NEWS: Medieval Tea Party

POLITICS: Medieval Tea Party

Diary entry - 4/18/1312

Had a very good day today. Woke up early, as the rain had broken through the straw roof. Again. Me bed of leaves is in need of replacement. Being winter, however, there’s no leaves about, so I just may need to take some straw from the roof. Also will have to sweep out the reed floor, because of all the mud, crumbs and animal drippings. Michael is suffering from dysentery, as well, and has done a number on the floor more than once.

Ate porridge with some ripe cheese. Not too many maggots in the cheese this morning, which I took as a sign things is turning ‘round a bit. After breakfast, left my seven-year-old son Jean, to plow the field with Lord Marat’s ox I borrowed. I prayed nothing would happen to the beast, as I need the boy to live. He's strong for a seven-year-old! I took some wheat up to Lord Marat’s mill. He was generous in only taking one sixth of me wheat in exchange for using his mill. Milling didn’t take too long. After went out to work in the Lord’s field.

Saw a wild boar while working the carrots. Oh, I would have liked to have killed it and had a nice feast for the others, but not really worth being killed for, now is it? Especially right on the heels of watching Charles burned alive for killing those wild ducks. Lord Marat doesn’t take kindly to killing wild game on his land. Anyway, I’ve got bread and ale waiting for me tonight.

Heard John’s arm fell off yesterday. Shame that. He had a problem with the fungus in his rye flour over the winter, so it’s not a big surprise. I knew he had turned blotchy red. Apparently, he’s just babbling and staring at the sky now. Hopefully Lord Marat can find something for him to do that just requires one arm. It’s a shame it happened now, right after he paid Lord Marat a death duty and a fine for inheriting his father’s land. Losing his best pig and then having to give his second best pig to the church as an inheritance tax, and now an arm? Seems a bit too much for one man to bear.

The boy came by the field to tell me the priest had stopped by to collect the tithe. Five eggs, bag of flour, basket of firewood, 1/10th of me wheat and a chicken. Don’t get me started on them priests, livin’ the life up there, with all the food they want and going at it with all those young boys.

Just then, a crowd comes down the road, making noise and carrying signs. I saw Gaston and asked him what was going on. He says the King wanted to take an extra 3% in taxes from Lord Marat. Can you imagine? Three percent?!?! Course, I was enraged. We all were - even though he's going to use the money to give we peasants a bit more wheat. I grabbed me pitchfork and joined the mob, as we marched through the village. How dare the King Philip make Lord Marat pay more taxes! It’s an outrage! When’s it going to stop! Someone called it a “Porridge Party.” Not sure why, something about that time when they tossed all that porridge in the Reine because of the church taken too high a tithe. Whatever, porridge party is a good name as any, but it’s still just another indignation meeting. It was odd to have some of the knights involved in this one, especially after they raped me brother’s wife and daughters before killing him. Jacque actually said a couple of the knights started this march. We ended up burning down the local garrison. The king’s knights ran like women. It was a damned good time.

When I got home, learned me wife had gone into labor and died during birth, while I was at the porridge party. The baby died, as well. And to top it off, me youngest son, Lawrence, succumbed to the Black Death. What a fucking day! After the tithe and giving the wheat to use the mill, I haven’t anything left to hire gravediggers, so I spent the night with a hoe digging graves for me family. The whole time I was digging, I still couldn’t get that 3% out of me mind. Lord Marat has to pay a whole 3% to the King?!?!? Enough is enough! I expect more Porridge Parties!

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

The Original Tea Party wasn't really about the .03 tax on tea, as paying the tax was cheaper than buying the black market tea at the time. Likewise, this Tea Party wasn't so much about tax rates as what we feel as a lack of representation by our Government (even though ours is elected as opposed to back then). This includes excesses by both the current administration and the last(and those before it), and pretty much all of Congress. There's no free lunch, and Bush's deficit that Obama's gladly multiplying will come due.

lovely.

Geoffrey Chaucer you are not.

Blah, blah, blah guberment bad, blah, blah, blah I don't have any solutions, blah, blah, blah I wonder what Ayn Rand is doing tonight! Thank god the highway is still open so I can shoot over there and check her out!

^^ Good job in advancing the debate with a meaningful response^^
I would also like the add that the Tea Party Protest wasn't really about a single issue but a culmination different ideas and topics. You had the people that are upset about taxes, the amount of spending both sides have been apart of, the small group of people that just don't like Obama, and the one I personally am for; support for HR 1207 aka audit the Federal Reserve.

So you're admitting it was incoherent, then? If y'all decide to do this again next year, and especially if you're planning on doing it on TAX DAY, maybe the rhetoric about it "not being about (er, maybe only not solely about) taxes" should be hammered out a little better. Don't you think?

Oh goodie it's the lost chapter of the Canterbury Tales, you know I was thinking of going to one of those Tea Parties I heard the tea there is spot on. I don't want my whole family to die though because the moral of this story is obviously that if you have a dissenting opinion from the majority your whole family will die and your life will go to shit.

where the hell were the tea parties during the last administration? oh, that's right, there weren't any, because the current crop of conservatives don't really care how much is being spent, so long as it's not being spent by librulz.

Actually motorfirebox us Conservatives have been worried about the spending of Bush and many of us did write to our representatives in opposition to the Bush Bail outs and TARP funds. However, like Al Gore says it takes a big event to get peoples attention, so isn't it good that people are finally waking up to the financial crises that has been growing for years?

Also, Toku666 I don't see it as a bad thing that there were different views and messages being expressed. It was rather the media that distorted the messages so bad that it was hard to see what it was about.

The Republicans are all bent out of shape over taxes that most of them dont even have to pay, but they are A.O.K. with Bush (and Obama, as well) eviscerating the Constitution.

Worrying about misspending in 2008, the height of the election season, is hardly a sincere Conservative protest or dismay of 8 years of misspending. That being said, I wish the teabagging protestor's messages were more focused on oversight of federal funding then eliminating funding altogether. Oversight is the representation of the people that is in danger with such large sums of money at stake, and that shouldn't be a partisan issue.

What? Tea parties?

Sorry. I vaguely remember something about that from last week, but it was so convoluted and pointless and it vanished so quickly from the public consciousness that I'm struggling to recall why it was important.

Well, to my recollection, there were tea party protests during the Bush Administration, but were held by Libertarians angry over the Fed and very few Paultards would show up. It's just, this year, that the Paultards' protest was co-opted by Republicans angry over their white-conservative hegemony dying.

I was using the events of 2008 since that is when most people awoke from their thick haze of pop culture to come to realize that the current and past management of funding was flawed and out of control. Many of us have been concerned before then as well. The part of the Tea Party's I agree with were those ones trying to get support for HR 1207 which would require the first full audit of the Federal Reserve.

Thanks. Because what I was going for with my hastily written blurb on a titty site was to write something comparable to one of the greats of literature.

You are the epitome of ridiculous.

Who do you suggest we trust to oversee this funding?

And for someone who claims to be a comedian you have a shitty sense of humour and ridiculously thin skin.

FearTheReaper, I know we have our differences, but neither you nor I care to make this another thread about your presence on the site. What it should be about is your confusing piece of satire.

Chaucer's medieval satire was a) funny and b) a critical reflection of medieval England. If you're trying to compare protestors to ignorant medieval serfs, OK, but why exactly isn't clear. No one in the media has made the medieval link, so why are you? And why are you evoking the name of Jean-Paul Marat for the Lord here? Care to clear up some of your weaker links?

The sound of nuance whistling over your head is deafening.

Your HR 1207 is simply a remake of your previous hero's HR 833 (Ron Paul) and a thinly disguised effort to abolish the Central Bank and the resultant fiat money system. That's not a solution, that's another chapter in the 12 steps to complete creative destruction.

And you wonder why this crap gets so little traction.

The point, you missed it:

Bush put through 8 years of astoundingly irresponsible budgets and GOP senators used budget reconciliation to ram through the fiscally irresponsible 2001 and 2005 tax cuts for the rich that helped sink us deep into the red. Bush also pursued the Iraq war on borrowed money, further sinking us hundreds of billions of dollars further in debt.

Where were these idiots then? The majority of the GOP rank and file not only didn't give a shit, they actively promoted this crap - eight fucking years of the GOP shouting down those who were fiscally responsible, by questioning their patriotism among other odious tactics. Where were the protests against irresponsible war spending? Where was Fox News?

Why was the GOP media all about defending this BS when their guy was doing it when it was totally un-necessary during financial good times, yet the same douches are all about being against it when the other team is doing it, now that we're in a fucking meltdown and desperately need to?

So yeah, these people are far more than a day late and a few bucks short of credibility when they buy into an astroturf movement organized by rich, connected GOP power players and aggressively promoted by Fox News.

Also, Katie, you should point out that in 1312, Europe was just wrapping up a few centuries of incredible prosperity, and life was relatively good. The crisis of the Late Middle Ages hadn't really gotten going yet; the Great Famine was still three years away.

And the term "Black Death" wasn't coined until the 19th century; in the 14th people called it the "Great Pestilence" or the "Great Plague." In any case, it didn't spread to Western Europe until the 1340s.

Now, if we moved the story to about 1350...

Please stop frightening people, your knowledge is astounding. And frightening.

Its nice to see literary criticism on the CE Boards.

I'm having a hard time recalling a multi-trillion dollar spending bill that was passed without a single member of Congress reading before approving it during the last administration. Maybe you can help me out with that one.

I was at the rally in Chicago. It was by no means a partisan attack. Speakers were from both sides. I can't believe people dismiss standing up against the government as something petty as partisan hatred, racism or whatever naive conjecture you can come up. What will it take to wake people up to the fact that spending like this is completely irresponsible and backwards economically? How is outspending the past administration a change in the right direction? Have a little pride and respect for people who took time out of their lives to stand up for all of us. This outrageous spending and borrowing hurts all of us...well...at least those of us who actually work and contribute to society.

Congratulations. You brought out my first post as a member of this site.

whazzat? massive spending with no oversight? whazzat? passing debt on to the next generation?

the thing that really dumbfounds me is the conservative bitching about 'no representation'. a) conservatives lack representation because they were voted out of office after wrecking the damn country, and b) i just spent the last 8 years not being represented. cry me a river.

and, haha, i'm the one that killed your lurker status? man, wait until you meet some of the real liberals who post here.