Monday, August 23, 2010

Tea Party Hippies

On Saturday, some supporters of candidate Todd Lally assembled outside the Courier Journal to protest the CJ's obvious media bias for Congress John Yarmuth. From the Courier Journal:
Approximately 65 supporters of Republican nominee Todd Lally’s bid the 3rd District seat in Congress protested outside The Courier-Journal building for an hour Saturday morning, saying the newspaper is not being fair to the candidate.

“We want to protest the non-coverage of the 3rd District race,” said Kevin Dicken, 50, of Fern Creek, a volunteer with the Lally campaign. Lally “represents what I think this country needs” on issues such as health care, the economy and abortion.

The protesters contended the newspaper’s coverage is biased toward Democrats, and, in 3rd District race in particular, has written eight stories about the Democratic incumbent, John Yarmuth, for every story it has written about Lally.
I was surprised to see the CJ cover the protest, but even more surprised that the protest received attention from the national blogosphere. In particular, Hullabaloo wrote some harsh criticism of the protesters and even compared the conservative protest to Woodstock. According to the blogger:
They are living out their angry Woodstock fantasy pretty much everywhere these days. (Yes, Beck's calling his "Triumph of the Wingnut" event Woodstock too.) They are hoping for a bunch of liberals to spray them with fire hoses and scream at them on the way to church just so they can really have their midlife crisis in style....
...They're just upset about everything these days and they're taking it to the streets!

The paper explained that they strive to be "fair and balanced" but that they can't cover every campaign event. (If they're like most members of the press, they'll immediately assign a full time reporter to the GOP campaigns now that a bunch of angry, middle aged white people have expressed their inner Abby Hoffman. So you can't say it isn't effective.)

I'm waiting for the Joseph Kraft of today to have the blinding insight that these people are not mainstream and that it's the working and middle class moderate liberal who represents the silent majority. I suppose the first question is, who's the next Joseph Kraft/David Broder?

So, now, every time a group of people congregate, for any reason, it’s Woodstock? The picture painted by mentioning Woodstock is 180 degrees from the truth considering most tea partiers are huge supporters of family values. He could have at least refer to conservative protests as Woodstock minus the drugs, sex, and violence—but, then it wouldn’t be anything like Woodstock, would it?

The author thinks that tea partiers are some sort of fringe group (but Woodstock liberals are okay?) He's obviously never attended a tea party rally, so perhaps I should forgive his ignorance.

Personally, I think the tea party may be the greatest thing to happen to this country since Ronald Reagan (who was the greatest thing since sliced bread). But, suggesting I'm some sort of fringe lunatic would be giving me way too credit in the "interesting" department--I'm just not that exciting. And, tea partiers are no more fringe than those who stood up for freedom in the Revolutionary War.

The reason the author considers tea partiers to be outside the realm of mainstream America is because the press paints them as racist, closed-minded, right-wing extremists. The blogger's entire opinion is based off media bias, which is exactly what Saturday's group was protesting.

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