Tea Party

[purejuice]

The Tea Partiers are not, as I deduced from a previous NYT story, boomers out of work. There's a new NYT poll which explains who they are.

I am ready to consign them to the scrapheap of history I shall dub The Racist Backlash Against the 1965 Voting Rights Act That LBJ Said Would Last 50 Years. Five years to go. Buh-bye.

I must say, I think the blogosphere pundits' Gotcha, argue with every word uttered by every asshole on the planet, attitude, is counterproductive. Ignore them, deprive them of a venue, do not repeat or listen to what they say, and they will go away.

Comments

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

As The Charm often points out to me, pro-wrestling has a bigger audience than Glen Beck. They are lucky, and probably thankful, to get all the attention they do (and don't deserve).

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

the charm is a very wise young person. comparitive numbers study is incredibly enlightening. and if i were a progressive politician, i'd be at every wrestling match that exists, working the crowd. those are my swing voters.

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

Figures can lie and liars can figure...

When you hear things like "5 MILLION weekly listeners to his radio show" you should immediately start doing the math: 5 million a week/ 5 shows a week/ clear overlap in daily listeners/ 300 million total people in the country= 0.33% of the country actually listens to said idiot. % of Americans that believe in UFOs? 34.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

all of this is begging the question of how the blogosphere gotcha discourse sets agenda for news judgment....i think that while monitoring hits is one way of keeping tabs on trends and fads, it is also very much contributing to the feeding frenzy pack news coverage. this, i believe, helps create the radio soundbite political agendas fascists batten upon, helps create the NCPAC/terry dolan/single-issue voter turnout contests which are political agendas foreign to everyone and against the interests of all voters, which fatally limits the political agendas of both parties such that the plurality does not turn out to vote, and ignores the modest and progressive political goals of the vast majority of constituencies.

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

Part of this, beyond the attention-grabbing gawking sideshow appeal of people in costumes carrying signs (but yet, never for the leftist demos), is the awful tendency of TV news to go for the "two-sides" angle on everything. "While most people believe that they need to breath in order to stay alive, SOME people hold a different view..."

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the speaker at the Tea Party rally I attended today who cited a Newsweek poll claiming that 25 percent of Americans are sympathetic to the movement.

"So, it looks like Glenn Beck was right when he said, We surround them!" she concluded, not providing another example in which 25 percent of a group "surrounds" the other three quarters.

Or, as Custer said to his troops, "Don't worry, men - we surround them!"

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

the geek and i have been discussing your perspicacity in this statistical matter.
do you think the tps get too much coverage?

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely too much coverage. Especially because they aren't actually doing anything - wave a sign, draw a crowd of 400, make a speech. Super. But where are their candidates? Where - to use the 60s example - is their willingness to directly confront the institutions they consider corrupt/tyrannical? Where are their building occupations/wildcat strikes/sit-ins/boycotts/marches? All they do, as far as I can tell, is whine.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

what drives the coverage (news judgment) in your shop? or do you think all demos/photo opportunity/soundbite politics of zero agency get the same coverage?

goebbels was all about the soundbite. i have to go back and read my fascist tomes. (and i wish i could confirm the internet rumor that mick jagger and david bowie have see Triumph of the Will 43 times.)

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

In my shop, I think local factors determine coverage. My old chums in West Virginia handled their Tea Party story with a brief not exceeding 130 words, for example. We gave them a full-length story because we wanted to write about how they've become an arm of the state (and, in particular, the Wake County) GOP, despite constant claims of nonpartisanship. Of the dozen office-seekers who spoke, all were Republicans, and they were joined by apparatchiks from the Wake County party. It seemed like a good chance to point out how this movement supposedly formed in opposition to politics-as-usual is becoming, in North Carolina at least, a get-out-the-vote drive for one of the Big Two.

But in general, I think the press is attracted by the chance for pictures of people acting crazy and quotes from people saying stupid things.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

that's a good story, tp R us.