Tea Party Express runs on slogans — a whole lot of them

After hearing so much about the national "Tea Party Express," I decided on Monday to see for myself what all the shouting is about.

What I found in the parking lot of a defunct sports park was the Angry Americans Homemade Sign Convention. Nearly all of the few hundred mostly older and grayer folks in attendance seemed to have one. I felt underdressed without one.

Here are a few of many. See whether you spot a theme:

"Obama Care: Change we don't believe in," "Be a Reid Wacker," "Bye! Harry," "Dump Reid," "Conservatives for Freedom," "Stop the Spending," "Hope won't hold your place in the bread line," "Take our country back," "The stimulus is a Obamanation" and "Higher taxes don't create jobs!"

Although the rally's organizers noted the Tea Party buses were rolling across this great land of ours in an effort to take back the country -- perhaps from the banks that control it, or did they mean the Democrats? -- it's noteworthy that it makes more stops in Nevada than any of the 17 states its buses will visit on the way to a Sept. 12 rally in Washington, D.C.

Maybe that's because we're just better at expressing ourselves with Magic Markers and cardboard.

Some juicy ones: "Harry Reid is a traitor," "Our Constitution needs a bailout. It's too big to fail," "Shame on the Chamber of Commerce."

It was a homemade sign-writer's paradise, but not all the enraged rhetoric was on placards. There were plenty of "Don't Tread on Me" flags, a "Did U Get Stimulated?" bumper sticker, and specialty toilet paper featuring caricatures of the federal bank bailout players.

It was the only place in that crowd where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was on a roll.

Reid was vilified as a turncoat and a socialist and a threat to a certain high-minded local newspaper at the tea party, where the fear-mongering started even before the wheels on the buses stopped going around and around. The "death panel" canard was alive and well. The three-headed monster Obama-Reid-Pelosi was a serpent that threatened the Republic.

And then there's the Constitution. So sacred its likeness was plastered on the sides of the buses, the consensus was it's an endangered species as long as the Democrats are in Washington.

It was my first tea party, but as far as I could tell, the traveling patriots didn't miss a trick. They waved a lot of flags, used a child to recite the preamble to the Constitution, sang angry patriotic songs, waited approximately 10 seconds before mentioning the word "freedom" and less than half a minute before the "forefathers" were roused from their slumber and called to attention.

Entertainer Diana Nagy said, "Thank you for coming to celebrate freedom with us" and then noted how that freedom is threatened. She exclaimed how she was happy to see all the "great American patriots like you."

Were they all great American patriots? I decided to take her word for it. But when I saw a man wearing a Union uniform and carrying a 35-star American flag and a sign reading "Will invade South for food," I figured he was the truest patriot.

"It means if they don't stop all this insane spending, we won't have money to preserve the Union," Jim Edwards said. "That's basically the take on it."

That makes sense. The federal deficit will dramatically increase in the coming years. I decided not to ask the Union soldier whether he waved his message and flag during the Bush administration's run-up of the federal deficit.

It was a day for signs, not debate.

There were many contenders, but Dennis Allan of Sandy Valley carried my favorite sign. On one side it read, "Stop eating a bowl of stupid." On the other side, "S.O.S. Stuck on Stupid. Quit making debts."

Allan is on Social Security disability, but like others, he is a strong supporter of smaller government.

"They're stuck on stupid," Allan said. "They're stuck on spending our money. We ain't got no money left. The debt is something we just can't afford to keep on building up and up and up."

I scanned the crowd but found no sign from Samuel Johnson, who once said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

In the end, Allan was a poet: Stuck On Stupid.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.