It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To

Jane Hamsher does a pretty good Lesley Gore impression here. (She even somewhat looks the part) It was her party after all and she can cry if she wants to, but Media Matters has something else in mind. You can see what has the Left so shook up - and they are shook up - by comparing the genuine Tea Party movement with the Left's slap dash affair and distorted rhetoric here via Glenn Reynolds.

This week, Media Matters for America released a damning new report that documents in startling detail how Fox News has been promoting anti-Obama "tea party" protests across the country scheduled for April 15.

If serious people on the Left weren't concerned over the Tea Party movement, their new media apparatchiks wouldn't be trying to dismiss, or marginalize it by falsely claiming it's being sponsored by Fox News, or some dangerous Right Wing fringe. If there's any culprit in a media sense here, it's the mainstream media for failing to report a serious and growing grassroots American movement that is truly ground up and not beholden to one Party or some few special interest groups.

Tea Party protesters aren't being bused in by the likes of ACORN. They're showing up because they care about their country and they've seen enough over recent years to start doing something about it.

Big media may be able to continue to ignore it for a little while longer and the Left's new media apparatus can try and undermine it all they want. It won't work.

The Left can't quite figure out the script for the Tea Party movement because there isn't one beyond what is being written as it grows. But it is being written. And at this rate, a good number of politicians from both parties are going to have to start reading from it eventually because enough American voters are going to demand it.

Media matters - but only so much, especially in this day and age. But people will always matter when it comes to politics. And the Tea Party movement is currently on track to be the largest genuine grassroots movement America has seen since the Sixties.

That movement had a big impact on America that has been playing out over the last several decades. Today with the Internet empowering people-based politics in ways it never has before, anyone who believes what's happening today doesn't at least hold the potential for changing things in this country in a major way is simply kidding themselves.

That's what the Left knows and fears. As I said, if they didn't, they wouldn't be paying the movement any attention at all. And if it keeps growing like this, no one is going to be able to sweep it under the carpet, or attempt to portray it as anything other than what it is: American taxpayers who are fed up and want change far different from any thing Obama's handlers ever worked into some stump speech purely for his political gain.

Comments

[John_R]

It's my belief that the MSM is ignoring the Tea Parties for fear of repeating what happened with the Minutemen on the Border, spreading and popularizing the movement.

[Texpatriate]

I'm waiting for a Law & Order script in which a Tea Party "member" commits mayhem.

[Peach]

How pathetic is Jane Hamsher? It's truly embarrassing and likely not to help get her ad funding she's demanding. Would you advertise with such a flop?

[mark l.]

let's see, obama takes over gm so that it can be managed better. The have 111 billion in debt.

obama's rosy scenario for our national economy adds 'only' 7.2 trillion to our debt over the next eight years.

If obama had taken over gm with similar goals and standards, then the company would then owe 190 billion in eight years. The inherent quality that one would expect from a ceo is to have a plan to return a company to 'profitability'. obama does not have such a plan.

what are people protesting? the obvious.

[Peg C.]

Texpatriate, we quit Law & Order because the lefty regurgitation simply got to be too predictable, too perversive and too brain-dead. Well, all that plus the good actors all left. ;-)

This is a perfect take on the Left and the Tea Party movement. "Methinks they doth protest too much" for this movement to be as dumb and irrelevant as the statists are trying to portray it to be. They are scared spitless. GOOD! That means it's working!

[Bob]

I listened to one of Beck's clips and he clearly says things like this: "This year Americans are having tea parties to let politicians know that WE'VE had enough. Celebrate with Fox News. This is what WE'RE doing next Wednesday . . ." I emphasize the "WE" because Beck is clearly associating himself and Fox News as enthusiastic supporters of these events. Even being generous that Fox might be considered a mainstream news organization, can anyone find an example of any other mainstream news organization associating itself with any liberal demonstrations or organizations the way Fox has so blatantly done with the tea parties? For things even to be "fair and balanced" here, wouldn't CBS or CNN or MSNBC have to be publicizing and actively promoting events like Hamsher's? And yet you complain that the mainstream isn't being fair because they're not giving your little tea parties ENOUGH of the attention that you demand. If your own side showed even an iota of fairness, perhaps non-right-wingers might at least be willing to respect you.

[Sam the Plumber]

Teabagging has the whiff of desperate left-wing post-Johnson protests... you've just had your man in charge for a long time, the country is sick of it, and you're protesting really about nothing in particular other than the fact that you feel disenfranchised after losing. If your answer is spiraling debt, then you have to answer for Reagan, Bush, and Dick "Deficits don't matter" Cheney.

Obama is the left's Nixon. He's the adult that has stepped in after the mess. He represents the silent majority now. And the backlash that swept Reagan in is only beginning. Teabagging won't save you, it won't turn things around, it will just concentrate what is left of you into one easy-to-point-at group.

But instead of "hippies" you will be "teabaggers."

[Philip McDaniel]

Well, something is making all you leftists nervous. If you had nothing to fear from the ‘Tea Parties’ and the participants of same you would not be squawking such nonsense. The fact of the matter is, you and your running dogs have been caught out and are about to see the wrath of an aroused electorate – however silent they normally are. My advice is to be quiet and let things unfold. We have your best interests at heart too…well, better said, the best interests of your children along with ours.

[David Johnson]

"If your own side showed even an iota of fairness, perhaps non-right-wingers might at least be willing to respect you."

Posted by: Bob |

You have to wonder if people like "Bob" live in the same country the rest of us do. This is the country where CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, AP, RUETERS, the NYT, the WaPo, the Boston Globe , the LAT, the San Fran Chronic, and a host of other "newspapers" and magazines dutifully fly the Democrat Party flag.And let's not even get started on the gaggle of so-called "late night comedians" who orally service Obama every night of the week. The MSM in America is trying to turn this nation into a one-party state but when ordinary citizens start a mass movement and ONE TV network reports on it then the libs start screeching "Where's the fairness"? With America's media now a trained lapdog for Obama , the only ways for the truth to get an airing is via word of mouth, the new media and mass protest. The Tea Partys' are important, a flexing of long dormant political muscle and the libs (like "Bob") are frightened. Mass protests are supposed to be for leftists only but now the ordinary people are taking to the streets and suddenly the libs have decided that "Dissent is no longer patriotic".
And, in the end, it doesn't matter if Fox advertise these events or not because if the anger wasn't there people wouldn't turn up anyway. Just look at that sad leftist clown Jane Hamsher who plugged the lib's DC anti-bank protest on her blog and got 15 (yes, FIFTEEN ) lonely leftists to turn out in support. Even the smallest Tea Party events are attracting hundreds !!! Squawk about "fairness" all you want "Bob" but as a friend of your Messiah once said....."the chickens are coming home to roost" !!!

[Bob]

Like I said, David Johnson, find an example of a mainstream news organization like CNN or CBS or whoever promoting and actively participating in partisan liberal demonstrations. And by the way, I can assure you that the liberals aren't frightened by these tea party demonstrations. In fact, I detect fear and frustration on the part of the tea partiers themselves. They're threatened and angry about their current state of irrelevance in American politics. The tea parties are like a spoiled 2 year old having a tantrum as a desperate cry for attention. Leftists don't feel the need to demonstrate now, because our side is running the whole show. About all your side can do now is get together and whine about it in unison. Great! Have fun!

[Johnny Reb]

By all means, Bob, continue to dismiss the outrage of the citizenry. Please go on thinking of these 'little tea parties' as harmless whining of the defeated. Really, its nothing to be concerned about.

It's just a revolution brewing.

Did you hear what Brittany just did? OMG!