The Tea Party: At Last a Citizen Movement the Corporate Media Can Love

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via AlterNet



Extra! / By Peter Hart and Steve Rendall

The Tea Party: At Last a Citizen Movement the Corporate Media Can Love
The hateful, ignorant, haphazardly-organized Tea Party movement receives a level of press coverage few progressive citizen groups will ever see.

May 26, 2010 |


In the first year of the Obama administration, the corporate media suddenly overcame their general aversion to citizen movements that criticize government policies, granting the staunchly conservative Tea Party activists enormous coverage—a decision that seems likely to impact politics for the foreseeable future.

Citizen movements are hardly ever front-page news, even when they have clearly identifiable political agendas and broad public support. But the Tea Party movement—an amorphous, politically incoherent umbrella designation for various strands of opposition to Obama, much of it beset with racism and backed by less-than-grassroots deep-pocket Beltway lobbying groups—has managed to buck that trend, getting the fervent support of conservative media and wide, often uncritical coverage in the corporate media.

The Tea Party name derives from a rant by CNBC’s Rick Santelli (2/19/09), who was furious about the White House’s home loan modification programs. “How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” Santelli barked, making his case with the kind of logic that would later make Glenn Beck such a success: “You know, Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy. They moved from the individual to the collective. Now they’re driving ’54 Chevys. It’s time for another tea party.”

That clip became an Internet sensation, and—so we’re told—a movement was born. Anti-tax protests were organized in numerous cities in mid-April; conservatives complained about the lack of coverage, but the events were in fact well-documented (FAIR Blog, 4/16/09). ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/146998/the_tea_party%3A_at_last_a_citizen_movement_the_corporate_media_can_love/