“They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo, although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks.”

This is from today’s long (and on the whole not bad) USA Today article on the tea parties and tea partiers. But there’s something a little odd about that term “scattering.” That “scattering” is (as is suggested later in the same sentence) pretty hefty—23 percent of tea partiers are, according to the survey, non-white Anglos. How does this compare to the nation’s adults as a whole? They’re 25 percent non-white Anglos. So tea partiers are—in this as in other respects—a startlingly representative demographic group.

And I, for one, look forward to chatting and picnicking with fellow tea partiers at the Proud to be American July 4th Tea Party on Independence Mall in Philadelphia Sunday.