Day: 1/19/2010

Fox News Brews Black Tea Party Conservatives

Posted by on January 19, 2010 at 11:31 pm. 8 Comments :

In its perpetual promotion of Tea Baggery, Fox News is now peering into a bowl of tea leaves and divining a thoroughly imaginary movement that can only be seen by faithful disciples of Wingnutism.

The article on their web site (and linked from Fox Nation) utterly reeks of parody. I spent twenty minutes looking for the Onion logo, but eventually had to accept the fact that this is for real:

Black Conservatives Take Lead Role in Tea Party Movement.

“Though the movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity — MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently called the groups “monochromatic” and “all white” — those minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.”

Obama Witch DoctorHonestly? Supposed lack of diversity? Even one of the black “leaders” profiled in the article describes the Tea Parties as “mostly white.” And now, after nearly a year of overtly racist rhetoric and symbolism Fox News is going to portray Tea Baggers as a bastion of tolerance and diversity? The same Tea Baggers who call President Obama a Lyin African; who accuse Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor of being racists; who carry signs that depict the President as Hitler or a witch doctor? Those Tea Baggers?

The article on the Fox web site actually only identifies three of the black conservatives they allege are leading the Tea Party – a singer, an author, and candidate for a House seat in Maryland. Setting aside the fact that three people hardly constitutes a vibrant caucus, and the fact that none of them actually have any official leadership role in the Tea Party infrastructure, each of them do have personal interests to exploit. But that just affirms their place in the party of greedy, self-serving, leeches.

Without bothering to support their assertions, the article describes the “enthusiastic involvement of black conservatives in the tea party rallies and trips,” That lie is exposed by pretty much any photograph of an actual Bagger event. And when you see the real leaders of the Tea Party nation, it is unmistakable who this movement is really working for. Like Dale Robertson, the head of TeaParty.org, at left.

It is highly unlikely that Fox can peddle this nonsense to anyone beyond their protected sphere of demented influence. But just the fact that they are trying would be laughable, if it weren’t so ugly.

Sarah Palin Unites America In Opposition To Sarah Palin

Posted by on January 19, 2010 at 5:33 pm. 11 Comments :

Despite the drooling fanaticism of Tea Baggers and Glenn Beck disciples, America’s best known quitter, Sarah Palin, is not as well loved as she thought she was. A new poll by CBS shows her support as a presidential candidate to be nearly non-existent.

“Specifically, 71 percent say they do not want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president, while 21 percent say they do want her to run.”

That’s an unusually lopsided result. There are very few polls taken in these highly divisive times that produce such unity. The poll internals reveal that it isn’t just Democrats (at 88%) who are cool to Palin. A majority of Republicans (56%) oppose her candidacy. And the same is true for independents (65%). Even conservatives (58%) don’t want Sarah Palin to run for president. What’s worse is that this dismal showing is actually a decline from previous polling, even though she has been an persistent presence in the media since ditching her job in Alaska, embarking on a nationwide book tour, and hooking up with Fox News. Apparently tweets and Facebook postings have not endeared her to the country.

In addition to this bad news for Palin, the Tea Parties took a hit in this poll as well. The poll confirms prior surveys that show how flaccid the so-called movement really is. I called it the Tea Party Delusion, because majorities of respondents have no opinion, or haven’t even heard of the Baggers. This poll has that number at 69%, including 61% of conservatives.

None of this seems to be fazing Palin or those or seek to bask in her black-light glow. She currently has appearances scheduled for Republican gatherings in Eugene, OR and North Little Rock, AR. She will also grace the Daytona 500 in Florida and a wine wholesalers convention in Las Vegas, NV. And of course there is her highly anticipated keynote speech at the first annual(?) Tea Party conference in Nashville, TN. She stands to make several hundred thousand dollars from these gigs. This doesn’t leave much time for her to fulfill her duties for Fox News, but I’m sure they will be accommodating.

The one part of this poll that I take issue with is the number for Democrats who don’t want Palin to run in 2012. Every Democrat I talk to is fervently praying for a Palin candidacy. Personally, I’m pulling for Palin/Steele. I can’t think of anything that would be more fun, except maybe Beck/Joe the Plumber.

White House: Fox Is Not A Traditional News Organization

Posted by on January 19, 2010 at 2:57 pm. 9 Comments :

When former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn expressed the view that that “Fox News is a wing of the Republican Party,” it was hardly revelatory to anyone who pays attention to the media. But it was nonetheless a courageous act in a political environment that is unaccustomed to such truth-telling.

Now the new White House Communications Director, Dan Pfeiffer, is officially taking the same position as his predecessor:

“I have the same view of Fox that Anita had, which is that Fox is not a traditional news organization. They have a point of view. That point of view pervades the entire network, both the opinion shows like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, but also through the newscasts during the day,”

“We don’t feel an obligation to treat them like we would treat a CNN or an ABC or an NBC or a traditional news organization. But there are times when we believe it would make sense to communicate with them and appear on the network.”

Not a traditional news organization? That’s a bit of an understatement. But it’s enough to properly categorize Fox as a partisan mouthpiece for the Tea Bagger Party. Pfeiffer correctly points out that Fox’s bias transcends what they call their opinion shows. It does indeed pervade the entire network. This view is confirmed by Fox’s response to Pfeiffer:

“Obviously new to his position, Dan seems to be intent upon repeating the mistakes of his predecessor… and we all remember how well that turned out.”

Yes, we do. Fox likes to believe that their ratings validate their position. But Dunn’s remarks were never intended to impact their ratings. No one expected her comments to cause Beck or O’Reilly viewers to pull the Fox needle out their arms. The purpose was to stop the rest of the media from regurgitating Fox falsehoods as if they were news. There was some success in that respect and it warrants the continuation of the policy from the White House. It’s good to see that, at least on this matter, they are holding firm.

The Morning After: The Last Best Reason To Vote For Martha Coakley

Posted by on January 19, 2010 at 10:11 am. NO Comments :

There are a multitude of reasons to vote for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts today. They have all been discussed elsewhere, but here is an excellent summary if you still need one.

But the thing that keeps roiling my thoughts as more and more pundits predict a Scott Brown victory is the reaction from the right-wing media to this affair. Already they are positioning the race as a referendum on President Obama and health care. They are dismissing the failings of the Coakley campaign and elevating the role of Tea Baggers. If Brown prevails, starting tomorrow morning their will be a nausea inducing avalanche of rightist gloating and misrepresentations of what actually took place. In fact, The Fox Nation has already started:

This morning the Fox Nationalists are featuring a five course spectacle of Brown worship. Every story on their top headline graphic is about the race in Massachusetts. Apparently Haiti is old news and unworthy of recognition. The rest of the page reflects the same editorial incompetence. There are presently 25 stories about the senate race and only six on Haiti. Is the next senator from one U.S. state really that much more newsworthy than an ongoing crisis that may have killed hundreds of thousands and left hundreds of thousands more maimed, homeless, and clinging to life?

This is just the beginning of the Massachusetts media blitz. With a Scott win the election postmortems will be unleashed from every right-wing corner. We will have to endure the smug swagger of Bill O’Reilly, the juvenile pomposity of Glenn Beck, and the vacuous revelry of Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh will weigh in, along with Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and every Republican officeholder. There will be commentaries and op-eds from every rightist rag in the nation, all heralding the death knell for Obama, health care and liberalism. It will be a bacchanal of conservative orgasmic delight.

And the worst part is that the reasons for the fading prospects for progressives are entirely misplaced. Democrats are not losing because voters just love them some Tea Baggin. They are losing because they have failed to fight for the ideals on which they campaigned. They have squandered an historic opportunity to bring the real change they espoused. They capitulated to GOP opponents in a search for bipartisanship that was never going to be reciprocated. They were punked in supreme fashion and now they come out looking like fools with nothing to show for their naivete.

The lesson from all of this, which Democrats will almost certainly misread, is not to move farther to the right in hopes of snagging some wavering moderates, but to revisit the election of 2008 and what made that election possible. Hope and Change dominated the dialogue, but there has been precious little of it by this administration and congress.

It would be bad enough if Scott Brown wins this election; it would be hard enough to accept that devolution of electoral intelligence; it would be sufficiently depressing to know that so many critical initiatives would become that much harder to achieve; but to have to bear, on top of that, the endless bluster of self-satisfied Tea Baggers and putrid pundits rubbing it in our faces for the next three years may be too much. If for no reason other than that, the people of Massachusetts need to get off their damn asses and protect the rest of us from the flurry of revulsion that will spew from these greedy, obstructionist, Dark-Ageists who want nothing more than to line their pockets and roll our nation back to its Puritan roots.

There’s got to be a morning after. And if Brown wins we will all be wishing for a lost weekend.