Column: Good intentions no excuse for poor execution

By Charles Austin

Published April 13, 2010

There’s a lot to be angry about this April.

It struck me this morning that this is a terrible month to be a Tea Partier. Within the span of two weeks, the government is prying its way into households with the census and into bank accounts with tax collection.

But the census in particular is so innocuous I have a hard time believing anyone is angry about it out of principle. When Tea Partiers claim they detest the census because it’s an overreach of government power and cite its use in the Japanese internment camps of the '40s, I can’t shake the suspicion their rage toward the Democratic administration is just being sublimated into a completely unimportant issue that didn’t bother them at all in 2000 under George W. Bush.

But I can’t cast stones, because I’m also angry this April. Insane Clown Posse just released a video for its song “Miracles,” which has me as irate as the Tea Partiers are over the census.

The song boasts some of the most intellectually insulting lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life:

“Water, fire, air and dirt/Fucking magnets, how do they work?/And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist/Y’all mother fuckers lying and getting me pissed.”

This gem is off the 2009 album Bang! Pow! Boom!, which is a return to the group’s Dark Carnival imagery.

A substantial part of ICP’s discography revolves around this fictitious carnival, which is basically the central motif in a morality tale created by the group to capture the imaginations of the lower-class Detroit youth of their upbringing. In the music, pedophiles, domestic abusers and the like are summoned to the Dark Carnival for punishment for their misdeeds. Beneath the clownish veneer, ICP is ultimately a street-savvy, Faygo-guzzling, evangelical group.

Although it’s commendable the group seeks to open up a discussion about morality in low-income communities, I have to take issue with its unwillingness to learn how magnets work. And this is the problem with anti-census Tea Partiers.

In the same way ICP members aren’t the best evangelicals, the Tea Partiers aren’t the best libertarians or conservatives. Somehow, they’ve allowed Glenn Beck to ascend the throne of their cause rather than, say, Ron Paul or anybody with an education.

ICP undermines its intended positive messages with unbridled stupidity in the same way the Tea Party undermines valid concerns about federal power and states’ rights by letting its most irrational proponents (gun-wielding town hall protesters, Beck) retain serious mainstream prominence.

Having valid concerns about an issue doesn’t make you a good spokesperson on that issue. Leaders need knowledge and a willingness to come to an understanding with those who disagree.

I can't help but be angered by Beck and ICP, but I also have a hard time gauging the irrationality of my own anger against the irrationality of theirs. Is ICP completely deplorable even though the group has a (sort of) positive message? They certainly put more time and effort than I into making the world (in their eyes) a better place.

Can the Tea Partiers be dismissed for their hyperbolic rhetoric and lack of tact, rather than for the actual substance of their beliefs? Don’t I also behave irrationally when I’m angry? Is it really fair for me to write the entire movement off, including its intelligent proponents, just because some prominent members are ignorant and proud of it?

It’s tricky to weigh good intentions versus poor execution, but ultimately I think people have a responsibility to learn how magnets work, even if it means trusting scientists.

Still, I’m sure this idea angers others the way ICP and Glenn Beck anger me.