April 15 was tax day and to celebrate, I, like 250,000 other patriotic Americans all across the country, attended one of the 800+ Tea Party demonstrations. I went to the one held at New York's City Hall, where,
according to the NY Post, there were about 5,000 in attendance, most of whom were working taxpayers, small-business owners, and family members. (And most, like myself, had never attended a protest before.) Some wore Revolutionary War attire while others carried American flags and big signs that said things like "Can We Bankrupt the Country? Yes We Can!" and "Give Me Liberty, Not Debt." (Others were
less sensitive.) I saw a lot of books as well, most notably Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged* and Mark Levin's
Liberty and Tyranny.*
(
AMDAL contributor scos convinced his dad to take a picture as the crowd was starting to build. Check out the sweet placard in the back. For those unfamiliar with economics, "Friedman" refers to Milton, not Thomas; "Marx" refers to Karl, not Groucho.)While we had different reasons for being there, we were all united in denouncing the government's reckless taxing, (bipartisan) spending and
foisting of debt onto future generations. Most of the people with whom I spoke were conservative or libertarian (or "moderate"), although I did encounter some frustrated Obama voters who now regret how they pulled the lever in November.
The event was surprisingly apolitical in the sense that few identified themselves as "Republican" or "Democrat" (probably because on spending the parties had become virtually indistinguishable). And most of the
speakers were radio talk hosts, speechwriters and authors - not
politicians in power. The good ones roused the crowd and tapped into its energy by focusing on economic and political freedom; the less successful ones digressed on issues like abortion and foreign policy. Former Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich spoke at the end. He said, "Tell every person you know. . . and tell them to contact their senators and their congressmen with a very simple message: Vote against the upcoming budget of big spending, big deficits, big bureaucracy, big politics, big taxes." His short speech generated wild applause.
Most of us had heard about the event via word of mouth,
Facebook, or
email. This is probably why it had such a raw, grassroots feel to it - in direct contrast to Nancy
Stretch Pelosi's opinion that these events were "a
stro-turf" (meaning that they were not organized at a "grassroots" level but were simply funded by "the wealthiest people").
(Watch Nancy Stretch Pelosi parrot the Dems' favorite refrain: "the failed economic policies of President George Bush." Note how she, like Obama, never says "spending your money" but uses the Orwellian "investing in the future" instead. She also likes to divide people into "classes," in which the middle one, specifically, is "great." Presumably, the top ten percent of earners - those who make over $109K a year and pay 71% of all taxes - is "less great.")So how did the media cover these events, in which hundreds of thousands across all 50 states assembled to protest the government? Unlike their coverage of protests whose causes they endorse (e.g.
amnesty and
gay marriage), the mainstream media (i.e. ABC, NBC, CBS;
NYTimes, Washington Post, etc.) did so with a big collective yawn. The cable news media, excluding Fox News, did so with a big collective joke - about
teabagging. Internationally renowned doorknob, Anderson Cooper, dispelled rumors about his heterosexuality when he said "
It's hard to talk when you're teabagging." David
Shuster, filling in for the thick-
skulled, perpetual ranter /
hyperventilator Keith
Olbermann, beat the joke to death with an
innuendo-filled monologue which included such classics as "full-
throated", "toothless" and "whipped out."
Rachel Maddow, whom I've never watched but apparently has her own show, showcased her journalistic talents with this
tasteful bit.
Now
don't get me wrong, I love a good
teabagging joke as much as the next guy. Heck, I enjoy the act itself so much I actually went to the event with a minty-clean mouth and a silky
smooth sack, prepared for anything. The thing is, all these liberal pundits really went
balls to the wall with this one joke for so long. My question to you: Why? Was it simply to get a laugh to boost their sagging ratings? (Go to
Drudge to see how far they all trail Fox News.) Or, was the rare opportunity to go nuts just too difficult to resist [see: this paragraph]?
Or, was something else at play, something more sinister? Were the jokes and minimal coverage and characterization of the
protesters as "rich" or "extreme" an attempt to trivialize a grassroots movement that seems to be picking up serious momentum?
If you have an opinion, hit the comments button and let me know how you feel. I'll leave you with this fine piece of "reporting" from CNN:
*Atlas Shrugged, which is over 1,000 pages and 52 years old has
climbed as high as #16 on Amazon.com in recent weeks; Liberty and Tyranny now sits atop the
NYTimes Best Seller list for the third week in a row. Funny how the
Old Grey Lady still hasn't reviewed the book yet, isn't it?
Update: Thank you BMar and Block for your thoughtful comments. Readers, if this stuff interests you, you should read them both. Here I'd like to address some of the points BMar raised.
- I said the "mainstream media" (which I defined above) didn't cover the tea parties, not the "cable news media." While a lot of people conflate the two, I try keep them separate because their approaches to reporting are different, as are their perceived biases (Fox New is conservative, MSNBC is liberal; ABC, NBC and CBS is allegedly "unbiased"). Same goes for the "alternative media" which, broadly defined, is talk radio and the internet. This is a good topic for a later post.
- BMar makes an excellent point that "Maddow/Olberman/Limbaugh/O'Reilly and their ilk are commentators and not reporters." This is absolutely true, (although O'Reilly, who has a degree in journalism, would beg the differ) but I wouldn't lump Limbaugh in with the other three opinion makers, since he does three hours of radio a day and they each do an hour of t.v. Also, Olbermann - as we'll see below - is truly despicable. [Correction - Maddow does have her own radio show. O'Reilly's radio show ended this February.]
- I'm not sure if anyone on the Right has made an actual teabagging joke of laate, though if someone did I'd bet it was Dennis Miller (I didn't listen to him this week and I don't have access to his radio archives; come to think of it, while Miller is certainly irreverent, juvenile comedy isn't his bag (of tea); sorry). I did a quick google search and found this clip of Greg Gutfeld and Jim Norton (2:45) ripping on all the sophomoric teabagging jokes with their own sophomoric cracks. Eh.
- BMar's main argument was this: "The whole "teabagging" thing is just funny, and that's why television commentators are making jokes." Personally, none of this played-out, double entendre stuff strikes me as that funny. It's kinda like that recent South Park episode with the fishsticks. [Dork update - second 30 of that link has Jimmy and Cartman talking about dry nuts and how they're not that funny. Was BMar right that wet ones are?] Mildly clever at first, but it gets old really fast... until Kanye sings about being a gay fish. When some dork inevitably comes up with a catchy teabagging song, maybe I'll change my mind, but I doubt it. (Unrelated, here is Kanye's must-read response.)
Let's see what comedienne, political activist and former Air America host
Janeane Garofalo and "commentator" Keith
Olbermann have to say about it. It seems they have their own theory about the tea parties:
Wow. I just learned a lot about myself. Not sure I laughed though.
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