{"id":10424,"date":"2013-08-23T12:57:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T19:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10424"},"modified":"2013-08-23T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T22:28:09","slug":"stupid-tea-party-tricks-freedomworks-launches-pointless-boycott-against-comcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10424","title":{"rendered":"Stupid Tea Party Tricks: FreedomWorks Launches Pointless Boycott Against Comcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tea Party has been involved in too many idiotic escapades to count. One of their more memorable proposals was to fly a plane over the Superbowl<\/a> with a banner reading “Impeach Obama.”<\/em> Apparently they were not aware that the game would be played in a domed stadium and that it’s illegal to fly over it anyway. Or recall their assertion that ultra-conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist is a Muslim infiltrator<\/a>. Their proof? He has a beard. And who could forget the call for Americans to rise up and burn their ObamaCare cards<\/a>. No matter that ObamaCare cards do not exist, FreedomWorks will be printing them up and providing them to Tea Party pyromaniacs.<\/p>\n

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The very same FreedomWorks is now embarking on a massive campaign<\/a> to punish Comcast because their MSNBC subsidiary employees Al Sharpton. They have produced a comically amateurish video (below) declaring it “a disgrace that Sharpton has his own TV show.”<\/em> They sent an email to their 2.3 million suckers…er…members urging them to cancel their cable service if Comcast is their provider. The email states that…<\/p>\n

“By paying your Comcast cable bill, your money is helping to pay for Al Sharpton\u2019s salary…Comcast cable subscribers can take action against Roberts and his biased media empire by changing their cable TV service provider. By exercising marketplace choice, consumers can prevent their money from supporting media propaganda.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you get the idea that FreedomWorks didn’t think this through very well, you’re quite right. After all, Sharpton works for MSNBC, not Comcast. Any cable customers who cancel their subscriptions will have zero effect on Sharpton’s employment status. Those customers were encouraged by FreedomWorks to switch from Comcast to DirecTV, AT&T, or some other provider. However, all of those providers also offer MSNBC, so the revenue generated to the cable network will be exactly the same. Should they opt to do without cable programming, their boycott will do just as much harm to Fox News, and every other channel, as to MSNBC.<\/p>\n

So this threat is as impotent as Rush Limbaugh sans Viagra. When liberals mounted a successful boycott against Fox News’ Glenn Beck, they targeted Beck’s advertisers. The same tactic has drained the bank account of Limbaugh and his radio affiliates. But going after Comcast won’t have any more impact on Sharpton’s MSNBC program than it will on Donald Trump’s unreality show on NBC.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of good reasons to boycott Comcast: It is an anti-competitive conglomerate that exploits its market power; it unfairly discriminates against progressive advertisers; it improperly uses data it collects on its customers, invading their privacy. If Tea Partiers want to shun Comcast for any of those reasons, I’m with them. But this attack on Sharpton (of whom I am not a fan<\/a>), is utterly absurd. However, it is another clear indicator of just how dumb the Tea Party community can be.<\/p>\n