Pop-star and courageous anti-toilet-paper crusader [1] Sheryl Crow apparently has a new political concern: Tea Partiers.
The country crooner told CBS journalist Katie Couric that Tea Party members are uneducated, angry and potentially dangerous in an interview [2] with Glamour magazine this June.
After Crow complained in the interview that Americans have become too blasé about politics, and that nobody has taken to the streets to cause “a riot or a revolution,” Couric correctly pointed to the Tea Party as an example of modern day activism.
“What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Because that is the specific sort of group of people who would say we're out there, we're getting involved in the process…,” asked Couric.
“I appreciate the fact that those people are out there and that they are fired up,” responded Crow, before adding that Tea Partiers “haven't educated themselves…they're just pissed off.”
“My main concern is that [the Tea Party is] really fear-based,” said Crow, a cancer survivor and environmental activist. “What's coming out of the Tea Party most often, especially if you go onto YouTube, and you see some of the interviews with these people who really don't even know what the issues are, they're just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it.”
“They're not sure what they're angry at,” Crow continued. “[T]hey don't understand what's happening on Wall Street.”
The singer also worried that the “uneducated” and “angry” Tea Partiers could even become dangerous. “[K]nowledge is power, and anything less than that when it comes to anger can be dangerous,” said Crow.
But before she snubbed the education level of Tea Partiers again, maybe Crow should have checked out this New York Times poll [3], which found Tea Party members to be “more educated than the general public.”
The Grammy-award winning songstress could also serve to learn a thing or two from the Tea Partiers – in the past she's come under fire for her own bone-headed remarks. In 2007, Crow was mocked across the political spectrum for suggesting in a Huffington Post column [4] that people should use “only one square [of toilet paper] per restroom visit” in order to conserve trees.
Other ideas in Crow's 2007 column included using a reusable “dining sleeve” instead of a dinner napkin, and a creating a “greenest lifestyle” contest for aspiring musicians.
Crow later backed away [5] from her statements, claiming they were merely brilliant satire written in order to bring attention to the dire threat of climate change.
Later in her June Glamour Magazine interview with Couric, Crow slammed Karl Rove and other conservatives for harping on her toilet paper idea. She claimed this was done “[j]ust to discredit me and to make me look silly.”
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