The Media’s Tea Party Tirades To Come
By K. Daniel Glover | April 6, 2009
Journalists have willfully and negligently ignored grassroots, anti-tax "tea parties" across America the past several weeks, but Michelle Malkin warns that they are about to take notice in the only way they know how to cover conservatives -- by publicizing the coordinated smears of the liberals bent on taxing, spending, borrowing and regulating the country into ruin:
For the next 9 days, the left-wing blogosphere and left-wing clueless pundits will hammer away with their unreality-based Tea Party smears.
And on the ground, the tax-subsidized and Soros-subsidized troops are going to try and wreak havoc every way they can. Many readers and fellow bloggers have seen signs that ACORN may send in ringers and saboteurs to usurp the anti-tax, anti-reckless spending, anti-bailout message. ...
Another tack: As [Bob] Beckel signaled, leftists are going to use fear-mongering to paint mainstream taxpayers who believe in the Second Amendment, the Constitution, limited government, low taxes, and fiscal responsibility as fringe wackos. They have already exploited the Binghamton and Pittsburgh shooting sprees for political gain. They have no shame. Be prepared. Confront them with their own rank hypocrisy and unhingedness. Don't get distracted. And don't let your local media get away with lazily recycling their smears.
The national media wouldn't cover the protests no matter how many were held or how many people attended. But they will cover the liberals who protest the protests and stoke fears that conservatives want a literal "armed rebellion" rather than a figurative re-enactment of the original Boston Tea Party. Yep, that sounds about right.
Here's Malkin's advice on how conservatives should react: "When they smear, sing louder. Get a fellow tax revolter to register to vote. Then sign up 10 more. Don't get mad. Get active." In other words, don't let the modern-day Tories win.
UPDATE: That New York Times columnist linked above who's all concerned about conservatives fomenting "armed rebellion"? Turns out he appreciates symbolism after all -- in his own writing. He suggested that General Motors Chairman Rick Wagoner should be "flogged."
K. Daniel Glover is a project manager for Accuracy In Media. He has worked as an editor, writer and new media specialist in the Washington area since 1991, spending most of that time at National Journal and Congressional Quarterly.
7 Comments | Post a Comment
Brian: I am not ignorant of who Tories are today. My article clearly was a reference to the Tories of colonial America and the fact that they were on the wrong side of history—just like today’s leftists who are ranting against grassroots outrage over out-of-control government.
This was a great article and unquestionably correc—I’d bet my M.A. in Jornalism on it.
The question is, what do we sing? Oddly, there is no conservative-libertarian anthem of the power of the Left’s “Masaillaise,” “The International,” “The Horst Wessell Song,” or even “We Shall Overcome.” the left always seems to get the better songs.
For a couple temporary stopgaps, I propose Dr. Joseph Warren’s “Free America” to the familiar (and ironic) tune “The British Genedier,” and, of course, “Yankee Doodle.”
Gary,
“Battle Hymn of the Republic”...of course, its likely to scare the snot out of the Left….“He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…”
Dear Mr. Glover,
You wrote: “My article clearly was a reference to the Tories of colonial America and the fact that they were on the wrong side of history.”
“Clearly”? Who are you trying to kid?
“The wrong side of history”? Doesn’t that depend on where you stand? Ever read Kenneth Robert’s “Oliver Wiswell”? Ever spent any time in New Brunswick?
I’ve been a historian for the past thirty-five years. Even the most objective and conscientious historian knows that “right” and “wrong” are subjective value judgements.
Go to Alabama and ask people what they think about what they “The War Between the States’ was about. Read interviews with Silvio Berlusconi in which he opines about Mussolini. Then read the reactions in the Italian press. Visit Australia and ask people about the heroes and villains of their country’s 19th century history. Talk to educated Indians about what happened in their country from 1942 to 1948.
The people of Alabama, Italy, Australia and India all live in democracies and enjoy freedom of speech, the press and of opinion. But you won’t find much agreement about the right and wrong side of history in regard to the topics I mentioned.
As for the blather and bilge you put out on the AIM site, it isn’t so much right or wrong as just plain uninformed, biased and frequently downright stupid. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
Brian R. Sullivan
all
Read the Text ” Masters of Deceit” Circa 1953, for the tactics, schedules, traits, methods, etc that the Left will use to defeat these T Parties
Nothing is sacred, all is to achieve the end, justification stands aside.
end
“Masters of Deceit” is a shameful reflection of the McCarthy-period ideology. Worse, to think that a book written c. 1953 at the tail end of Stalinism and the heyday of Maoism has much relevance to the post-Cold War world is, actually, not to really think at all.
More to the point, to claim that there is a monolithic “left,” as if liberals, social democrats, socialists, Jacobins, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists and anarchists form a single entity is ignorant foolishness.
That notion is roughly the same as if one were to claim that the “right” encompasses within a single ideology all Hobbesians, classical liberals, neo-cons, conservatives, libertarians, monarchists, Bonapartists, Fascists and Nazis.
The simple-minded, ignorant, bigoted attitudes stated by Mr. Slim help explain why the American conservative movement is in such turmoil and distress at the moment.
I am a conservative and proud of it. But the ideas of Mr. Slim and others of his ilk cause me to almost despair for the future of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in general.
April 7 at 8:50 am | #1 | Link
What hypocrisy! AIM can make out all sorts of vicious and false attacks on others. But it can’t take even moderate criticism in return.
Another point: Glover uses the term “Tories” to describe some on the left. Since when are “Tories” leftists? Today, “Tory” is the colloquial expression for a member of the British Conservative Party. Glover appears to ba na ignorant fool.