Posted on 04/25/2010 9:42:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Pulitzers for top-notch journalism arent what they used to be.
Heres the way Pulitzer winner Eugene Robinson, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post, recently described the Tea Parties: The overhyped Tea Party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A movement that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, constitutionalists who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy birthers who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists (come on, people, let's be real) and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be outsiders is not a coherent intellectual or political force.
I was at the Pittsburgh Tea Party on April 15 in Mellon Square and Mr. Robinson, a Pulitzer winner for outstanding commentary, got it far from outstandingly accurate on several counts.
First, there was no screaming, but rather thoughtful speeches about taxes, debt, deficits, government waste, the nations founding principles, and the problem of burdening our children and grandchildren with unsustainable levels of debt and taxation.
Second, one could hardly say that the Tea Party phenomenon has been overhyped, except in a negative way by the mainstream media and by establishment politicians. Right from the start, Nancy Pelosi warned that Tea Partyers were Nazis because she saw a picture of a swastika at an event. There were a few swastikas and Hitler pictures (plus some occasional pictures of hammers and sickles and Lenin and Che), but those were anti-Nazi, anti-totalitarian and anti-communist expressions, examples of the threat to individual liberty from overblown government and overreaching politicians.
Third, I was there and Im no devotee of the gold standard, no devotee of Sarah Palin, not a lobbyist for an insurance company or any other capitalist enterprise, not a Medicare recipient, not an outright racist or a masquerading one, and not a fat-cat professional politician pretending to be an outsider.
On the birther part, thats not my issue. But if it were me and millions of people thought I was a foreign interloper, a pinko from Kenya, Id just produce the original birth certificate.
Im also no gun nut and not one of the constitutionalists who have not read the Constitution. Ive read it and I have a pocket-size copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, courtesy of the Cato Institute, in my glove compartment.
Robinson concludes by saying that American public opinion seems to have become an unguided Weapon of Mass Suspicion. In fact, thats exactly what Robinson has done in his ridiculing of the Tea Party. Hes allowed his suspicions to distort his objectivity and destroy his credibility.
The issue is that the money the American people have invested in Social Security has been squandered by the government, their 401-K money has been gambled away in high-risk insurance schemes, government mandates have forced banks to give mortgage money to millions of unqualified borrowers, Medicaid and Medicare are going bankrupt, theres a gold-plated revolving door connecting the thieves on Wall Street with the political crooks in Washington, and now were supposed to hand over our healthcare to these government geniuses.
The result is that four out of five Americans now say they dont trust the federal government to solve their problems, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, and nearly one in three says the government is a major threat to their freedoms.
And the Tea Parties are the problem? Come on, Mr. Robinson, lets be real.
*****
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Couldn’t they think of a few more ways to smear the Tea Partiers?
“Couldnt they think of a few more ways to smear the Tea Partiers?”
This is a new week. They will!
They're slipping. They left out "homophobic"./s
No, they’re gerbils tying to be reporters.
“No, theyre gerbils trying to be reporters.”
Or men who have never left their mothers’ skirts—boldy calling others names hiding behind the pleats they believe will protect them from something far bigger and far more prominent than they could ever stand next to.
Don’t call them elitists any longer. They don’t deserve the title. It’s glaringly obvious there is very little “elite” about them.
I wondered how long I would have to wait to find an example to prove my point. It was less than ten minutes.
PLEASE FORWARD these links to anyone who has been lied to by the media and politicians about the Tea Party Movement, which of course is everybody.
The True Face of the Tea Partiers
The one thing that is undoubtedly driving libs crazy if the fact that virtually all Tea Parties have been free of violence, disruptions, hate speech, or exhortations to do so. So they had to invent the slurs supposedly directed at the Black congressmen and then tar all TPer’s by extension. I can imagine a lib newsperson covering the TPs fervently wishing for violence to happen.
bump
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