Posted on 03/17/2004 1:18:04 PM PST by ConservativeMajority
Recently, Senator John Kerry bitterly complained, "There is a Republican attack squad that specializes in trying to destroy people and be negative." He was referring to conservative talk radio hosts who have focused on his long record of contradictory votes in Congress as well as his opportunistic antiwar activities following his four-month stint in Vietnam.
Kerry is certainly correct in that the talk radio crowd is a no-nonsense bunch that scoffs at the Massachusetts senator’s “nuanced” statements that put him on both sides of every issue. Then of course, there is the outright untruths that go virtually unchallenged in the media.
But nothing that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity can stir up compares with the effectiveness of what I have begun to call the Democrats’ “media flash mobs”. The term “flash mob” refers to a staged event spawned by internet communication and instant messaging that brings people together on a few minutes notice in a particular location to all do a particular thing. The Boston Globe cites examples of “A scene in Australia when hundreds materialized at the Sydney Opera House, singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," or in New York, when a crowd appeared as if out of thin air to ogle an Oriental rug at Macy's.”
A similar phenomenon is occurring within this year’s battle for the White House. Within hours of the airing of President Bush’s campaign ads using a few seconds of Ground Zero footage, “outraged” family members of 9/11 victims filled America’s television screens. The White House press corps dutifully parroted the exact same talking points that day in their questioning of Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
Upon further examination, but ignored by the press, it was discovered that the family members were part of a left-wing group, Peaceful Tomorrows, that has financial ties to a murky labyrinth of groups including the Tides Foundation and MoveOn.org. Instead of a naturally occurring response in the course of political debate, a “media flash mob” manufactured an event that dominated the news cycle for nearly a week.
This provides an explanation for several other recent flare-ups that defy logic. Questions about the President’s service record in the Texas Air National Guard persisted for two weeks until every available document was released, but Kerry’s service records are safely locked away with out a single query into how someone “earns” three Purple Hearts but doesn’t miss a single day of duty.
And this week, the “media flash mob” peppers President Bush with questions about Kerry’s assertion that he’s met with “foreign leaders” who want Bush to be defeated, but doesn’t ask the candidate to name names.
Expect this pattern to be repeated until Americans catch on to the fact that these are well-coordinated events being orchestrated by a political party and not random happenings in the news cycle.
To properly fill in the last piece, the Tides Foundation is funded by the Heinz Endowments, Teresa Heinz Kerry chairman.
Dream on.
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