I started reading Rolling Stone back in the late ’60’s. I remember it as a different magazine. Or maybe I was just different (sure bet). I loved the pieces by Hunter S. Thompson. I had never read any reporting like that.

I recently subscribed to Rolling Stone, for one reason: Matt Tiabbi. I’ve been following his stuff or a few years now. I trust him and believe his reporting. I remember how disappointed I was when he called out the Obama administration for bringing in a batch of Wall Street crooks. But I didn’t doubt the accuracy of his reporting (or his outrage).

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the Tea Party movement (without subjecting myself to being in their presence). Here’s some excerpts from Mr. Taibbi’s piece in the October Rolling Stone:

Tea & Crackers — How corporate interests and Republican insiders bilt the Tea Party monster

“A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment.” [Matt Taibbi’s description of the Tea Party]

“A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.”

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell: “With his needle nose, pursed lips and prim reading glasses, he’s a proud wearer of the “I’m an intellectual, but I’m also a narrow-minded prick” look made famous by George Will.”

“At times, their desire to withdraw from the brutally complex global economic system that is an irrevocable fact of their modern life and get back to a simpler world that no longer exists is so intense, it breaks your heart.”

“This, then, is the future of the Republican Party: Angry white voters hovering over their cash-stuffed mattresses with their kerosene lanterns, peering through the blinds at the oncoming hordes of suburban soccer moms they’ve mistaken for death-panel bureaucrats bent on exterminating anyone who isn’t an illegal alien or a Kenyan anti-colonialist.”

“Of course, the fact that we’re even sitting here two years after Bush talking about a GOP comeback is a profound testament to two things: One, the American voter’s unmatched ability to forget what happened to him 10 seconds ago, and two, the Republican Party’s incredible recuperative skill and bureaucratic ingenuity.

There were literally no healthy bodies left on the bench, but the Republicans managed to get back in the game anyway by plucking an assortment of nativist freaks, village idiots and Internet Hitlers out of thin air and training them into a giant ball of incoherent resentment just in time for the 2010 mid-terms.”