Maybe you are someone who used to say that things would be different if more women were in Washington. Maybe then politicians would stop playing games over women’s bodies and be clued in to the need for safe and legal abortions.

Maybe with women in charge there would be a greater commitment to end sexual violence. Maybe women at the top would put a priority on taking care of everybody’s families. All kids would get health care. Grammy need not worry about becoming a bag lady.

At least, that was my thinking. But the more I hear from this crop of women Tea Party candidates I’m terrified. Whose side are these women on?

It reminds me of a young female colleague who was so happy to work for her first woman boss and then later sighed, “She was the worst man I ever worked for.”

There’s a part of any feminist who is cheered when women boldly and passionately declare themselves for public office. It takes guts and we need more women at the top.

In general, I want to say “Go, girl.” But in the case of some of these GOP women candidates, I’m more often sputtering, “She thinks WHAT?”

Sharron Angle, the Nevada Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is so fiercely against abortion that she thinks a young girl impregnated by her father should have the baby. Two wrongs don’t make a right, she said. Lemons, she said, “can be made into lemonade.”

Same with Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware Republican Senate nominee, backed by Sarah Palin – some call her a Sarah Doll. O’Donnell says no exception for abortions even if the woman was raped.

Here’s another who is no friend to women, especially older women.

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, who loves the Tea Cozies, calls Social Security and Medicare a form of welfare. She’s said if her crowd were in control they could get rid of Social Security over one long weekend. And then on Monday throw how many older women out in the street? More women than men rely solely on Social Security to live. Perhaps Bachmann never expects to get old. Or poor.

These sisters are not looking out for the health and welfare of girls and women. They are the kind of sisters who put on their fancy dresses and made Cinderella stay home and clean toilets.

Anne Coulter, the uber conservative commentator and Tea Party cheerleader,once said that the United States would be a better place if women had never won the right to vote. (Meaning too many women vote for Democrats.) You might remember Coulter as the nasty one who mocked the widows of 9/11 who pushed for a government investigation into the attacks. Coulter called the widows self-obsessed and said they were taking advantage of their husbands’ deaths to gain notoriety.

These are scary women and they don’t make sense to me. They go on about what they would take away but not what they would provide.

Like most Tea Party types, they say they want government out of their lives. O’Donnell makes fun of laws restricting soda pop from school vending machines. Are there no obese pre-diabetic kids in Delaware?

So, would they get rid of regulations on car seats for babies? Mandatory school attendance? Who would fix their roads, put out their house fires were there no government? Or do they think government’s greatest role should be to order women to have babies?

But now I have another question and it’s for the Democrats. Got any more ready-to-run sisters?

I was thinking that the Tea Party could rename itself after the volcano in Iceland, the way it suddenly grew angry and blew hot air, dominating the news because it was such a weird scary phenom and no one knew how far and wide its damage would be.

That would be Eyjafjallajokull, which is kind of a mouthful. We could just call it the Volcano Party. There are a few differences. A volcano has a certain beauty. And it’s a natural function of a volcanic mountain to build up a head and just go off, not caring who gets hurt.

But I don’t get the reason for a bunch of Americans to erupt into just plain nastiness and try to obscure the truth with their gray muck. You know what I mean? The stuff about the country going socialist. Obama favoring black people over white people. And my favorite Tea Party delirium: that big business is a friend of the little people.

I know this tea party is named for the colonial protesters, but calling a violence-inciting mob a tea party is like naming a battleship Darling Nell.

I don’t think of them as a party at all. They’re about as joyful as a tantrum.

When the Tea Party got started a lot of people assumed it was primarily a goon squad for the Republican right. Paid thugs looking for a fight. But a recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed Tea Party types are largely white, older, educated Americans. I know a lot of white older Americans with half a brain and they’re not having tea tantrums, although they too have done their share of protesting in the streets. Mostly for civil rights and against war, for which they were called un-patriotic.

One thing I don’t get is how you get old and consider yourself educated and still not understand paying taxes. Of course, nobody likes taxes. The first time you get a paycheck you wonder where it all went and then someone like your dad explains that this is how the system works. You give money to the government and it provides roads and police and firefighters and schools. If you lose your job it will give you some help while you look for another. And provide a cushion when you want to quit work after 45 years.

The Tea Party says it worries about the economy and people losing jobs. And who doesn’t? But its leaders direct their rants toward the current Congress and the guy in the White House, the poor saps who inherited the mess made by the ones who did us in. And this wise older educated flock believes them.

Early on I expected some clear-thinking fair-minded Republicans to step forward and say you’re embarrassing us. Instead the Tea Party started telling Republican leaders what to do.

I had a chance to ask NPR’s European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli a few questions when she was visiting the public radio station in Santa Rosa (Ca.) I asked what gives her the most hope, considering all the world turmoil and unpleasantness she has covered.

She said she takes her hope from “here.” Here? I asked. You mean this country? And she said yes. Ooh, I groaned, along with others in the room. We are in trouble. She explained that France and Germany are torn up by racism and hostility over immigrants. Italy suffers from basic corruption. She said it was getting pretty ugly.

But how pretty are we? Tea Party people accuse members of Congress of being domestic enemies, paint Hitler mustaches on Obama and rev up the trigger-happy. Now, Arizona wants to run roughshod over illegal immigrants or anyone who might look like one. And what billious hot gas will that unleash?

As healthy debate is replaced by screaming matches and goons run amok, it is refreshing to observe that a passionate people can still engage in civilized protest, like the one over a local movie theater.
If you live here in Wine Country and go to movies you know what I’m talking about. The demise of the arty little Rialto theater in Santa Rosa, Ca. A theater with a name larger than itself, like that landmark bridge in Venice.

The theater is a plain, squat building that could morph into a pizza house or a new age church or back to its beginning as a skating rink faster than you could say “pass the popcorn.” There’s nothing fancy inside, nothing like those long-ago theaters people have fought through history to save. No velvet curtains or private balconies. No art deco nymphs in the ladies room.

Physically, the space is as boring as any movie complex in any town. But it has an elegant soul, a grand mission, a high-minded approach to the art of film and community dialogue. It’s an art movie house, a cut above mainstream theaters, which appeals to varied types, progressives and traditionalists both. People seeking foreign and independent films, movies they just read about in the New Yorker. Opera lovers spending an afternoon watching full screen productions from the New York Metropolitan and the likes of Helen Mirren from the National Theatre.

The Rialto even shows movies in the morning, puts real butter on its popcorn and serves fresh brewed coffee.

When news came last month that the current operator and creator of the thriving beloved venue was losing his lease to an entertainment group with a number of Bay Area theaters, fans began to mourn. They started a Facebook objection. They wrote letters to the editor. They delivered love notes to the theater which are posted on a big board in the main lobby like many multi colored Valentines. This was their neighborhood theater – too little, too charming, too essential to fail. Yet, it looks like a done deal.

But the protesters have kept to the high road. Some harrumphed about what they fear will replace the top drawer offerings – loud, shoot-em-up blockbuster pap appealing only to young men of arrested development – but more focus on what the Rialto has given them and what they will miss.
The Rialto engaged with the community. It worked with teachers to let school classes see important movies for free. It introduced opera to some people who before didn’t know a coloratura from a corndog. When it featured films on AIDS, homelessness or hunger it had advocates in the lobby dispensing information on how to deal with the issues right here in Sonoma County.

It opened up for fund-raisers, like one for the library where you get to eat chocolate from local patisseries and see an old movie like “The Philadelphia Story.”

The new owner states he won’t change things and protests he’s no Starbucks, referring to that famous goliath versus little guy scenario. But people continue to be upset and sad and vocal although no one’s going Tea Party over it. The objection has been more a wake than a fight. We are peaceful movie-goers, as you might expect of people willing to watch movies in subtitles, including the latest Swedish mystery thriller. We have manners. We don’t talk during the show and we don’t leave candy boxes under the seat.

If the honorable Ky Boyd and his crew take the Rialto to another spot we will take off our black arm bands, get our money out and cross that bridge when he comes to it.