Media Matters: Weak Tea

[Nostalgic]

Weak tea

by Jamison Foser, Media Matters, Apr. 17, 2009

For all the media attention devoted to this week's so-called "tea party" protests, the most striking thing is what wasn't mentioned.

When a group of colonists in Boston dumped a bunch of tea in the harbor in 1773, they had an unambiguous grievance: They had no say in the tax policy to which they were subject. "No taxation without representation" became one of the central rallying cries of the American Revolution and continues to represent a concept so basic most Americans probably take it for granted.

As for this week's tea parties, few people seemed to have any idea what, exactly, the events were meant to protest.

Even Fox News, which served as both quarterback and head cheerleader for the protests, had trouble explaining what the attendees were upset about, and what they wanted. They were angry, Fox told us -- but angry at what? Some were angry about taxes, or (typically unspecified) spending, or Washington, or (purely imaginary) attempts to repeal the Second Amendment. Others just seemed angry at the wind. In Texas, some members of the "Party of Lincoln" even began talking about seceding from the United States.

One thing was clear: They were angry. Fox News' Neil Cavuto made that clear during an exchange with Bill O'Reilly: "They're annoyed at everybody. ... There is a palpable rage here. ... These people are ticked. ... These were a lot of average folks who said they were sick of it. ... They're just very angry. This is a populist rage. ... They don't like being laughed at. They don't like being joked about. They're average folks who want to just be treated like average Americans who are angry." (Presumably, the people who don't like being laughed at were not the people who walked around with bags of tea dangling from the frames of their glasses.)

Read the rest here: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200904170029?f=h_top

[Old and In the Way]

1. It was a big FAIL

Weeks of free advertising on Fox...and this is the turnout that they had? 100,000 people? What a joke. Fox has proven how marginalized and irrelevant the Republican/Conservative movement is.

[Xipe Totec]

2. The poor pouty babies don't like to be laughed at...

:rofl:

[Cha]

3. The teabaggers summed it up in their signage..

and another one spouting.."Remember Descent THE HIGHEST FORM of Patriotic"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5477083&mesg_id=5477633

[lostnotforgotten]

5. Why Are These Folks Always Such Atrocious Spellers?

eom

[Nostalgic]

4. Fox News anchors lash out at CNN reporter

Fox News anchors lash out at CNN reporter who said network "highly promoted" tea parties

Summary: Gregg Jarrett said of a report at a tea party by CNN's Susan Roesgen: "She took a swipe at Fox News saying, well, we contrived the whole thing, which is, of course, preposterous." In fact, Roesgen did not say Fox News "contrived the whole thing"; she said the network "highly promoted" the protests.

During the April 16 edition of Fox News' The Live Desk, co-hosts Gregg Jarrett and Martha MacCallum defended their network's coverage of the April 15 tea party protests by distorting CNN reporter Susan Roesgen's remark that Fox News "highly promoted" the protests. After playing a part of Roesgen's CNN Newsroom report, in which she interviewed protesters, MacCallum said that Roesgen "went on to say that it was an anti-CNN crowd. She also took a slam at this network in the process." Jarrett, as part of his response, said that "she took a swipe at Fox News saying, well, we contrived the whole thing, which is, of course, preposterous, and she clearly has to know that -- I would hope." MacCallum replied: "Hard to take credit for all those people painting -- hand-painting their own signs and showing up. It's hard to engineer something like that. But we did cover it, and it was very interesting." In fact, Roesgen did not say that Fox "contrived the whole thing," as Jarrett claimed. Rather, in a part of her report that The Live Desk did not air -- but MacCallum and Jarrett purported to summarize -- Roesgen stated of the protests: "It's anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox." Indeed, Fox News has aggressively promoted the tea parties, which it has labeled "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties," in dozens of instances. Fox News business contributor and substitute host Stuart Varney even said on the April 13 edition of Fox News' Your World, "It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!"

The rest of the article is here, with the video clip: http://mediamatters.org/items/200904160034?f=h_latest