Wednesday, around the United States, rallies were held. Prior to the rallies, professional idiots/propagandists (just don't call them journalists) such as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann attempted to trash the rallies with ridicule -- while allegedly on air to provide information and not juvenile and lame attempts at comedy. Bob Somerby's called out that nonsense for nearly two weeks now at The Daily Howler.
You didn't have to watch the gutter sewer of MSNBC to hear or read the slurs. (And few watch MSNBC. As Rebecca noted last week, Rachel Maddow is not a TV star, she's a media-created one, propped up by easy, glossy press that fails to note how many MSNBC viewers switch stations the minute she comes on.) "Tea bagging" was suddenly the rage. The morning of Friday, April 10th, 5 US soldiers were killed in Iraq. By the afternoon when C.I. was dictating the snapshot, community members had already e-mailed in about how allegedly left web sites weren't even mentioning the deaths but they were tossing around "tea bagging."
Tea bagging, for those not in the know, is largely a term from the gay culture. Picture a mouth as a tea cup, if you will, and the male 'hang down' as a tea bag and you'll grasp the picture. Were "tea bagging" parties due to be staged? No. The organizers didn't use that term.
But some 'manly' man (trace down that closeted homosexual) on the faux left thought it would be "funny" to use the term. Because gay men are conservatives? Because protesting is inherently gay? Or just because our alleged left leaders love to mock gay men as much as they do all women? (We'll guess the latter. But never forget lesbian Rachel Maddow was cheering the homophobia on.)
And if you're a self-loathing lesbian like Laura Flanders -- one who never said a peep about Barack putting homophobes on stage at the end of 2007 or using them in the general election to scare up votes in the swing-states -- you join in with attacks on the American people. Not attacks on the powerful, as Marcia pointed out, attacks on the American people.
The tea parties, Lying Laura (whose really getting the face she deserves in middle age and that nose is looking more and more like a pig's snout) wanted you to know that the tea parties were about . . . racism. Was she there? Hell no. Was the idiot Arun Gupta there? No. (Arun Gupta is the biggest waste of money and why most donors gave up on the Indymedia movement. But that's another story.) Laura and Arun want you to know the tea parties were about Obama "talked about as not really American, a closet Muslim, a 'sub-prime' president." 'Sub-prime' president would fit because this is the sub-prime era like calling Jimmy Carter the "oil crisis president," for example. Not really American? Doesn't sound like a right-wing slogan, does it?
Because it's not. It's Political Closet Case Laura Flander's idea of what Americans talk like it. Belonging to a political faction that never even sprouted in this country and having been born and raised outside the US, Laura doesn't know the first thing about America or Americans. It's really past time for someone to buy her a ticket home. She and her cats will be very happy back in England.
Laura wanted to insist, "Crazy talk comparing Barack Obama to Hitler went mainstream April 15th." That is so laughable. On The Laura Flanders Show (her radio show prior to RadioNation), she took calls constantly. Any caller comparing Bush to Hitler was not called out. And, thing is, Laura would make those comparisons herself.
She didn't think it was crazy talk when she said it. But she'll be damned if she'll let anyone else operate within the same framework she does.
It's called hypocrisy and when you add that to the rest of her tired bag of tricks, you start wishing one lonely night real soon she'd pull a Judy Garland. She's trashed her mind, she's trashed her image, her pudgy body is all that she has left. For Laura Flanders, the last eight years were about hating George W. Bush and, with him gone, she's transferred her hate onto ordinary American people. Yeah, that'll pull people over to whatever her next pet-cause is.
Trying to find out what the tea parties actually were was near impossible for most Americans.
At wowOwow, Liz Peek explained the basics in "Obama Ignores Tea Parties at His Peril:"
More than 250,000 feisty Americans took to the streets this week to protest high taxes and rising government spending. Curiously, the media -- and the White House -- treated this outpouring of anger as insignificant. Though we are supposed to take seriously Barney Frank's outrage over AIG bonuses, apparently ordinary taxpayers are motivated by some "special interests." Yes they are -- their own interests!
Americans are not stupid. They fear the huge deficits stemming from the budget proposed by President Obama, and they know that someone is going to have to pay for them. Moreover, they recognize that in all likelihood the numbers will only get worse. Indeed, only weeks after the budget was released, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that total outlays would exceed Obama’s projections by $2.3 trillion between 2010 and 2019. And that was before Congress axed some provisions that would have raised revenues.
How big are these future deficits? According to the CBO, the cumulative deficit under the president’s proposals would total $9.3 trillion in that time period. Boiling this down -- really, who can deal with trillions? -- the CBO reports, "Debt held by the public would rise, from 41% of GDP in 2008 to 57% in 2009 and then to 82% of GDP by 2019." Eighty-two percent! According to a Rasmussen poll out today, 85% of Americans are worried about rising inflation -- are we surprised?
A Dallas Common Ills community member was taking her daughter to the public library downtown for a school project and they rushed there arriving a little after 5:15 p.m. The main library in Dallas (it has many branches) is right across from City Hall and they parked beside City Hall ("at the meters because no one checks them after 4:30 p.m.") and were surprised by the crowd in front of City Hall. They had no idea what was going on and the daughter snapped some photos as they headed to the library.
"When we arrived, 'Jesse's Girl' was playing on the stereo system," the mother explained to us, referring to the Rick Springfield hit from the eighties. "We didn't know if it was a picnic or what. All these people were gathered in front of City Hall and there were more coming. As we moved on down the sidewalk towards the library, we saw people in t-shirts and with signs and I realized it was the tea bag thing. I was, honestly, a little scared. I hadn't been following the story but had heard so many outlandish things that I was thinking my daughter and I might be targeted or something [due to race, both are African-American]. We crossed the street and had to make an L to get to the library. As we were waiting to walk, two women and a man, probably in their forties, asked us if we were going to the rally and I explained that we were doing research for my daughter's school project. They were really nice and invited us to come over after we were done. I thanked them and assured them they'd be done before we were because this project is a huge part of the grade for this six weeks period. But it turns out that they were wrapping up when we left. In the library, we were on the third floor because she was researching poetry, we could hear the crowd chanting and roaring. We weren't by the windows. That's how big the crowd was. When we were done it was about 8:15 p.m. and we headed back to the car and the rally was still going on. Some man, I couldn't see him, was making 'jokes' about whether to call their website person the 'webmaster' or 'webmistress' since she was a woman. I thought that was kind of lame. Especially because he had to get in his p.c. dig. But it was a huge crowd and a couple on our street, they may have been the only African-Americans there, walked up to us and asked if we'd attended the rally as well. They were really excited about it and they voted for Barack Obama. I voted for Ralph [Nader]. I asked them, because they're kind of yuppies and really into the Democratic Party events locally if there were others like them attending and they reeled off about 10 names which isn't a lot considering the crowd. Then again, that might have been all they knew. They said they were there because of TARP."
We thank her for her comments and we thank her daughter for the photos. FYI, we attempted to get comments from 15 right-wing bloggers with no success.
Our own thoughts on the event have to do with the critique or 'critique' being offered by a number of idiots.
1) They're in bed with Grover/Karl/whomever!
Who the hell cares if it is true? If Karl Rove sponsored these events (we don't know that he did), who the hell cares? The events weren't "Let's love Karl!" We've never bought into that cowardly crap that we can't go to this peace demonstration or that rally because one of the co-sponsors is ___ (whatever). Who cares? The event was the event. That's why people were there.
2) It was astrorfed!
How idiotic has the left gotten? Or is that what's coming out of the White House's 8:00 a.m. Echo Chamber meetings? Astroturf refers to when a small amount of people flood someone (often a news outlet) with tremendous amounts of e-mail, letters or calls to give the impression that a large number of people are offended. An event can't be astroturfed.
3) Fox 'News' promoted it!
Like Pacifica radio promoted peace rallies once upon a time? Like Air America promotes every fart and giggle from elected Dems? Who the hell cares if Fox 'News' promoted it? They promoted lots of things that flopped. "Promotion" or coverage? We'd love to see our causes get attention and we're sure they'll never get a word of praise from Fox 'News' but we won't begrudge an event that Fox covered and promoted.
4) It was a small turn out! Ha ha!
250,000 people is not a small turn out. 250,000 is an amazing turnout especially on a weekday when you're asking people to show up after many have already worked 8 hours and expecting them to stay for hours and still wake up the next morning and go to work. 250,000 is an amazing number. Good for the people who planned and participated. Congratulations to them on their successful event.
Some may wonder where our criticism of the event is? We think it's been mocked and ridiculed and distorted. That's the main reason this moved onto our topic list mid-week. We think the events were grassroots and that the people participating did so with the best motives. We're far more troubled by the intolerance and ignorance being exhibited by the likes of Laura Flanders, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann.
IVAW's Adam Kokesh never drank the Barack Kool-Aid so you should trust him. He offers his take on the Tea Parties here.
