It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a Tea Bagger! 

Since 1941 Captain America has been keeping America safe from all manner of foes, both real and imagined by the clever folks at Marvel.  He fought the Nazis! He kept us safe from the commies during the great "Red Scare." And most recently, he's been taking on the tea baggers, and getting his ass kicked for his efforts.  It would seem that tea is Captain America's kryptonite.

In his blog post on Yahoo! News this morning Brett Michael Dykes details the great hero's battle against those who would tea bag. They do know we're all snickering when we call them "tea baggers" don't they? An excerpt from his post is quoted below:

Issue 602 of the comic features Captain America investigating a right-wing anti-government militia group called "the Watchdogs". Hoping to infiltrate the group, Captain America and his African-American sidekick The Falcon observe an anti-tax protest from a rooftop. The protestors depicted are all white and carry signs adorned with slogans almost identical to those seen today in Tea Party rallies like "tea bag libs before they tea bag you" and "stop the socialists."

The Falcon mentions that the gathering appears to be "some kind of anti-tax protest" and notes that "this whole 'hate the government' vibe isn't limited to the Watchdogs." He then tells Captain America that he doesn't think their plan will work because "I don't exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks." Captain America then explains that his plan entails sending The Falcon in among the group posing as an IRS agent under the thinking that a black government official will most certainly spark their anger.

The clear implicit attack on the Tea Party Movement was first noticed by Publius' Forum's Warner Todd Huston. When a minor uproar ensued, Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada spoke to Comic Book Resources and defended the issue while apologizing for the panel that seemed to tie real-life Tea Party protesters to the fictional group depicted in the book.

Quesada then went on to say that Marvel would "apologize for and own up to" a series of "stupid mistakes" that led to them "accidentally identifying" one of the members of the protest group "as being a part of the Tea Party instead of a generic protest group." He explained that they were on deadline to get the issue to the printer for publication, and in the course of sending it off it was noticed that the signs in the scene contained no words or phrases. He said the editor then asked the letterer to "fudge in some quick signs" and that in the "rush to get the book out of the door," the letterer "looked on the net and started pulling slogans" from signs captured in photographs at Tea Party protests in order to make them appear "believable."

Seriously people.  If you're gonna form organizations like the Tea Party Nation and promote an aggressive agenda, you're gonna have to expect that you're gonna be talked about in the main stream press, the blogosphere, and yes, even in the funny pages. 

When these conservative groups post racist photos of our president, cast aspersions on his heritage, religion, and place of birth we're supposed to let them pass out flyers at the super market, but Captain America can't kick their asses around the Marvel universe?  Pshaw.