Party Time With Jenny Beth

Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots is one of the activists featured in Tea Party: The Documentary, which premiered Tuesday in D.C. She's also featured in my column today at The American Spectator:

Jenny Beth Martin didn't set out to become a movie star. Yet Tuesday night at the Ronald Reagan Center amphitheatre, the mom from Georgia was a celebrity at the big-screen premiere of a new film that features a cast of thousands.
Wait -- better make that "hundreds of thousands." . . .
The amazing growth of the movement is highlighted by one of Martin's earliest on-screen appearances, showing her speaking at a Feb. 27 event in Atlanta, where a small crowd turned out on a cold rainy Friday. Martin subsequently explains that she was one of about 20 organizers on a Feb. 20 conference call that led to that first round of Tea Party gatherings, which followed commodities analyst Rick Santelli's now-famous Feb. 19 rant on the CNBC network.
As the film makes clear, however, Santelli's call for a Tea Party protest tapped into a deep vein of discontent that started growing among grassroots conservatives during the Bush administration. The documentary begins with audio of a Dec. 19, 2008, speech by President Bush advocating a bailout for the auto industry: "If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers."
Indeed, although some have characterized the Tea Party movement as motivated entirely by partisan GOP opposition to President Obama, it was Obama's Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who took the lead in advocating passage of the Wall Street bailout in September 2008. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

UPDATE: It's real. And it's spectacular. And I'm not necessarily talking about Pink Elephant Pundit.

Henry Waxman, meet Jenny Beth Martin

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey notes that Rep. Henry Waxman wants taxpayers to bail out newspapers. Having spent 22 years in the newspaper business, you might think I'd be in favor of such a proposal, but I'm not.

Sad as it is for an old newsman to see the industry circling the drain (especially the worsening woes of the Washington Times) I'd go back to driving a forklift before I'd work for a newspaper dependent on bailout money swindled from the taxpayers.

This "gimme" attitude -- that government has an obligation to support us at the expense of our fellow citizens -- is antithetical to liberty. One of the people who rejects that attitude is Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.

One of the most touching scenes in Tea Party: The Documentary Film shows Jenny Beth and her husband looking at their dream house -- a house they lost to foreclosure last year as the result of a business deal that went bad. But the Martins didn't go looking for a government bailout, and Jenny Beth talked about that in a two-part video interview at last night's premiere:

"When they started talking about the mortgage bailouts, we realized . . . that is not a good thing. If you can't afford your house any longer, you don't need to be in it."

What happened to the Martins -- like what's happening to the newspaper business -- is painful, but it's part of a larger struggle that makes this country great. We are Americans. Maintaining our independence despite adversity is what we do and who we are. As Allen West said, "In life, you're going to get knocked down. The measure of someone's character is what you do after you've been knocked down."

I walked away from the newspaper business nearly two years ago, and spent out my 401(k) to pay the bills while I launched a freelance career online. It hasn't been easy and I haven't gotten rich (yet), but it beats the hell out of sitting around waiting for a government handout.

Want to tell Henry Waxman to shove his newspaper bailout up his notorious nostrils? Just support your favorite bloggers, and we'll make sure he gets the message.

Bailout? We don't need no stinkin' bailout!

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