Tea Party to-do's, why wait?

  The other day a columnist
  for The Washington Post -
  or would that be, a blog-
  ger; one never knows, in
  the Amazon kingdom, where
  the stuff is coming from -
  was hailing a subsidence
  of the Tea Party's ram-
  page against the 5th Com-
  mandment, and I found my-
  self tallying the list of 
  deficiencies in that pro-
  ject, of chastising the
  Republican Party for ad-
  mitting modernity through
  the blinders. Is it too
  late a stage in this dawn-
  ing transition into back-
  sliding, to speak up for
  traction in the tea cup?

  Something has happened, as
  I know you don't need to be
  told, to the composition of
  our materials. Some kind of
  hamburger helper concoction
  has invaded our porcelain,
  a weirdly shiny agent of
  slipperiness, which I sup-
  pose could be some cousin
  of that non-glass stuff
  that's going into glass
  these days, in bar tumb-
  lers of exotic endurance.
  And this, mind, is taking
  place at the very time
  that Lucretius' knowing
  complaint on behalf of a
  supporting finger, is be-
  ing addressed by reducing
  the diameter of the ring
  to a mockery of digital
  passage (not that it was
  ever to be condoned). That 
  is to say, it's getting so 
  one can't get a grip anymore.

  Far be it from anyone's in-
  tentions, "after" what we're
  going through with the Repub-
  licans - always assuming, our
  scribe is on to a trend, be-
  yond coincidence - to open up
  a purge of the purgers, some
  indelicate raising of stakes
  in a game that was naughty in
  the first place. But a decline
  in our mettle is just certain 
  to settle, if a shtetl's new
  kettle is not swept, pristine. 
  As they say.

  We repulse the slippery slope
  of tractionless teacups today,
  or we defend against this slip
  and fall of civilisation, it-
  self, in backlit boots of mil-
  itancy. (Whee! These bipolar 
  binomials are fun, I've always
  wanted to try one). Nor is the 
  slide confined to tumblers and 
  go-go first responders, anymore.
  Even as we speak, we're find-
  ing an addition to one of the
  page's preferred edifices, con-
  fected of concrete diluted by
  2 percent glistening titanium. 
  And these are bearing walls, 
  mind you, no dangling scrims
  for Renoir and Rubens and such
  stuff. How on earth, may we at
  least demand, could this have
  come to pass in Texas?













Martin Filler
No Harm to the Kimbell
The New York Review of Books
December 9, 2013

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