Posted on 07/21/2012 6:12:30 AM PDT by markomalley
ABC News’ Brian Ross speculated this morning that the alleged shooter who attacked a Batman premier in Colorado might be a member of the Tea Party. His suggestion — since retracted by ABC — continues a trend of media figures wrongly tying such tragedies to the Tea Party since 2010.
In February 2010, Joseph Stack became a Tea Partier for purposes of the media after he committed suicide by flying his small airplane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. New York Magazine, after reading his online suicide note/manifesto that day, immediately declared that “a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a tea party rally.” The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart added that “his alienation is similar to that we’re hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.”
Neither Capehart or NYMAG mentioned that Stack quoted the Communist Manifesto approvingly and denounced capitalism as a system that teaches, “From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” That would seem to put him at odds with the Tea Partiers, who often attacked Obamacare as a socialist government program. A few months later, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated that the failed attempt to bomb Times Square was carried out by someone “with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.” The would-be bomber, a Pakistani immigrant, said in court “If I’m given 1,000 lives I will sacrifice them all for the life of Allah.”Most famously, politicians and media figures attacked Sarah Palin and the Tea Party after the Tucson shooting that wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords, R-Ariz., and killed six others. Palin was faulted for having put “crosshairs” over Giffords’ district when she was targeting Democratic seats that might be vulnerable to Republican takeover. Even a year after the shooting, Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was willing to cite the shooting as proof that politicians need to “tone things down, particularly in light of” the Tucson shooting. “I hesitate to place blame, but I have noticed it take a very precipitous turn towards edginess and lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement,” she said. In reality, shooter Jared Loughner was reportedly a mentally ill alcoholic with no coherent political ideology (like Stack, though, he wasn’t above invoking the Communist Manifesto). These cases and others have all been marked by politicians and journalists rushing to connect their political opponents to murder. ABC News, to its credit, quickly retracted Ross’ suggestion today, but the damage to their credibility was already done because bias is revealed in the kinds of questions that a person asks. More fundamentally, the search for political alignments is a dishonest attempt to create a negative impression in the minds of the American populace. Correlation does not equal causation. Even assuming that these reports of Tea Party allegiances were correct (which they weren’t), they don’t tell observers much about the Tea Party. “Now, even as we learn how this happened and who’s responsible, we may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this,” President Obama said today. “It’s beyond reason.” H/T Gabriel Malor
Nice start. I hope other incidences will be added to this list. The left accuses Tea Partiers of being what their left wing Occutards actually are and do.
We are at war folks, and are being attacked on a daily basis simply for upholding American ideals.
They will increase their attacks when they see they are losing their Dictator in Chief. While we do not yet know if the psychopath in Aurora was a frustrated Occutard, I fully expect they will copy his tactic as they continue to lose their grip on power and reality.
We had better be ready to place the blame where it belongs.
Where is this Tea Party and what is their address?
It’s all we hear from liberals, but how can I get in contact with the real tea party?
In fact there is no tea party. A few souls who make a claim to represent the tea party,people who more or less elected themselves, but mostly it is Americans who reject entitlements for hard work.
Thanks markomalley.
Bump!!
IMO this is just a constant attempt by Liberals and MSM to make the Tea Party look like a dangerous organization so when a really serious event happens they can blame the Tea Party and feel justified in banning it and maybe even arresting anyone who is a member.
Unfortunately for them it is turning out to be more like the Boy who Cried Wolf. Hopefully the more they cry “Tea Party” and it isn’t the less people believe them until is just becomes a joke.
Before the Tea Party, crimes of this type were often blamed on the militia movement or other conservative groups.
Before the identity of the Unibomber, Ted Kazinski, was known, he was labeled a right wing zealot. Come to find out, he was an earth first kook who read all kinds of environmental wacko stuff, inc. Al Gore’s book.
The D.C. snipers (Malvo and ?) were consistently labeled as right wing militia types until it was found out they were black and apolitical. Then they were just disaffected outcasts of society - victims.
The Columbine massacre was attributed to Rush Limbaugh, even though the shooters were just a bunch of sicko punks.
Even more recently, many have tried to tie George Zimmerman to right wing groups, talk radio, etc. His friends and family said he’s a Democrat, but that doesn’t stop the accusations.
I can’t recall a single incident where the media or political hacks fingered left wing causes or groups for single or mass murder.
I’m unaware of a single circumstance of law breaking by a Tea Party member or at a Tea Party function, yet they are the targets of speculation by the DBM.
Never mind that there were countless circumstances of law breaking, even murder and rape associated with OWS, yet it barely created ripples and stopped being reported altogether by the DBM after a while.
We need to keep throwing these back into the faces of liberals and the MSM or we will be forever tainted as “dangerous”.
Many people believe Sarah Palin said “I can see Russia from my house.” In truth, it was Tina Fey on an SNL skit that said that.
But the media repeated it, reinforced it an nobody refuted it......so it has now stuck.
Dan Quayle was stuck with being stupid for spelling.
The examples are endless of how we need to defend ourselves forcefully, vocally and endlessly.
It's worse than that. OWS is lauded and celebrated as "heroic", with comparisons made to the Founding Fathers and the early patriots, when in fact the Tea Party is the correct comparison. Every Tea Party gathering I have ever seen was peaceful, respectful of law enforcement officials, and completely law-abdiding in every way, to the extent of cleaning up their litter afterward. Compare that to the anarchistic trends of the OWS, defecating on police cars, assaulting officers and each other, rape, and utter filth and degradation.
Is it not a world gone mad when filthy scum are held up in admiration, while peaceful and honorable people are denigrated as, at best, abnormal kooks and racists?
Libs chomp at the bit to tie the Tea Party to any shooting, because of their view of what constitutes an average Tea Partier. In their deranged imaginations, all Tea Partiers are gun-waving, bible fanatics who want to reintroduce slavery, invade Mexico, and drop hydrogen bombs on everybody. Like Pauline Kael who didn’t know anybody who voted for Nixon, they probably don’t know any Tea Partiers. Tea Partiers are weird denizens of that strange part of America known as flyover country. They believe in outlandish things like the U.S. constitution and this awful thing called morality. Ugh, who would want to associate with dreadful people like them? (smirk)
It would be funny if it weren’t so damn unfunny. You’re more likely to see American flags, middle aged attendees singing “God Bless America”, “Taxed Enough Already” signs and conservative speeches at a Tea Party rally than anything else. - The “Occupy Wall Street” crowd is exactly what the media accuses the Tea Party of being. More Obamamania at work.
How right you are. It’s an idea, a citizens movement, an attempt to select quality individuals to represent us in government. To reduce the size of the monster that is eating every dollar it can sniff out of our wallets, taking our freedoms that are almost sacred, God given. It’s an attempt to return the nation to what the founders had in their vision. I am all in with it.
I have never had or seen a ballot to select a leader. I don’t need one, I don’t need another envelope in the mail with a pretty face on it requesting a donation.
Amen to that, I will join protests that agree with my version of how America should be run and they can call it a tea party if they like.
Every time there is a tragedy, blame the tea party or right wing, if it turns out that the fact don't fit the template then ignore the story. If by luck it does fit the template then run with it till you have beaten the dead horse into a bloody pulp. Smear, demagogue, defame, malign, dehumanize, to their evil hearts content. It is people like this in the media, and DNC, to some extent the GOPE, that we can get a murderous rampaging government at some point should the populace ever fall for the propaganda.
D.C. shooters (I will not call them snipers, as that would be an insult to our fine military snipers.) John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo were muslim terrorists. http://michellemalkin.com/2006/05/25/the-jihadi-snipers-revisited/ Most media speculation at the time was of the “angry white male” variety.
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