Sad: Washed-Up Movie Critic Takes to Twitter to Trash Tea Partiers

You'd think a guy battling cancer would have more to worry about than harboring insane rage against Americans fighting for their freedom. It's really sad this far-left kook can't let go of his anger.

Who's the biggest scourge of the tea party movement these days? It might be film critic Roger Ebert, who lately has been tossing brickbats at Sarah Palin and other right-wing politicians in between rendering verdicts on the latest movies.

Over the last few weeks, Ebert has used his busy Twitter page to give the tea party belittling nicknames, predict it will quickly fade and opine that "a loud movement is not the same as a mass movement."

"I write about the TeePees because it's so sad how they've been manipulated to oppose their own best interests," Ebert said in an e-mail, using his latest epithet for the tea party followers. "I am a liberal."

Yes, people just cannot do what's in their own best interests and think for themselves. Instead, they're being "manipulated" by some dark, unseen forces, unlike liberals who always think for themselves, naturally.

Now here we have a grown man reduced to using the term "TeePees" to refer to Tea Partiers.

So clever I'm surprised nobody else came up with it. Get it? TP, like toilet paper?

But due to complications from cancer surgery in 2006, he has been unable to speak. The story of his recovery battle, along with a jarring portrait that revealed his surgically ravaged jawline, recently appeared in Esquire. Tuesday, he will appear on a taped piece on "Oprah" to unveil an electronic device that promises to give him back some vocal function. Given the fact that for years Ebert was never far away from a microphone, there's irony in the fact that his current battle with the tea party followers is conducted in text only, with bite-sized tweets and blog posts.

He might gain some sympathy if he acted like an adult.