Pierce: To Paraphrase Another President: 'Is Our Media Learning?'

[mcar]

To Paraphrase Another President: 'Is Our Media Learning?'
Let's see how we're all covering a series of protests that are approximately as spontaneous as the Rose Parade.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 20, 2020

To paraphrase the previous Republican Worst President of All Time, is our media learning? It’s hard to say. Some elements of it seem to be the walking embodiment of the old joke about getting the mule’s attention with the 2x4. On the vaguely positive side, it seems that the Washington Post is somewhat determined not to be fooled by the AstroTurfed protest groups protesting the stay-at-home orders—demonstrations that are approximately as spontaneous as the Rose Parade—the way that everyone pretended that the Tea Party demonstrations were grassroots enterprises back in 2010.

“Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine” was created on Wednesday by Ben Dorr. His brother Christopher is the creator of “Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine,” as well as “Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine.” A third brother, Aaron, is the creator of “New Yorkers Against Excessive Quarantine.”

The online coordination offered additional clues about how the protest activity is spreading nationwide, capturing the imagination of the president and of Fox News even though it represents the views of a small minority of Americans. Trump himself tied the protests to gun rights — a primary cause for the Dorr brothers — in telling Virginians that the Second Amendment was “under siege” as he urged them to liberate the state.

...

These protests are tiny. Five states is not “coast to coast,” even if small groups of bored loons flocked together in Florida and Washington state. Every scrap of polling data indicates that massive majorities support continuing the measures that seem to be working to flatten out the pandemic. To inflate these small gatherings of angry shut-ins as a national movement is profound journalistic malpractice....

The more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that Mr. Trump enacted with the help of congressional Republicans in 2017 were not paying for themselves as promised. And deals negotiated between congressional Republicans and Democrats that traded increases in military spending for added domestic dollars boosted the deficit as well. Republican concerns about deficit spending — once an animating force of the party — seemed to have evaporated when President Obama left the White House.

That last sentence may be the funniest sentence ever to appear in the pages of the NYT. Those “concerns” haven’t been an “animating force” in the Republican Party since Reagan and, maybe, since Eisenhower. The only “animating force” in Republican politics is to make life miserable for people who don’t vote for Republicans, and to shove as much of the country’s wealth upwards as possible. Starving The Beast and Owning The Libs are two sides of the same coin. It’s all they have left.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32209760/lockdown-protests-media-coverage-tea-party/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Look to Brad Pascale tRump campaign chairman 2020 Big Data meister 2016. He has millions of profiles

The astroturf was pre-positioned. Ask Pascale for a list of 100,000 zealots on any topic and he can sell it to you instantly. Mercerized.