Fox, Cut the Crap With this Non-Partisan, Grassroots Tea Party Talk
Reported by Ellen - April 13, 2009 -
Guest blogged by Julie
Come on, now, Cavuto . . . Malkin . . . Beck . . . Hannity. Enough with the oh-this-is-a-non-partisan-event. Even your colleague Geraldo Rivera and Fox Regular Hater Ann Coulter admitted on Saturday night's (4/11/09) “Geraldo At Large” that this tea party deal is a movement by conservatives who are upset with Obama.
And as for the “grassroots” BS, as Think Progress reported, “the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works. The two groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests . . . .” And the national tea party movement is partnered with Newt Gingrich's “American Solutions for Winning the Future” organization. (It's notable that its main web page made no mention of the Tea Party protest.) You can read more about the hustlers behind the Tea Party protests here .
Also, as was reported by two Playboy reporters (more on Playboy's report here), CNBC's second-stringer Rick Santelli's rant against President Obama on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange wasn't exactly spontaneous, but was actually a carefully-planned trigger for an anti-Obama campaign, funded and assisted by the right-wing big-wig Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, including the Cato Institute, Reason Magazine and FreedomWorks. (The Koch Family's head rightie, Fred Koch, was also a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society). Does seem a little odd, doesn't it, that a bunch of tea party websites and organizations were online and live within hours, even minutes, after his rant, and voila – a week later a protest was born. (Didn't work out too badly for Santelli personally, either – it's rumored he's shopping a book deal).
By definition, the grassroots is the bottom of the political pyramid, opposite the "establishment," which controls the top. It's a little hard to claim to be “grassroots” when you're in bed with heavily funded organizations like Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, associated with Newt Gingrich's organization, and when you've got Fox News, rumored to be the #1 cable news network, aggressively promoting for you.
And if you're still not sure about the right-wing slant to these rallies, check out some of the signs (Google “tea party rally signs” and click Images):
“Obama is a Damn Liar, Biden is a Dumbass, Big Brother Needs to be Castrated”
“Liberalism is destroying America . . .”
“Hey Butt Boy . . . .”
“Revolt against socialism”
“Send Geithner to Gitmo”
“The Three Little Big Pigs: Pelosi, Reid and Obama”
“Obama is to the economy as the Three Stooges are to surgery”
“Teabag the liberal Dems before they teabag you” (Is “teabag” some sort of code word?)
“Obama sucks”
“Don't blame me I voted for Sarah”
“O B A M A – One Big Awful Mistake America”
“O B A M A – One Big Ass Mistake America”
“Sorry Obama no teleprompter here . . . .”
“Don't Tax Me Bro!”
“Obama Lies America Dies”
“Wanted . . . [photos of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid] High Treason and Fiscal Sabotage”
And the tea party kids:
“Fees are Taxes; No Taxation Without Representation” (Kids, tell mommy and daddy to take you back to school to study history. This isn't, unlike the Boston Tea Party, taxation without representation.)
And let's take into account the mostly white crowds at the various rallies. In the mob photos, I didn't see anything but white faces. Texas – all white; Orlando – all white; Topeka – all white (little confusion about the message there; one person held up an anti-immigration sign); Oklahoma – all white; Chicago's Daley Plaza – all white; Santa Barbara County, California – all white (with the exception of the guy at the mic, who appears to be Fox News' poster boy crooner in favor of the protests, Lloyd Marcus); St. Louis – all white. You get the drift.
You know, the first step in any 12-step program is admitting you have a problem. Fox News, stand up and repeat after me: “We at Fox News know we're not fair and balanced and oh yeah, we forgot to mention that these Tea Party protests are run by conservatives, funded by conservatives, driven by anti-Obama sentiment, and we're helping 'cause we'll do almost anything to see Obama fall.”
There, that wasn't so hard, was it?
