In brief, the Tea Party/GOP is pushing for economic and social policies based on fears: fears of massive transformation, turmoil and chaos underway in our society, and fears about how those transformations will impact lives largely defined by self-interest, power and money.
Another unlikely yet delightful paring came from uptown, where the Soho Rep (in collaboration with Piece by Piece Productions and Rising Phoenix Rep) is staging Elective Affinities, a brief evening tea with the fictitious New York socialite Alice Hauptmann played with acute grace by Zoe Caldwell.
They stopped for a brief cup of tea at the United Nations guest house and then were again whisked away through the bombed-out streets of Kabul to a high-walled detention center in a residential neighborhood.
The invitation offers breakfast with the prime minister, a morning tea briefing on the state of the Senate, afternoon tea with ministerial chiefs of staff and a policy lunch, all for a "registration fee" of $11,000.
See the brief rundown of major tea varieties set out below for more help.
If a foreign crisis occurs on her watch, there is a good chance she will already have been there, read the briefing book and had tea with the local power brokers.
There followed the briefest of cameos before tea from Moeen Ali, who danced fearlessly down the pitch to his first ball and hit it over the top to the pavilion but then prodded and was bowled by the next.
In reality, that translates into some great events: 1940s-style tea dances for Brief Encounter; The Princess Bride in a Welsh castle; Wings Of Desire in a 12th-century Glasgow abbey; My Beautiful Laundrette in, er, a laundrette.
Beyond its value as an engrossing reading and rearranging of political tea leaves, the briefing by Mr. Bush's advisers -- the second of its kind in less than two months -- suggested an investment in portraying Mr. Gore as a persistently unappealing loser whose retoolings have failed to reinvigorate his campaign.
