Last week, I detailed how WorldNetDaily has provided nothing but fawning coverage of the National Tea Party Covention, ignoring or whitewashing the numerous controversies surrounding it. WND’s coverage of the convention itself followed that template. Reporter Chelsea Schilling performed the service that was expected of her by writing near-stenographic accounts of speeches by WND editor Joseph Farah , ousted judge Roy Moore (a former WND columnist) and global warming denier Steve Milloy . A similarly fawning, stenographic account of Palin’s speech carried no byline. Schilling was silent, however, on one bit of actual news from the convention — Tom Tancredo’s insult of Obama voters as so stupid they “could not spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English.” WND offered a link to a Fox News blog post for that (which buried the statement), but even Fox News didn’t mention Tancredo’s subsequent call for a “civics literacy test” before being allowed to vote, which smacks of the now-outlawed literacy tests used in the Jim Crow South to keep blacks from voting. But then, Tancredo is a WND columnist , and the elitist belief that Obama voters are stupid and immature is accepted wisdom at WND. Schilling also couldn’t be bothered to write (or was prohibited from writing) about another controversy, even though she witnessed it. The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel detailed how Schilling asked Andrew Breitbart about his criticism of birtherism, and how Farah joined the argument to defend his birther activism. Schilling did not write about the confrontation; instead, WND offered a link to a CBS News blog’s partial summary of Weigel’s post. Why didn’t WND link directly to Weigel’s account, even though it’s the most complete version available? Perhaps because Farah hates Weigel and the Independent for reporting on the birther stuff — i.e. Orly Taitz’s shoddy lawyering — that WND won’t. Indeed, during his rant, Farah denounced the Independent as a “socialist newspaper” (even though it has no print version). It may also be because the CBS summary leaves out the fact that Schilling was present for the entire incident, and Farah and WND are likely hoping that its readers won’t click through to Weigel’s account to read about the fullness of Farah’s pettiness — or wonder why Schilling isn’t writing her own version of events. One more note: Despite taking the anti-birther side in his argument with Farah, Breitbart has previously used his websites to promote birtherism . Meanwhile, WND’s readership reflects its skewed coverage — as well as its long history of serving as Obama Hate Central. An opt-in poll asked, “Now that it has held its 1st national convention, what do you think of tea party movement?” The overwhelming response, with 58 percent as of this writing, is: “It’s the best representation, now evident, of real America, in contrast to Team Obama’s ruthless socialist takeover.” More on Sarah Palin
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Terry Krepel: WorldNetDaily Extends Fawning Tea Party Coverage to Convention
There was much to mock about this past weekend’s Tea Party convention: the low turnout, Tom Tancredo’s repulsive immigrant bashing, a conspiracy-drenched documentary claiming the financial crisis was deliberately engineered by radical 1960s ideologues bent on bringing down capitalism, and, of course, Sarah Palin’s keynote lite. But it would be a huge mistake to dismiss the movement that led to the event. Yes, some of the Tea Party movement is ugly. Yes, some of the Tea Party movement is race-based. Yes, some of the Tea Party movement is being bankrolled by conservative political groups — and all of it promoted by Fox News. But focusing only on those elements obscures the fact that some of what’s fueling the movement is based on a completely legitimate anger directed at Washington and the political establishment of both parties. Think of the Tea Party movement as a boil alerting us to the infection lurking under the skin of the body politic. In his recent piece about the Tea Parties, The New Yorker ’s Ben McGrath wrote: If there was a central theme to the proceedings, it was probably best expressed in the refrain ‘Can you hear us now?’, conveying a long-standing grievance that the political class in Washington is unresponsive to the needs and worries of ordinary Americans. Republicans and Democrats alike were targets of derision. Though this weekend’s event had a decidedly conservative bent, it was interesting to watch how during the Q&A session after her speech, both Palin and Judson Phillips, the chief organizer of the convention, proudly informed the crowd that neither of their spouses vote Republican. And thanks to the botched bank bailout, anti-government rhetoric — a conservative hallmark since Ronald Reagan branded government the problem, not the solution — has moved beyond the ideological right. Indeed, at times in her speech, Palin sounded like the second coming of Huey Long. “While people on Main Street look for jobs, people on Wall Street — they’re collecting billions and billions in your bailout bonuses,” she said. “And everyday Americans are wondering: Where are the consequences? They helped to get us into this worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Where are the consequences?” I was within an inch of singing along: “Yeah, where are the consequences!? You tell ‘em, Sarah!” I’ve written about how the middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse. And the bleak indicators just keep piling up: a new study found that one in eight Americans received emergency food aid last year — up almost 50 percent from 2005. The numbers are even worse for kids: one in five. That’s 14 million children facing hunger. In America. Can you hear them now? Tim Geithner doesn’t seem to. There he was again this weekend, on ABC’s This Week , assuring us that “the economy is now growing again,” and “we’re seeing some encouraging signs of healing.” At the same time, on NBC’s Meet the Press , his predecessor Hank Paulson was equally upbeat: “I have great confidence that we have touched a dynamic private sector in this country that they’re eventually going to begin creating jobs.” And a little later, he let us know that the deficit is “by far the most serious long-term challenge we, as a nation, face. All these other issues… are minor compared to that.” These other issues he was referring to were jobs and the epidemic of foreclosures. Minor, eh? Can you hear them now? Is there anything worse, when you’re struggling and mad as hell, than being told to chill out? Geithner’s latest tone-deaf pep talk, and Paulson’s faith that “ultimately” there will be jobs, certainly aren’t going to assuage the anxiety and anger middle-class Americans are feeling. “Discontent with the present and apprehension about the future have become the background noise of our politics,” writes Tim Rutten in the LA Times , “yet both sides of the congressional aisle seem deaf to the din.” He then goes on to quote historian Ian Kershaw: “There are times — they mark the danger point for a political system — when politicians can no longer communicate, when they stop understanding the language of the people they are supposed to be representing.” Maybe that explains the lackadaisical, going-through-the-motions response of the White House to the rising chorus of middle-class anger, and the prediction among many economists that, in the end, there will be no substantial financial reform. Calling the administration’s latest proposals “superficial,” Simon Johnson laments : “There will be no serious attempt to cut financial institutions down to a size at which they could be allowed to fail. With their incentive structure intact — they get the upside and regular folk get the downside — Big Finance is ready to roll into the next great global boom-bust cycle.” In fact, for Wall Street, the next boom appears to have already started. Our “recovery” might be “jobless,” but it’s certainly not bonusless. And, no, poor Lloyd Blankfein getting a bonus of “only” $9 million this year won’t diffuse the populist outrage. And comments like this from compensation consultant Mark Borges don’t help: “It’s almost as if he’s taking a bullet for everyone else.” How brave of him. I’m sure we’d have no trouble finding someone among the 16.5 million unemployed and underemployed willing to take that gold-plated bullet. It’s ironic: Democrats have been waiting 30 years for a populist movement to counter the Reagan Revolution. And now that it has, Democrats find themselves the targets of that movement, caught in flagrante delicto with the big banks — and more in thrall to the deficit hysteria sweeping Washington instead of fighting for an aggressive, comprehensive plan to rescue the middle class. “Washington now has its priorities all wrong,” writes Paul Krugman, “all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.” And more and more of them, frustrated and convinced that their leaders don’t have any empathy for their situation, will increasingly turn to movements like the Tea Parties. Will our leaders — finally — hear them now? More on Sarah Palin
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Arianna Huffington: The Tea Party 600: Canaries in the Political Coal Mine?
Honest to God, how do these people spew this crap with a straight face? Here’s the morning crew on Fox & Friends , with their take on Sarah Palin’s 19th century palm pilot: CARLSON: I think she did it on purpose. I think she did it on purpose, yeah. Because it’s an exact opposite of reading off the teleprompter with a script written for you with every word in a sentence and here’s she’s just taking crib notes on her hand. It makes her look like she can just talk off the cuff and she just jotted down a few couple notes before she went out to give a big long speech. DOOCY: I think she did it because she probably does it a lot. I do that all the time. KILMEADE: But to sit there and look at, and do the interview and look down at her hand, I think that is — like you said before, Gretchen — folksy, absolutely, down-to-earth, I can identify. Leaving the eye-roll inducing rationalizations aside, do these idiots realize that Palin uses a teleprompter when she gives speeches? Are the talking heads at Fox News really that stupid?
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Fox & Best Friends Ever!
… or she is willing to lie about when it’s okay to do so. From Greg Sargent at The Plum Line : Case in point: On Fox News yesterday, Palin explained why it’s okay that Rush Limbaugh used the word “retard” even as Rahm Emanuel’s use of the term “retarded” constituted a firing offense: PALIN: I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel has been reported, did say that. There’s a big difference there. But again, name-calling, using language that is insensitive, by anyone, male, female, Republican, Democrat, is unnecessary. It’s inappropriate. Let’s all just grow up. So Palin’s claim is now that Rush didn’t refer to people he disagrees with by using the R-word. But of course, Rush did exactly that: LIMBAUGH: Our political correct society is acting like some giant insult’s taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards. I mean these people, these liberal activists are kooks. They are looney tunes. Naturally Chris Wallace, who was conducting the interview, immediately called her out for her blatant misrepresentation of what Limbaugh had said … okay, okay, stop laughing. As Sargent points out, Palin’s lies are “growing increasingly blatant, casual and even effortless,” but when you restrict yourself to appearances on Fox News , that’s obviously not a problem.
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Sarah Palin Now Supports Calling People "Retards"
Last Wednesday, Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove spent five minutes of airtime claiming that the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll on the crazy beliefs of Republican voters was fraudulent. “The poll is a fraud,” O’Reilly said, “as is the website.” “Daily Kos is trying to make an argument,” Rove said, “and the argument falls flat on its face when you begin to look inside the numbers and you look at the methodology.” Flash forward to yesterday, and on Fox News Sunday — the network’s flagship broadcast — Chris Wallace asked Sarah Palin whether she would run for president, pointing out that a recent poll showed her as the frontrunner among Republican voters. Which poll was Wallace citing? You guessed it: none other than the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of Republicans derided just days earlier as a “fraud” by O’Reilly and Rove. Of course, Wallace didn’t actually credit Daily Kos as the media organization that commissioned the poll (which was conducted by Research 2000). But if even Chris Wallace and Fox News Sunday recognize that this poll was a scientific survey, isn’t it about time for O’Reilly and Rove to admit that they know our poll was accurate? Truth is, they’re just worried that people will kind out what a bunch of loons the modern Republican Party has become.
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Bill O’Reilly, Karl Rove pwnd by their own network
You know what the funny thing is about the leader of the anti-bailout Tea Party teabaggers? She supported the bailout in the first place! Yep, Sarah was for the bailout before she was against it. Just like Glenn Beck.
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Palin vs. Palin
Random thoughts while zipping through the Sunday morning shows: - Peggy Noonan says on This Week that the Administration does not speak seriously about economics, but rather “sounds like some kind of mix between “rah-rah” and gobbledygook.” Does she not realize that the ability of those in government to speak seriously about economic issues ended when she penned the words, “read my lips, no new taxes” for George Bush 41? - Also on This Week, shouldn’t Jake Tapper have asked Tim Geithne about the NY Federal Reserve’s advice to AIG to keep the payments to its counter-parties secret. I understand that Geithner claims he had recused himself by the time of Darrel Issa’s e-mails, but, for example, what was his position on the secrecy? Instead, Tapper sat there and listened to Geithner’s mantra about avoiding a depression about a hundred times. - Speaking of Tapper, is there a rule against a Sunday morning host demonstrating a personality? For every other type of TV program, that is how one attracts viewers. As annoying as Russert was, he had one, as does Stephanopolis. Isn’t it obvious that one of the networks should hire Gwen Ifill? - Hugh Hewitt on Reliable Source s (debating Arianna)says we should excuse Beck and Palin for exaggerating and not knowing much because they are successful demagogues (not his words), but condemns Keith Olberman as a “joke” and a “sportscaster” who “doesn’t know anything.” Hewitt has no problem that Palin said that Obama “tells us to sit down and shut up,” and than cannot back it up with a single example. To me, Hewitt is the most annoying reactionary twerp of them all. - I am not going to do a separate item on it again this year, but NBC’s contempt for West Coast sports fans continues to be manifest in its tape-delaying coverage of the Winter Olympics here even though the Games are in the Pacific Time Zone. NBC is the only network that still tape delays sports. I pray that Comcast straightens this out or that ESPN gets future Olympics. If NBC wants to tape delay on NBC for those who like the costumes and personal interest stories, fine, but they have umpteen cable networks and could offer the events live there. (This is the big point Tim Goodman missed in his San Francisco Chronicle apologia . The Miracle on Ice was not the same here where we already knew the score. Also, see here . More on Olympics
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Stephen Kaus: Sunday Morning TV Gripes: Surprise, Peggy Noonan and Hugh Hewitt are Hypocritesr
The Tea Party movement is given far too much attention. The traditional media, always drawn to a spectacle, has flocked to the many spectacles provided by this movement far out of proportion with their import. Sarah Palin speaking to 600 people who’ve paid inflated ticket prices to cover her huge fee is treated as major news and given blanket coverage. That’s absurd. The screamers bussed in to town halls in August were covered when the many calm, thoughtful participants were not. That’s irresponsible. At the same time, the Tea Party movement should be taken seriously, investigated and understood rather than treated as spectacle. That being the case, Ben McGrath’s recent New Yorker article The Movement seemed promising going in. It’s unfortunate that that promise was so wasted. McGrath has clearly made a journalistic decision to take the tea partiers or 9/12ers on their own terms, to explain how they see what they’re doing. It’s worthwhile to go a ways with that. But at some point you have to step back and consider what you’ve just reported, or you’re a stenographer. McGrath appears to be content mainly with stenography through much of an article that shows signs of having been rushed out in response to Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts last month. Brown gives McGrath the tools to assemble an argument about the movement’s power and get it out before it can be disproven. The fact that that argument, made in passing, ignores significant parts of the special election’s story and anticipates its own undoing, I suppose we’re intended to ignore. But back to the stenography. If we’re to understand the tea partiers, we have to understand the impulses behind what they do. McGrath mentions some of the relevant history — the Know-Nothings and William Jennings Bryan — but he never really ties that history to what’s going on now or even ties the pieces of what’s going on now to each other. We learn that several of the people he talks to in researching the movement are the kind of people who would have multiple conspiracy theories about multiple things in any historical moment. In other words, the kind of crackpots that are going to attach themselves to whatever political movement is handy. One of his main informants is a social conservative whose wife works at the Creation Museum. A meeting he attends is held at a facility owned by “a born-again car salesman.” Ok…conservative Christians have been a mainstay of the right for some time now. What’s different about their participation in this moment? There’s no serious attempt, either, to explain why these people are coming together with the former Fannie Mae analyst or the “self-described ‘party animal’ (in the night-life sense),” let alone the footloose Ron Paul supporters, goldbugs, evangelicals, Atlas Shruggers, militiamen, strict Constitutionalists, swine-flu skeptics, scattered 9/11 “truthers,” neo-“Birchers,” and, of course, “birthers.” So where is it coming from? McGrath talks to Dick Armey, who poo-poos the notion that he or his group Freedom Works is responsible in any significant way for the emergence of the movement. (N.B. When someone who heads a group reliant on donor funding denies in a major publication that they’re responsible for something their donors would see as good, be suspicious.) Rick Santelli is mentioned and Glenn Beck recurs throughout the article but his role, or that of any other Fox personality, isn’t deeply investigated. We’re presented with multiple sources of massive publicity and significant funding and expertise…but in the end McGrath leaves it feeling like a peculiar alchemy, not something that can really be analyzed. McGrath also punts on analyzing the 9/12 rally and the stories movement members tell about it. And that’s where he really abdicates any kind of responsibility. He mentions a sign carried on 9/12 reading “The Zoo Has an African Lion and the White House Has a Lyin’ African!” Ok…that’s racist, right? And it seems likely McGrath knows many of his readers will get that about it — it’s even possible it’s intended to color our reading of the entire piece. But it’s dropped in without ever being analytically tied to anything else about this movement. Given the many disparate components McGrath mentions, the racists could be a minority element. Or not. We don’t know, because he doesn’t even attempt to address the question. Most egregiously, McGrath writes: Politics is ultimately a numbers game, and the natural excitement surrounding 9.12 drove crowd estimates upward, from an early lowball figure of sixty thousand, reported by ABC News, into the hundreds of thousands and across the million mark, eventually nearing two million—an upper limit of some significance, because 1.8 million was the figure commonly reported in mainstream or “state-run” media outlets as the attendance at President Obama’s Inauguration. “There are more of us than there are of them, and we know the truth,” one of the Kentucky organizers, who had carpooled to D.C. with a couple of co-workers from an auto-parts warehouse, told me. The fact that the mainstream media generally declined to acknowledge the parallel, regarding the marchers as a loud and motley long tail of disaffection, and not a silent majority, only hardened their resolve. Eric Boehlert : Are you kidding me? According to the New Yorker , the “mainstream media” declined to acknowledge that 1.8 million people showed up at the Tea Party rally? Might that be because 1.8 million people didn’t show up and that number was pure fantasy , whipped up by the likes of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck. Or, to put it another way, the press didn’t report the 1.8 million number because it was off the mark by 1.7 million. Faced with one of the Tea Party’s truly monumental falsehoods (1.8 million marched on Washington!), the New Yorker , rather that highlighting the fictional streak that runs through the movement, instead treats the 1.8 million number as legit and seems to scold the “mainstream media” for not reporting the number. A number the Tea Party folks made up , which the New Yorker never makes clear. UPDATED : Notice how ABC News reported the “lowball” figure of 60,000, according to the magazine. But that makes no sense because that 60,000 crowd estimate came from Washington, D.C.’s fire department. Meaning, it wasn’t a ”lowball” estimate. It was the official estimate. The other, larger numbers were simply fabricated. It’s plausible that McGrath assumed that references to “the natural excitement” indicate that these are exaggerations. But nonetheless it’s an abdication of responsibility. And if it’s the most egregious such abdication in the article, it’s representative of the way he either accepts what he’s told at face value, or assumes that his readers are so critical of his subjects that snide inference will do it. Either way, he’s insulting someone’s intelligence. We continue to need informed analysis of what’s going on with the new form of rightwing movement. It’s unfortunate that McGrath and the New Yorker elected not to provide it.
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Reading "The Movement"
First the facts, from Palin’s softball visit to Fox News Sunday, as posted by Huffpo’s Sam Stein: “…The former governor went to great and sometimes awkward lengths to insist that when conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh used the same exact term to describe the same exact group, it was simply in the role of political humorist. “They are kooks, so I agree with Rush Limbaugh,” she said, when read a quote of Limbaugh calling liberal groups “retards.” “Rush Limbaugh was using satire … . I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards,’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel, as has been reported, did say that. There is a big difference there.” Yes, of course there is. And it’s very simple math: If (Person) says ( Thing Sarah Doesn’t Like) is (Righter Than or Equal To) Palin, it’s fine. However: If (Different Person ) says ( Thing Sarah Doesn’t Like) is ( Left Of) Palin, it’s the worst thing in the whole wide world. See? Rush is a satirist. Then again, so is Letterman. However: (Letterman) who (Made Comment Palin Didn’t Like) is ( Left Of) Palin, therefore, it’s bad. See how simple that is? Was what Letterman said insensitive? Sure. Substitute Letterman with Glenn Beck, and the formula states she’s laughing with him, not calling for his head. It’s the most basic of math - no calculator required. Which is what makes it so awesome. Never before has there been somebody so clearly hypocritical, so obviously agenda-based, and so unabashedly opportunistic in her demagoguery and indignance that a person is left with only one of two choices: Reject it, because it’s a double standard, or accept it and be the double standard. Watching her moral outrage collapse like a deck chair when she had to decide whether to criticize someone she needs - to stay beloved, to remain in the news, to run for President in 2012 - this is a priceless and teachable moment. Americans can be divided by a lot of things: Politics, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, war, national security… the list is mind-boggling. They can be divided by the use of the word “Retard,” which was just used in “The Fantastic Four” - Enjoy The Debate Here - as a young girl calls her less intelligent little brother the word in a teasing and loving way. To be honest, even I found that a little off-putting. You name the issue, everyone from individual Americans to screaming pundits on Fox News or MSNBC will be lobbing verbal grenades at each other. And that’s fine. I will naively say that left or right, a person can have a strong opinion - one that can be hopefully debated like adults (regardless of how little that seems to be happening these days). If that opinion is consistent, you might not like it… but you should try to at respect it. But we don’t have to do that with Palin anymore. This was a litmus test - She doesn’t have opinions, she has opportunities. She doesn’t have convictions, she has convenience. And as long: (Person) plus (Incident) does not always equal (Same Opinion) … Her Opinion = Zero. More on Sarah Palin
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Steve Marmel: The Good News About Sarah Palin’s Hypocritically Bad Math
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (8 PM CST) Ahh sweet Earl Grey Revolution! Sarah Palin knew that speech like the back of her hand. The Q&A answers, however, were on the front of her hand. Or so it appeared. During the Q&A following her speech at the Tea Party Convention, Ms. Palin appeared to read from her hand in answering. The following image was caught by some sharp-eyed Twitter users, notably @jryanlaw -> Tweet Photo link UPDATE #2 : A high-quality video on youtube seems to prove that something was indeed on the palm of Palin’s hand. The question is what. Close-Up: UPDATE #1: And, via ThinkProgress , the Video: Crib Notes? This potential presidential candidate and “movement” leader was using crib notes to answer basic questions? This would mean: A) That she knew the questions beforehand and the whole thing was a farce. (Likely.) and B) That she still couldn’t answer the previously agreed-upon questions without a little extra help. If true, this is supremely rich coming immediately after a speech in which Palin took a shot at President Obama for using a teleprompter to read his prepared speeches. You can bet that the President wasn’t reading scribbles off his extremities while he sparred with Republicans and Democrats in an unscripted format in his recent Q&As. Palin, on the other hand, seems to need a cheat-sheet just to get through a contrived lovefest with a smitten interviewer and an adoring audience. I’m no fan of the Tea Party movement - if it can be called such - but if this is their leader I actually sympathize with them. ——- Question: Can anyone get a blown-up image of this from a different angle to confirm or disprove it?
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Stefan Sirucek: Did Palin Use Crib Notes in her Tea Party Q&A?