Tea Party Stenography

WaPo:

NASHVILLE -- The 600 delegates at the National Tea Party Convention feel taxed to death, ignored by their elected representatives and the media, and appalled at the federal government's spending -- and there are millions of Americans just like them.

Lord knows nothing makes me feel ignored by the media like a top story in the Washington Post agreeing that there are "millions of Americans" just like me. I mean, why not begin your story by validating everything your subject has to say, which is that they are oppressed, persecuted and alone? That's the best way to demonstrate their persecution!

The story only goes downhill from there.

It's a critical moment for a movement that is unmistakably people-powered, that has been deliberately left leaderless to give voice to all frustrations.

Sigh.

Jeff Link, a luxury jewelry maker from New York, says that President George W. Bush started the fiscal policies that ruined the economy and that President Obama is making them worse, a belief shared by many here. But, he says, looking at the crowd, which is overwhelmingly white and middle-aged, "it saddens me not to see this gathering more diverse."

Sample follow-up questions, either unasked or unanswered: Why isn't it more diverse, Mr. Luxury Jewelry Maker? Why would that possibly be? 

Sigh, again.

I really wish poor people would show up to bitch about how awful it is to be taxed on your $10 million a year! Why don't they? It's so weird.

They can't support Obama because he's for "abortion and homosexuals," Tom Runn said.

For Homosexuals goes on the band name list.

"The tea party movement has grown out of a sense of frustration about government here in Washington," senior adviser David Axelrod said Friday in an interview that will air Sunday on C-SPAN. "It's not isolated to Democrats or Republicans. . . . There is a sense that this town is consumed by politics, that people are consumed by their own ambitions and that we're not dealing with the real problems."

Jesus Decaf Christ. Can we not? I mean, really, Axelrod. The tea party movement has grown out of a sense of stupidity, racist fuckwaddery, a follower mentality of which first graders playing soccer would be ashamed, and MONEY. That is all this is about. Take it any more seriously than that in public, and you're feeding the angry, rabid porcupine in your yard.

Do you idiots really think if you pay lip service to the "real" concerns of these morons they'll be less pissed at you, less willing to compare themselves to Holocaust victims and your president to Dr. Mengele, less eager to cast themselves in the roles of plantation slaves, less apt to long openly for the days when the different knew their places? Take them seriously behind closed doors, in whatever meetings you have to try to win the morning or the afternoon, but when you're talking to the pretty shiny cameras, treat them with the respect they deserve.

A cheerful man with a broad set of interests -- he is a pastor of "an all-black Maranatha" church, a painter, a retired Secret Service and Homeland Security employee, and a historical reenactor -- he made these pronouncements using an accent he hoped would sound early American, and he was dressed in period costume as Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

STEP THE FUCK OFF BUTTON. He would kick your ass.

Although some here praised Obama for his energy and for making history, many delegates said concern over his policies has pushed them into political activism for the first time in their lives.

On Thursday night, giving the opening address, former U.S. representative Tom Tancredo (Colo.), who ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination as an anti-immigration candidate, railed against Obama and "the cult of multiculturalism." Americans could be "boiled to death in a cauldron of the nanny state," he said. "People who couldn't even spell the word 'vote,' or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."

Yes. Nothing says "concern over his policies" like implying all his voters were illiterate crackheads.

When Tancredo said, "His name is Barack Hussein Obama," the audience booed loudly.

Again with the high-minded policy concerns!

It's like they don't even listen to the stuff they're writing down anymore.

A.

Comments

[Robert Earle]

"People who couldn't even spell the word 'vote,' or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."

Besides all the other things wrong with this, it isn't even true.

From the NY Times exit polling:
Post Grad Education (17% of electorate) - Obama 58% to 40%
College Grads (28%) - Obama 50% to 48%
Some College (31%) - Obama 51% to 47%
High School Grad (20%) - Obama 52% to 46%
Not High School Grad (4%) - Obama 63% to 35%

If you take all of the "Not High School Grad" vote and give it to McCain, Obama still wins 50% to 48%.

[pansypoo]

angry stupid people.

OMG!!!!! a black man has our tax monee!!!11!!!!!

[montag]

Tancredo is just pandering.

Another small man in search of a balcony....

[BlakNo1]

How can Chomsky possibly believe that liberals can find some kind of common ground with these 'people'? Their complaints are exclusively based on hatred and racism.

[hoppy]

BlakNo1 hit it right out of the park! The Tea Baggers are driven primarily by hatred for Obama, differing from Repubs in that...ah....well the say they are different.

I have been disgusted with CNN for two days now for treating this BS gathering as if it were a serious gathering aimed at something other than enriching the promoter. And, treating it as if there were some serious policy issues involved, beyond hatred for Obama. If a left leaning splinter group of idiots were to fall for an obvious scam "convention" you can bet that the only attention they would get from CNN is the report that they fell for a stupid scam.

We are at the stage where the only real news reports are on the internet, like at TPM, and here. The TV media is no longer salvageable.

[BlakNo1]

Even if pronounced liberals held their own gathering without any ulterior outside motive involved, it would still be treated as somehow illegitimate by 'mainstream' press. Does anyone think that Netroots Nation will get that kind of fawning coverage?

[Rmj, Epiphanic Theologist]

Lord knows nothing makes me feel ignored by the media like a top story in the Washington Post agreeing that there are "millions of Americans" just like me. I mean, why not begin your story by validating everything your subject has to say, which is that they are oppressed, persecuted and alone?

Not only are they alone, but they are alone among millions! Who are too many to count! Who are probably a majority! Which makes these 600 REALLY important!

Except there is no evidence these 600 represent more than...600. No evidence at all. The article never provides any data to support that figure.

Journamalism!

But the true journamalistic nadir was on NPR last week. In the morning, a story on NPR, complete with "experts!", about how "teabaggers" were going to appeal to "today's yout'", because the "yout'" are all disappointed that Obama wasn't the Messiah after all who would bring the thousand year reign of peace by last December, if not in 100 days. So they will turn to the teabaggers, of course.

Then came Tancredo's speech about "multiculturalism" (it's so 90's!) and "literacy tests" for voters, which really resonates with....the "yout's" grandparents.

Yeah, kids'll be beating down the doors to join a movement that hails a benighted era they don't even remember, and would regard with the same horror as the Inquisition, if you explained it to them.

More journamalism! More cowbell!

[mothra]

Just finished listening to Weekend Edition airing Sarah Palin's childish insult-ridden speech at the convention. Why, oh WHY do they give her any time whatsoever? Her tone was so obviously juvenile and her points completely idiotic. Yet we have to treat her as a "serious person." Jaysus.

[Interrobang]

Not to mention that their notion of "unmistakably people-powered" means "funded almost entirely by wingnut-welfare front groups for right-wing billionaires." I guess billionaires are "people" and the rest of us aren't.

It's especially infuriating after the mainstream press' treatment of the anti-Iraq invasion protests -- millions of people protesting in a way that was genuinely "people-powered," and the MSM says "Oh, it was a few thousand protestors, and look! Commie front groups!" Here we have a "movement" genuinely made up of a few thousand protestors who are actually being funded and coordinated by front groups (protofascist, in this case), and the MSM is all like, "Oh, look! Genuine grassroots political activity! And here, have some hyperinflated attendance numbers!" Grrrr...

[lloydstool]

Shelby should be indicted for treason. I'm serious.

Much has been made of the "New Civility." Well, I'm sorry, but fuck that.

Just because someone's being polite while ransacking your home doesn't mean that they are not ransacking your home.

[pansypoo]

we need to educate the stupid mad white teabaggers that the republikklans are the people who helped the bankers SCREW THEM. NOT OBAMA.

[MapleStreet]

I watched a report long enough to hear Obama, previoiusly painted as not being able to write a good article for the Review, hit by Palin with the line that we don't need a Constitutional Scholar as President.

How can they not notice that they are so self-contradictory ?

[pansypoo]

tinkerbell thinking. just BELIEVE!