If you watch Fox News and listen to the right-wing media machine, you’d think all of those anti-tax tea parties that are to be thrown around the country are some sort of grassroots movement of lower- and middle-income people showing up to throw tea to help protect the incomes of the rich. But Paul Krugman at the New York Times points out that they are not grassroots events at all, but are actually a fake (AstroTurf) Roots campaigns:
[I]t turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.
But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.
Just like when John McCain was staging fake town halls. Krugman’s column in the Times goes on to point out that the tea parties have actually become hotbeds of fringe Republican party political thinking:
Then there are the claims made at some recent tea-party events that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in America, which follow on earlier claims that he is a secret Muslim. Crazy stuff — but nowhere near as crazy as the claims, during the last Democratic administration, that the Clintons were murderers, claims that were supported by a campaign of innuendo on the part of big-league conservative media outlets and figures, especially Rush Limbaugh.
[....]
Going back to those tea parties, Mr. DeLay, a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution — he famously suggested that the teaching of evolution led to the Columbine school massacre — also foreshadowed the denunciations of evolution that have emerged at some of the parties.
So if you plan to go to one of these tea parties, it seems you’ll also be railing against evolution and the media hiding Obama’s “secret Muslim” status. And you’ll also be out there to decry Obama in support of the rich [emphasis added]:
Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.
Stupid Americans: Why do we settle for so little?
The news organizations are failing to inform
Hunger and alienation in a time of love and brutality
Joan Rivers – a Musto-inspired photographic essay
I’m living with a ghost in New Jersey
A man has lived in a van outside my home for 8 years
Making out in public – good or bad?
Obama Condoms in Union Square
Hi A mwssage to let you LIBERAL communists know that ALLLLLLLLLL of these TEA PARTIES that YOU think aren’t going to matter to much of anything is just the BEGINNING that of the CHANGE YOU NEED. I pray for OUR presidents success on a daily babsis[more than once] BUT I guess YOU don’t DO YOU? Anti- opporunists like your groups just do not see the REAL reason in ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMERICA. Oh the TEA parties worked against tyranny THEN and you have only seen the BEGINNING of the CHANGE YOU NEED. See you at the PARTY friend. OBAMA is a Socialist and HE IS GOING TO GET THE change he wants.
I am a conservative and Not a moderate. Sea you at the TEA party guys and gals.
Please learn how to write in proper English (or a least make sense) before throwing out Spanish words.
It’s funny how many small minded conservatives rant that illegal immigrants can’t speak and write English, when our own English-speaking citizenry can’t either.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
@Red – but then that would remove the frothing-at-the-mouth that lends credibility to their arguments.
David,
Here is nice article from the Gazette that basically backs up what you already published:
http://www.gazette.com/articles/roots_51966___article.html/grass_tea.html
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Thanks for sending that, Red. Interesting–and surprising–column coming out of a conservative stalwart paper like the Gazette!
There is certainly a lot of energy being thrown around by fox and other conservative morons. But to think that the people are not upset and concerned is just another arrogant hubris filled knee jerk corporate reflex of CNN and its cronies. People see what is going on we see the corrupt double standard and banking corporate theft precipitated and printed by the government. I hope it works hope the economy stabilizes but do not expect a worship ceremony if it does. We know the hubris and greed that created this problem and we see many of its roots still intact.
So no mention of the billionaire’s who support the liberal fake grass roots protests, the fake Acorn organizers who insight poor people to help them raise more riches for themselves, the openly liberal media that does the exact same thing as FOX lying and promoting, misdirecting, and embellishing. The unions who steal from the middle class working people to gain power and control over others and to enrich themselves at the trough of the democrats.
You try to make it sound like only the GOP does this crap when in fact they seemed to have learned it from the liberal elite, the wealthy democrats and progressives who play the same games to ensure they have power over the poor, uncontrolled wealth through the manipulations of the poor and immigrants and regularly manipulate the mass media who blindly follow them like sheep over a cliff.
Your arguments carry no value or strength when you point out all the things conservatives do but fail to mention they are exactly the same lies and manipulations the liberals use.
From a squarely Independent person
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Sorry Michael, but you haven’t really given me anything to respond to. You use broad generalizations that, if I tried to figure out what you were referring to, I could spend all day trying to hit the right note trying to address your post, which said a lot, and said very little at the same time.
Sorry David, this seems a little light on facts. I watch all cable network news, network news, and listen to the radio…There was coverage of the NEWS of some of these rallies going on, but news coverage is not necessarily promotion, it’s called covering the news.
You have insulted thousand of those who showed up at these rallies because of what they believe in, not because they were paid or promised or bussed around by groups like Acorn. I could go on for awhile about left wing astroturf events that are clearly staged with low numbers, yet get huge amounts of media attention because they made sure to alert the press and the right people to get the coverage they wanted.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
That’s simply not true. It’s not as if these events happened, and the media showed up (whether alerted or not). Fox News was actively promoting the events, encouraging people to show up and participate. Here are more sources to back that up (1, 2 and 3). In fact, many Fox News stars hosted tea parties:
I would be far more satisfied if an advocacy group, and not a “fair and balanced” news organization, was promoting a partisan agenda and its related protests.
Those are commentators, not news anchors or journalists. Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann did the exact opposite, insulting these rallies and the people who attended them, as did many other liberal news personalities, without even taking the time to listen to them and understand what they were about. CNN news coverage by “journalists” was a terrible example of anything remotely resembling new coverage.
I would be careful if I were you, accusing news organizations of promoting partisan agenda. I guess you have never watched MSNBC, CNN or ABC news.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Actually, I don’t watch any of the cables news network crap – they are all terrible. And when I do, it’s with that idea in mind. I don’t like having my news packaged for me to fit my preconceived ideology. I like to make up my own mind; I like to be challenged with what I think I know; and I check a variety of sources, both “liberal” and “conservative”.
But Fox News is the most in-your-face partisan, without even going into how illogical these tea parties were when they completely missed the mark with history (there was no relationship to the Boston tea party and what these people were protesting).
And of course, it goes to the problematic economic policies that conservatives espouse. They are actually more “liberals” in the 1970’s sense than they are conservatives. It’s tremendously foolish to have cut taxes when we are fighting two wars, and it was never done before by anybody. Conservatives used to stand for sacrifice for the betterment of the country – yet the last eight years nobody was asked to sacrifice, as deficits were run up, two wars were launched, national disasters wrought, and…taxes cut. That’s not fiscally responsible.
They are totally ginned up by disgruntled Republican leaders who try to pass them off as “town hall” meetings when in fact they are staged gatherings. They want us to believe this is how the “average” American thinks, when in fact these are all rabid partisans.