New York Times Columnists Ridicule Tea Party: 'Zombies' Wearing 'Suicide Vests'

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Wednesday continued to ramp up the newspaper’s vitriolic attacks against Tea Party conservatives, bizarrely describing them as “cannibals” “zombies” and “vampires.”

Linking the debt ceiling deal to The Exorcist, Halloween and Alien (among other horror movies), Dowd offered these hyperbolic comparisons:

Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones. (Conjuring that last image on Monday, Vladimir Putin described America as “a parasite.”)

The piece included other cartoonish assertions, such as:

The horror director Brian De Palma once described the simple essence of his genre: “There is just something about a woman and a knife.” But, in this case, it was the president — and the federal government — being chased through dim corridors by a maniacal gang with big knives held high. Like Dracula’s castle, the majestic Capitol suddenly seemed forbidding, befogged not with dry ice but with the stressed-out Speaker John Boehner’s smoking. Like all great horror movies, this one existed in that surreal zone between fantasy and reality, as the Tea Party zealots created their own reality in midnight meetings.

The liberal columnist summed up the resolution to the debt standoff by lamenting, “The gory, Gothic melodrama on the Potomac is a summer horror blockbuster — without the catharsis.”

Savaging the Tea Party has been a theme of Times columnists lately. On Tuesday, columnist Joe Nocera attacked Tea Party Republicans as “terrorists” who have “waged jihad on the American people” while wearing “suicide vests.” Excerpts:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

Nocera actually managed to top those inflammatory comments by closing:

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.