'Tea Party Coloring Book' is kiddie propaganda art

As kids, lots of people had their first participatory art experience with coloring books. Simplified contour drawings in thick black lines leave blank spaces to be filled in with crayons or colored pencils.
 
Now, just in time for the November election, a small Midwest publisher has come up with a distinctive hybrid: a coloring book merged with kiddie propaganda.

"The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids" is a 32-page "special edition" on the right-wing political movement, produced by a division of Really Big Coloring Books Inc. The online imprint of the St. Louis-based publisher produces one other special-edition product: a 2008 coloring book on then President-elect Barack Obama.

Cheerful in tone, semi-literate in its writing and factually challenged, "The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids" offers itself as "a teaching and learning tool" for children ages 2 and up.

There aren't any drawings of tea bags suspended from sun hats, nor racist depictions of Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. Instead, puzzles, lyrics to patriotic songs and line drawings of the Statue of Liberty, edifices in Washington and the facade of the New York Stock Exchange are interspersed with free-market-obsessed texts.

Next to a big dollar sign, "Freedom of Choice and Economics" extols the "ability to choose your job in America's free market." Bright-eyed teen doctors flank "Good Health Care for All Americans," which means private medicine "not restricted by federal or state governments." "No more taxes!" is largely self-explanatory, a sentiment floating in the clouds above Mt. Rushmore.

Some of the drawings are funny. Pigs at a trough ("pork") look sick to their stomachs. The Mt. Rushmore presidents appear grave but worried. All of the citizens -- young or old -- wear big smiles on vacant, happy faces. Cluttered details on some of the drawings make the prospect of actual coloring dubious.

One drawing apparently cheering the virtues of agribusiness subsidies for the production of corn-based ethanol wouldn't cause Van Gogh to lose any sleep. A composition near the end, just before the workbook section on how to write your congressman, shows a wedge formation of striding young citizens that would likely pass muster with the Kukryniksy, the Moscow art collective that rose to the rank of People's Artist in the old USSR.

The texts are less funny. Government is "suppose [sic] to use our tax dollars" wisely. Federal debt has "become a life style because as [sic] this will bankrupt our country."  Run-on sentences are rife, which would have caused my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Adams, apoplexy.

But it's the premise of the coloring book that is the real eye-roller. Inside the front cover, the unidentified author explains that the origins of today's tea party are found in the iconic 1773 event in Boston's harbor -- and gets the history wrong.

The coloring book casts the pre-Revolutionary War episode in full fairy-tale mode, as a dispute between freedom-loving American colonists and an oppressive, far-away government that imposed taxes without their input.

In reality, a government deal with the British East India Company, one of the first and largest transnational corporations in history, meant that small businesses in the Colonies were going under because they could not compete. The Boston Tea Party was a popular uprising against big corporate tax cuts enacted by the British Parliament, many of whose members were, like King George III, major company stockholders. 

Speaking of deals, in 2004, Really Big Coloring Books entered into a partnership with MeadWestvaco Corp. to print and distribute its product line, an arrangement expanded in 2008 and now including the "Tea Party" tome. A business with global interests in packaging, office products, chemicals and real estate in 30 countries, the company also has an active political action committee based in Richmond, Va.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, MeadWestvaco's PAC has spent more than $95,000 in the current election cycle on contributions to 17 House and nine Senate candidates, 91% Republicans. In May, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich led a forum at MeadWestvaco's Richmond offices calling for repeal of healthcare legislation passed this year by Congress.

A report by Britain's Guardian newspaper says the coloring book, which retails for $3.95, has sold in the thousands. It is being reprinted daily, presumably without corrections, to keep up with demand.

-- Christopher Knight
twitter.com/KnightLAT

Photos: "The Tea Party Coloring book for Kids." Credit: Christopher Knight /Los Angeles Times

RECENT AND RELATED:

Jorge Pardo gets 2010 MacArthur 'genius' award

Gift of Rococo painting to LACMA goes back to the future

LACMA installs its Matisse ceramic wall

Comments

[Manuel]

This totally echoes the "Nazi coloring books" that were given to kids:

http://www.thebreman.org/exhibitions/online/1000kids/propaganda.html

[MJS]

The comments here are like a Mad Tea Party Rally! Let's vote against our interests! Let's not protest debt that comes from War Profiteering or War Mongering! Perhaps we should show the Little Children that Fire Departments are examples of Evil Socialism, just like Police Departments and the Interstate Highway System. Oh, Dear, Evil Socialist Medicine has already brought Canada and Europe to their knees, where they have longer life expectancies and families are not destroyed by one member's major illness.

It's one thing to gnaw off your arm to save yourself, quite another to gnaw if off because you've been told to by demagogues and loonies.

[Tuthmosis]

It's so obvious when comment writers are Republican staffers paid to troll around the web and pretend to be "regular citizens." They really should shut down comments on (real) news websites.

[Jere]

Well this is a nice unbiased article by the LA Times. Not a hint of prejudice anywhere. Such shining fair and balanced journalism in this age is hard to find.

[Wade]

I think the people in the book's pictures are meant to be white. That should save time.

[waustin]

Wow, I always knew liberals were a little deranged, but it's kind of funny seeing it in print like this. We say "Fiscal Responsibility!" Liberals hear "Get a noose!" We say "Smaller Government!" Liberals hear "No darkies!"

I am starting to wonder if liberalism is either a state of indoctrination that needs psychological help to overcome, or is in fact a type of physical disease that might require medications.

[Cheryl Glodowski]

Wow. How biased can you get? No wonder the coloring book company's President is receiving death threats. These articles are pathetic. With everything going on in the world, you are choosing to write about a coloring book? Yeah, I can see 2-8 year olds reading that & voting against democrats. Please. Write about something that really matters. You do know that they have a coloring book about Obama, right? Where's the outrage at that? Woah! Evil coloring books!!

[kbworkman]

Good lord. Could this person's prejudice be any more obvious?

I guess we are to ignore all of the prejudice like this we see in the LATimes and consider their opinion of these matters as correct or worth considering?

[Wm Brown]

What would you pay for just the book alone?

Order now and your coloring book will be delivered in
3-4 months by Pony Express.

But WAIT there is more!

Order now and and we will throw in a box of ALL-WHITE Crayons.
Just send in 1 Chicken, or 5 Confederate Dollars.

[Trey Allyn]

I agree with Tuthmosis - it's obvious these aren't real readers making comments, just staffers for Reps or TPers slamming this ART critic because it doesn't go with their beliefs...

[Jeta]

"Now, just in time for the November election, a small Midwest publisher has come up with a distinctive hybrid: a coloring book merged with kiddie propaganda."

Really, this is a new idea, funny my kid comes home from school with Earth Day coloring books telling us how bad humans are and we're killing the earth. Have you watched disney channel lately, every 5 minutes there's another one of the teeny-boppers telling us how we need to "buy green" and get all natural, organic frigging clothes. Kiddie propoganda is not new and was not invented by this coloring book printer. Kiddie propoganda has been used in schools for years (away from parental supervision) to turn our kids left. Quit whining when someone on the right give you a little-bitty dose of your own medicine.

[gobnait]

Evan R: Just because the left-wing LA Times calls the coloring book propaganda, it must be so? Seriously? Is it possible for a liberal to have an independent thought?

[Patrick Henry]

HAHAHAHAHAHA, what a joke you are! Did you ever walk through Barnes and Nobles kid section after Barry was elected? If so, you undoubtedly saw multiple kiddie books with the wonderful story of our savior Obama and his humble beginnings, born in a manger (in Kenya, lol) and then growing up to be savior of the world.

No propaganda there, nope not at all.

As a matter of fact, you can still find;

Barack Obama's Journey to the White House

and

Spider-Man Magazine Marvel Kids (The adventures of Presidents Barack Obama & Abraham Lincoln)

along with others on Amazon!

[debiesam]

Yes, it's too bad kids are being taught the "full fairy-tale" version of our founding, instead of the truth about wonderful King George and his "tax cuts" — and those big, bad "freedom-loving" colonists!

Gimme a break!

I LOVE the idea of this coloring book! My kids are teens, so I think I'll have to buy for my nieces and nephews. Heck, I may give a book to my teens too. They will learn more from this coloring book than from what passes for a history textbook in their government school.

[RogerCfromSD]

The L.A. Times is, itself, far-left propaganda.

Its hatred of all things American is obvious.

Which is why it's readership is steadily dwindling, like the NYT's.

[BigJay]

So the children's book "Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope" was a reasonable and well researched biography?

[Long Beach Mark]

How awful that children are taught about freedoms, work ethic and the rule of law in this coloring book. LOL.

I hesitate to give publicity to a spectacularly vile liberal progressive kiddie propaganda book popular when Bush was President but I assume most kool-aid drinking southern california liberals already own it and regularly read it to their children at bedtime. So I'll mention it to yet again point out the left's short-term memory and rank hypocrisy.

Now children can be fully indoctrinated by their leftwing parents to hate conservatives before starting preschool. How charming...I present the liberal progressive hate filled propaganda masterpiece that even Joseph Goebbels would admire...."Why Mommy is a Democrat"....complete with page samples!!!!

http://www.littledemocrats.net/Democraticbooks.html

[Shadow_Lurker]

It is at this moment I would like to remind the LA Times of Why Mommy is A Democrat

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Mommy-Democrat-Jeremy-Zilber/dp/0978668804

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Sounds like Chris Knight is espousing a political point of view and attempting to convince others of its correctness.

Propaganda!

Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda!

See how evil it is now?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

@Evan R 7:48 pm
"The coloring book really doesn't bother me, but the fact that these are the same people that cried out about "indoctrinating" our children when Obama first took office just cries out hypocrisy. "

There is a difference here, and you know it. If parents want to buy the coloring book, or not, that is their choice. The "mm mm mm Barack Hussein Obama" indoctrination was inflicted on public schoolchildren by taxpayer-supported teachers regardless of the wishes of the children's parents.