'Teabaggers': Roger Ebert Trashes His Own Fans (and Palin) on Twitter

If you follow a movie critic on Twitter, chances are you follow him because you admire his ability to critique the many offerings of Hollywood. Unfortunately, if you follow Roger Ebert, you also get endless tirades on greedy corporate fatcats, “nutjob Teabaggers,” and how dumb Sarah Palin is.

Ebert is, like many liberals, showing his true colors – and they ain’t pretty. His obsession with Sarah Palin and Tea Partiers provides the perfect example. He spent ample time Tweeting about the recent Tea Party Convention, where Sarah Palin was a featured speaker and – gasp – was paid $100,000 for her appearance (which he must now know that she pledged to donate to other candidates and causes).

When Roger Ebert Didn’t Trash His Fans With Pornographic Slurs

Ebert makes a number of references to how much Palin was being paid by both the Tea Party Convention and Fox News – a curious fixation considering he built his long and storied career by discussing the work of screenwriters, directors, actors and actresses – many of whom get paid millions of dollars a pop, as do the “corporate fatcats” at the studios who back these films.

But here, Ebert goes above and beyond the pale, managing to crassly insult both Palin and the Tea Party attendees by saying:

TeaBagger crowd: polite. The nutjobs who were bussed to Town Halls didn’t get their way paid to Sarah’s $100,000 speech

TeaBagger crowd? Is this what passes for informed commentary? Bashing a group of people with whom you disagree politically by labeling their movement with a degrading pornographic term? Just because the crew at MSNBC thinks it’s a hoot doesn’t mean it’s a great idea. I mean, have you seen MSNBC’s ratings lately?

Did Ebert stop to consider how many of those “teabaggers” might be Ebert fans who follow him on Twitter? I wonder how many of them read his movie reviews for guidance on their entertainment choices. But like so many of the entertainment world elite, if you disagree with him, you’re a dumbkopf who deserves to be insulted, regardless of whether or not you are a consumer of his product.

The irony of his Tweets on politics also seems to be lost upon him. Isn’t he indulging in the same freedom of speech privileges as the Tea Partiers he so casually denigrates? God bless him for utilizing the same citizen democracy ideals espoused by the Tea Party movement. Welcome to the party, Mr. Ebert! Too bad that he’s so busy slamming Tea Partiers that he doesn’t seem to realize that yes, he and the Tea Partiers do have something in common.

Unfortunately, rude name calling is not expounding upon the issues of the day, but using one’s celebrity to throw tasteless, classless insults — something that, until recently, has gone unanswered for lack of a platform.

But no more.

Thanks to the rise of the new media, the liberal elite — which includes entertainment “luminaries” like Ebert – no longer have a political soapbox from which they can lob political bombshells unchallenged. People like Andrew Breitbart are harnessing this new force and using it to change the way the news of the day is disseminated.

“They want to control the narrative,” Breitbart says. “I’m saying, ‘No more!’ The new media has freed it up. I’m sorry, mainstream media. It’s over. Your ability to control the narrative is over.”

So Ebert and his ilk can go ahead and continue trashing their ideological opposites rather than engaging in thoughtful debate. But they can no longer expect to do so unchallenged.

Bring it on.