Hey, remember back in late 2002 and early 2003, when tens of thousands of people showed up for several rallies to protest the looming war in Iraq -- suggesting that maybe a pre-emptive war under false pretenses wasn't the best use of American dollars and lives -- and when the American news media was falling all over itself to get the Iraq war protesters to tell their stories, and what their movement in opposition to the president of the United States was all about?
Yeah...me neither.
In that context, the New York Times has just given an extraordinary amount of the most valuable cyber-real-estate in all of journalism to allow 17 supporters of the Tea Party to tell their stories unfiltered, in a feature now getting prominent play on the NYT homepage called "Voices of the Tea Party." As explained by the newspaper:
The New York Times asked supporters of the Tea Party movement to submit videos, up to two minutes long, describing their concerns for the United States and hopes for how the Tea Party could help. Browse their submissions here.
This is not to argue that better understanding the Tea Party movement and its roots is not important -- indeed, I've just spent six months working on a book that will be published in late August that aims to do exactly that. And even a glance at the mosaic of videos is informative as to the face of the Tea Party movement -- it's a cliche at this point, but all 17 of the submitted videos are from white Americans, and the vast majority are middle-aged or senior citizens.
In several of the videos, the complaints are fairly representative -- that Washington is not listening to the majority, that the Obama administration is in some unspecified way violating the Constitution and is steering resources from hard-working Americans to the undeserving, and that Barack Obama has said things that made them uncomfortable. Nancy Ripley, a 74-year-old retired counselor from Apollo Beach, Fla., says that "nobody is taking action for the majority of the American people" and that "we do not want to become a Nanny State"; David Juhl, a 61-year-old trucker from western New York, said he became uncomfortable when Obama spoke "about transforming America into something -- I didn't know what he wanted to transform America into."
And the countervailing voices of the 53 percent of Americans who voted for Obama in 2008, that increasingly silent majority? Whereever they are, they are not in this mosaic of videos or anywhere on the homepage of the nation's most-read newspaper Web site.
Again, it's not that the Tea Party isn't newsworthy. But there's a difference between news and 34 minutes of solicited free advertising.
As noted many times over the years, defensiveness in response to constant accusations of liberal bias is what causes "the so-called liberal media" to bend over backwards and do things institutionally that aren't very liberal at all -- like running unedited videos from only one side of the great American political debate. And when we say one side, remember that the Tea Party is hardly half of the American people -- polls show support for its ultra-conservative views to be largely on the order of 25-28 percent of the electorate, at the most. This backwards bending over increased last year, especially in the wake of the ACORN episode -- which is more than a tad ironic since that story was largely a triumph of conservative misinformation -- and also the Tea Party protests which took the mainstream Big Media outlets by surprise.
Who knows, maybe tomorrow we'll see 17 unedited videos from the Coffee Party.
I'm not holding my breath.
The internet was different back then and the anti-war protesters did have their say in 2003 and 2004.— palmyra21- The internet wasn't that different back then. C'mon.— F. Harry Stowe
One media company creates the Tea Party and a different one promotes it (one supposedly conservative, the other liberal – if you believe what THEY tell you). It almost looks as if they work together to manipulate the American people, like during the buildup to the Iraq War. Naa, you'd have to be crazy to believe that.— Hamlet- The internet was a lot different then. Between the rise of the blog to the interactivity of the stories to Flash Video. All have improved over the last 7 years. You can go to archive.com to see for yourself.— philsoutthecomment
- For the life of me I can't understand why the uneducated, irrational tea partiers are given so much media attention. They think they are the majority because the only time they have ever left their home town was to protest nonsense.— birds
- Da Librul Mediuh refuses to give conservatives a voice.— E.Plebnista
//and when the American news media was falling all over itself to get the Iraq war protesters to tell their stories, and what their movement in opposition to the president of the United States was all about? Yeah...me neither. /// You're kidding me, right Will? Remember the fawing coverage of Cindy Sheehan, the heart-tugging stories of how she lost her son ans was now protesting against the war? do a LexisNexus search on Sheehan and the NY Times, you'll see hundreds of hits. And regarding the fact that most Tea Party folks are white, why is that SUCH a big deal to you? Time and time again, you imply that All White = All Bad. As if the fact that it is mostly white automatically makes their opinions count less. This is a HUGE logical fallacy of relevance, specifically a genetic fallacy of relevance. The fact that Tea Party attendees may be mostly white, in a mostly white country, in mostly white regions no less, has no bearing on the validity of their opinions. That's like saying "why should I listen to 'dirty f'in hippies?' We all know they're flakes."- ---}}} And regarding the fact that most Tea Party folks are white, why is that SUCH a big deal to you? {{{--- Good point, Bucky. Also irrelevant is when featured speakers at Tea Party conventions call for literacy test for voting. Oh, and don't forget that it is irrelevant that featured Tea Party speakers have called for the government to "control homosexuality" by using executions. It's all irrelevant, Will. Heh!— Talking point sleuth
- Yeah General, the media was so on the anti-war side I'm surprised we went to war (folks, GT lives in an alternate universe).— Hamlet
- ///Also irrelevant is when featured speakers at Tea Party conventions call for literacy test for voting. Oh, and don't forget that it is irrelevant that featured Tea Party speakers have called for the government to "control homosexuality" by using executions. It's all irrelevant, Will. Heh!/// Talk about a straw man argument there, TPS. So if you get one knucklehead saying something at a convention, does that mean it poisons the bunch? Under you're logic, Democrats believe most Indians run gas stations (Hillary Clinton) or Dunkin Donuts and 7-11s (Joe Biden). You're committing a logical fallacy as well. Dicto Simpliciter, a converse accident.
- ///Yeah General, the media was so on the anti-war side I'm surprised we went to war/// Way to move those goal posts, Hamlet. You must get tired from the heavy lifting. No one (neither me nor Will) said that the media was big time on the anti-war side. But Will's point about there being little coverage of anti-war protesters and their stories leading up to the invasion of Iraq by the New York Times is completely, provably false. Go to their web site and look it up if you have to, then tell me I'm living in an alternate universe.
The teabaKKKers are getting ready for the nuts to come out on April 15th. They are even accusing politicians of soliciting folks to show up with racist signs. No need to do that, teabaKKKers have been doing this for almost a year now. And have been crying about "plants" whenver one of their nutty members does something to embarrass even the other teabaKKKers and that bar is set pretty darn low!— Les Ismore
Comment removed.- bp.philly - no, what was pathetic is that puzzy comment coming from an anonymous poster. What do you have against free speech anyway? Why do you hate America?— Les Ismore
- ---}}} So if you get one knucklehead saying something at a convention, does that mean it poisons the bunch? {{{-- Nope, not the whole bunch. Just some of them. And btw, Bucky, these were FEATURED SPEAKERS, who received STANDING OVATIONS.— Talking point sleuth
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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