Birmingham News writer calls Tea Party ‘the extreme of the extremists’

Joey Kennedy, Birmingham News
Joey Kennedy, Birmingham News

Birmingham News editorial writer Joey Kennedy spent this past weekend the same way he usually does, posting twitter haikus and other über-intelligent, insightful things like this:

After following along for a while, Patrick Speigner, a 20-year-old Birmingham-area sales associate, took to Twitter Sunday night to confront Kennedy about one of his recent articles regarding the government shutdown.

Kennedy defied him to “name one.” Speigner responded that he did not believe, as Kennedy does, that the government shutdown is solely the fault of Republicans.

The rest of the argument is pretty much what you’d expect. Kennedy derides Republicans’ refusal to “compromise” and implores Speigner to stop watching Fox News because it’s “melting [his] brain.”

But then Kennedy takes it next-level and calls Tea Partiers, a group with which over half of Alabamians identify, “the extreme of the extremists” and proclaimed that they are “not patriots.”

Kennedy then “blocked’ Speigner from being able to interact with him further…

…which Speigner counted as a victory.


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