NM-Central “Outs” Anonymous Tea Party Spokesman?

by John Weckerle

Rats.  We had what could have been a great article in mind for this morning on the identity of the mysterious East Mountain Tea Party (EMTP) spokesperson “teapartynm.”  Based on writing styles and one particular hint from the web site, we were all ready to provide an exhaustive (and, now that we think of it, probably boring to most people) account of why we thought a particular person was the man behind the “nom de plume,” as it were.  Or, as it turns out, as it is.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, the Damage Control Subcommittee of the EMTP’s Public Relations Committee (okay, we’re being just a bit facetious there) appears to have gotten ahead of us and made a policy change requiring “teapartynm” to put his name on his articles – and after our most recent article on the subject, we might add.

The byline credits Bob Steiner of Edgewood, New Mexico, former New Mexico Central staff writer.

For what it is worth, Mr. Steiner’s rather, er, “dramatic” writing style is rather hard to miss in our opinion, and we did attempt to foreshadow this opinion on our part (and give the author an opportunity to self-identify) early on with our response to a comment on our first article on the subject: “And all your anonymous emotionalism (which seems a little familiar) aside…” – after which we continued to prod the commenter rather pointedly on the subject of identity.  (While we didn’t make a point of it at the time, this particular clue was hard to miss, but hardly conclusive as a one-time occurrence.)  We had hoped, but didn’t necessarily expect, that this would elicit a frank and honest response from “somebody” indicating his or her involvement, which still hasn’t happened.

We will note that Mr. Steiner has not publicly taken ownership of the (in our opinion) anti-Muslim posts on the East Mountain Tea Party site, and comments on our site. We call him to do so or deny authorship.

We did find yesterday’s tirade on the EMTP site to be, well, interesting:  “Creeping Socialists,” the NAACP, and even the ghost of Vladimir Lenin in the reincarnated form of George Soros are apparently coming to get you.  We do thank Mr. Steiner for the link to teapartytracker.org; interesting site.  What we find particularly interesting in yesterday’s diatribe is this particular statement on Mr. Steiner’s part describing someone who attended a Tea Party rally in a controversial t-shirt: “We really don’t even know if that person had any connection to the party.”

Hold it.  “The Party?” Mr. Steiner himself decried those who even consider that the “Tea Party Movement” could become a political party as “Marxist-Socialists” in a May 26, 2010 letter to The Independent.  Does this make Mr. Steiner a self-described Marxist-Socialist?  Is that better than being a creeping one?

All kidding aside, we realize that Mr. Steiner’s byline falls far short of an open and honest admission of authorship of the article with which we took issue, and so we still can’t say conclusively whether he is the author.  What we will say is that we no longer consider it reasonable for us to be curious about the author’s identity.  Either way, we still maintain that what is published on the EMTP site is the official position of the group, and we’ve already expressed our opinion on that.    And with that, we close the book on this particular chapter concerning the local klatch, and will move on to other, more pleasant subjects for the time being.

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