The Truth About the Tea Parties

soupsoup:

I agree [that the MSNBC report on tea parties] isn’t funny, but what about it isn’t true?

The report repeats the Krugman line that the tea parties have been orchestrated, fake grassroots events, which is simply not true.  For example, here’s the story of the genesis of the Cincinnati Tea Party in March, which drew thousands:

Six weeks ago, Mike Wilson was just a regular guy, sitting at his kitchen table in Springfield Township steaming over taxes and fuming over government bailouts and stimulus packages.

Today, much to his own surprise, he finds himself at the head of a political movement in Cincinnati - one that could well become a permanent fixture in Cincinnati politics, capable of mobilizing an army of thousands of anti-tax, anti-spending conservatives to put pressure on politicians from city hall to Congress.

And it was all because the Fountain Square rally Wilson and some like-minded conservatives organized for March 19 on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square - billed as the “Cincinnati Tea Party” - drew the kind of crowd at that downtown gathering place that heretofore was reserved for presidential campaign rallies and World Series victory celebrations.

“I have to say that I was surprised at how big it became,” the 32-year-old internet technology consultant said of the crowd of 5,000 who showed up on Fountain Square March 15. “It was enormous.”

When Wilson, a self-described political novice, went in February to apply for an event permit from Fountain Square Management Group, the agency authorized by the city to issue permits for use of the square. He filled out a form where he was asked how many people were expected to attend the event. He wrote “250,” guessing that was about as many people as he could reach.

“I had to keep going back and revising the permit,” Wilson said. “It just kept growing.”

It started with a kitchen-table conservation in February, with his wife, Joni. The burden of taxes on a family like theirs - two working parents, three children - was becoming too much to bear.

Fox, Gingrich, Armey … they have jumped on the bandwagon of a grassroots movement, but they didn’t, as Billy Joel might say, “start the fire.”  Yes, it’s bad for Fox to support these rallies; real journalists would just cover the rallies.  It’s just as bad for MSNBC to oppose these rallies, and even worse that MSNBC lies about them.

Biased journalism is bad; false journalism is worse.  Especially when delivered with innuendo and a smirk.

Source: jeffmiller

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