God bless America. It’s a land where we can all believe different things, have different values, look different, speak different, smell different, be Joaquin Phoenix, and still get along and respect each other like one big happy American family. Right? That’s how we do it in the U.S. of A. Right guys? High fives? Bill O’Reilly? Keith Olbermann? We can all agree to disagree right?
| Story Highlights | |
| • | This is a pretty serious article, but it has a few solid laughs in there. Dig in for the long haul. It’s worth it. Pretty lengthy though (that’s what she said). Get a beverage? |
| • | Liberal commentators resorted to dick jokes when covering conservative protests. That should be reserved for people like us here at TTM, thank you. |
| • | Janeane Garofalo accused conservative protesters of racism. She is also completely insane. |
| • | Conservative and liberal media alike are out of control, nearing if not having reached the point of irrelevancy. For Republicans to matter politically, they need to return to the basic fundamentals upon which the party was founded. |
Absolutely not.
I’m going to talk about a few news pieces by “lefties” and “lib’rals,” but let’s get one thing straight at the start: the right wing is not without sin. Bill O’Reilly is just as guilty of being a biased, idiotic, horrible “news” person as Keith Olbermann. Neither of them are interested in real intellectual discussions of the issues, they are both simply interested in hearing their opinions regurgitated by “authorities” that they bring on the show, who are almost never any kind of authority on anything. FoxNews deserves just as much criticism as the left networks. They’re doing a dumbass job of communicating and representing “conservatism.” Fortunately, there are plenty of people out there keeping a very watchful eye on FoxNews to make sure that they don’t get away with anything. Watch any comedian, fake news show, or news show on any other network and you will see FoxNews verbally tarred and feathered over and over again, often for damn good reasons. Get it together FoxNews. You’re making the intellectual, educated conservatives look like stupidasses. I’m tired of it.
Just a disclaimer: I am going to be mentioning some sexual language that you might find kind of offensive or at least gross. Sorry. Let it be known that it wasn’t my idea, I’m just covering what was on prime time news. This isn’t something from The Daily Show, this is Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann, et al. These are supposedly “respectable” news anchors. Let’s get right down to it.
You may have heard about “Taxpayer Tea Parties” that happened on April 15th, tax day. These were protests across the nation where people gathered to decry the recent actions of the federal government: bailouts which equal massive, massive federal spending. They were sort of fomented by an outburst from Rick Santelli on CNBC regarding government spending. Not really a controversial subject to be pissed about. These weren’t anti-gay marriage protests. Just some people getting together and loving their own money.
Granted, a lot of people said some stupidass, extreme things – comparing Obama to Hitler, etc etc. You name the stupid thing that someone could say to ruin a potentially positive conservative rally, and some idiot put it on a poster for some other idiot to photograph and put on national TV. Thanks, guy. Appreciate you implying that Obama is working for Osama Bin Laden. Really using a lot of good information and logic there, you know, the whole “their names rhyme so they must be in cahoots” thing. Way to help the conservative image. You’re going to have morons in any group, it’s just statistics.
And it’s not like you didn’t see really retarded things coming from the left either, did you? We’ve seen both sides using the same sensationalistic, dumbass rhetoric to attack people that think differently. I don’t give a damn what you think about Bush or Obama, neither of them is even close to Adolf freaking Hitler. You can’t make that argument. Stop it.
So anyway, people protesting taxes, some stupid but most probably honest Americans who really aren’t happy with what the government is doing. They’re protesting a federalist government – that is to say, a government with a large federal presence. This is supremely ironic, since the Democratic party actually has its roots in anti-federalism, citing this wikipedia article:
“The party arose from opposition to the policies of the ruling Federalist Party, which was dominated by [Alexander] Hamilton and advocated a strong central government, a loose interpretation of the Constitution, and a republic governed by a well-educated professional class.”
There you have it. Today’s Democrats have literally turned into what their party was started to oppose. And that’s what these “Taxpayer Tea Party” protesters were/are against: a large federal government whose hand is in everything, spending its citizens’ money in ways they feel are irresponsible and unconstitutional. This is a government that they feel is acting unjustly. They are not protesting taxes as a principle (sorry, John Stewart – see video later) but rather the extreme level of bailouts and subsequent taxes that both the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration embraced. These are people that believe in the free market and the private sector, hence their desire to let bad businesses fail. It’s a free market. If your business sucks, it’s going down. Too damn bad. Whether or not free market capitalism at its truest form is ever going to be possible in our society is up for debate, I’m just saying that this is – from what I can tell – what is at the core of these “Taxpayer Tea Party” protests. Doesn’t seem horrible, right? Enter the liberal commentators.
This all started because some of the “Taxpayer Tea Party” protesters were mailing tea bags to congress in the days before April 15th. Some of them – not all, this was not the overarching language of the movement which you can see here on this website - referred to this as “teabagging” congress or “teabagging” Washington. And therein lies the problem, ladies and gentlemen. You see, teabagging is… well… it’s… I guess I should ask Urbandictionary.com to help me out here:
Teabagging: v. To lower one’s scrotum into another’s mouth.
Yeah. Bad idea, conservative guy who used that verbiage. “Teabagging” wasn’t the slogan of the movement, though. They weren’t referring to themselves as “teabaggers.” They were protesters. You wouldn’t know that, though, from people like Rachel Maddow:
Sweet Holy Moses. Damn Rachel Maddow. I might have respected you at one point, despite the fact that I disagree with you on almost everything except that we both prefer boobs to bros, but not after you just made more teabagging jokes than I ever made in college. And I’ll confess to you – I made quite a few. I just thought that people whose job it is to cover the news would refrain from making jokes about putting balls in mouths. If this were the rhetoric of these protests, then I would be singing a different song. If you refer to your movement as the “Teabagging Movement” whose members are “Teabaggers,” then you really deserve to be mocked. You’re an idiot, and you need to know it. However, that’s simply not the case here. Maddow takes a couple examples that ignorantly stepped on a frathouse joke landmine and skewers them for seven minutes straight. She indicts the whole movement on the testicle-in-mouth concept, ignoring the fact that it really didn’t apply to the vast majority of those involved. Great news reporting, Rach!
Even the technology website/magazine Wired threw their hat into the ring with this article by Kevin Poulsen titled “FBI Arrests Oklahoma Teabagger For Twitter Threats.” Why not “Oklahoma Protester”? Wired isn’t utilizing a self-assigned moniker to refer to these protesters. They’re using a moniker placed on this movement by leftist commentators who seek to belittle people that think differently from them. That’s pathetic, Wired. Stick to technology and stay out of politics.
Then we have Keith Olbermann, who should have stuck to sports. Keith decided that he should get a political science professor from Harvard on his show to comment on the movement. Just kidding! He got “actress,” “comedienne,” and “activist” Janeane Garofalo:
This is where this crap gets way out of hand. Now I understand that the crowd wasn’t a big fan of the “Bush bashing” guy – hell, they’d probably be pissed at me for some of what I’ve said too – but Garofalo just goes ballistic. She starts quoting tons of neuroscience, which she’s obviously an expert on having gotten her degree in history. Whoops. Not a lot of neuroscience taught in history classes huh, Janeane? But then again, Olbermann didn’t bring her on the show because she’s an authority on anything, but rather because she would say inflammatory things. Which she did. Garofalo attributed the entire “Taxpayer Tea Party” movement to racism. Here’s a direct quote:
“…let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”
Where in the hell did she get that from? I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to say that she pulled that little idea out of her liberal, conservative-hating ass. The most ironic thing about Garofalo’s statement is that she is actually the one being racist. The protesters are not protesting Obama’s skin color, but his actions. They are evaluating Obama based on the merit of his decisions, in which they have found fault. Garofalo, on the other hand, defends him based not on the merit of his decisions nor on his actions, but on his skin color. These protesters are wrong, she says, not because Obama has made the right decisions, but instead because he is a black man. If President Obama were white, she’d have no argument to present. Were there racists present at these protests? Of course. There are crazy people everywhere. Have you been outside? They’re everywhere. But that is not the majority, which Garofalo doesn’t want to accept. She would argue that if Obama were white there wouldn’t be any protests, but that’s because she refuses to pay attention to the actual motivations of the protests. Why don’t we see some of these liberal commentators actually engage the subjects at hand, rather than tossing around hyperbole and testicle jokes?
She touches on the answer to this question, even though I’m not sure she realized it. The answer is a reality which The Talking Mirror hopes to change: intellectual conservatives in the media are all but nonexistent. Where can you find an intelligent conservative perspective in the media? One that doesn’t rely on fear mongering and embellishment to fuel their arguments? No where, and that is why the Republican party is floundering right now. The liberals aren’t engaging conservatives intelligently because conservatives aren’t communicating intelligently in the first place.
One thing is for sure, though: American news media is totally and utterly screwed. John Stewart hits on this pretty well, although I wish he were more even-handed with his criticisms:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Nationwide Tax Protests | ||||
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I hinted at this before, but Stewart is off on his criticism of the protests. That’s not the point, though. The point is that the news media at large is way out of hand and truth be told, I don’t have an answer. I do know that if conservatives want to have any place in the future of the country, they need to get back to the small government, free market roots of the party and stop embracing fear-fueled moral issues as the foundation of their politics. That hasn’t worked, that’s not working, and that won’t work in the future. It’s time to get back to the basics, guys. Fundamentals, not fundamentalism.
1900 words later, I’m done. What do you guys think?
Popularity: 71% [?]
April 27th, 2009 at 7:50 am
conor, while i would like to agree with you that these rallies are actually about the issue of critiquing a tax and spend administration, the lack of such protest during the bush years make that claim sincerely unbelievable. If these people really cared about that issue, why weren’t they in the streets when Bush destroyed the surplus that Clinton had created?
April 27th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Re: Wired’s purview, this, this, and this.
I appreciate the rant aspect, and I’m not even interested in reading a Wired story about somebody tweeting nonsense, but backing the ’stick to tech’ cliché in a perpetual clash of technology and copyright/criminal law, not to mention the economic shakeup inherent in such a rapidly evolving utility as the internet, all of which involve many political fingers in many pies, and on a blog of all places, is unwise.
Also, Stewart was doing what he always does: making fun of ridiculous people. The piece–as I saw it, anyway–was more about the weird inversion of left/right dynamics and the obvious and bizarre biases of the news networks than the actual protests. When he’s provided with a large ass, though, it’s kind of hard for him to not kick it as hard as he can.
But this is true: The liberals aren’t engaging conservatives intelligently because conservatives aren’t communicating intelligently in the first place.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
“Whether or not free market capitalism at its truest form is ever going to be possible in our society…” = whether or not i’ll ever be able to talk about the failings of my nostrum, the free market, as failings and not blame it on a “compromised free market”…
honestly, do you really think this was about anything? when was the last time any of these people protested? they (and i say “they” b/c i really don’t think it’s any of us intellectual conservatives) got out of the house for once b/c they were coerced by crying beck, et alia. and was it anyone other than those guys who thought up the tea bag motif? i mean, honestly, (at risk of echoing garofalo) does tea mean anything to these people???? taxation w/o representation??? that has nothing to do with this. fiscal policy has nothing to do with this (e.g., the florida clip). this is having a good time shouting and getting the idea from fox to make yourself feel good about it by pretending to be politically righteous.
April 27th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Conor, you nailed this thing. Conservatives simply have not produced a truly commentator to intelligently articulate our views; instead, they appeal almost solely to emotion. Granted, I’m not sure liberal pundits would respond in a respectful manner even if there was a conservative that argued the merits of an issue without resorting to hysteria or sensationalism, but we are in desperate need of better representation.
As for the TEA Parties, I can’t speak to all of them, but the one I attended in Denver was LEGIT. The speakers knew exactly what they were talking about and why we were protesting Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility. The crowd was well-educated, too, both on local and federal issues. Possibly best of all was the noticeable dearth of “radical right-wing extremists.”
In stark contrast to what James believes, I think people get whats going on. We don’t want heavy-handed government intervention that will inevitably delay economic recovery. Higher taxes simply exacerbate the current downturn, and the current administration must be made aware of our educated outrage.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:32 am
you mean this people were able to parrot the lines that beck and FNN feeds them? impressive.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
It’s too bad liberals believe conservatives are backwards, ignorant cedar-chopping boobs who aren’t intelligent enough to have an opinion worth consideration. And vice versa. I’m old enough to remember the good ol’ days before we were bombarded with “news” from every direction 24/7–except it’s NOT news, it’s media opinion. Unfortunately most Americans-liberals and conservatives-are just too lazy to do some research themselves before making decisions regarding our government. Most Americans just believe what “news” reporters tell them. We’re a subjective, emotional people; we vote with our emotions, not our intellect. Too bad for the US–oh dear! That spells ‘us’.
This is a provocative article!
April 28th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Conor. The far left media are irrelevant for this very reason. MSNBC is the only station with more letters in their name than actual viewers. Fox News dominates the ratings because they present both sides equally. It may seem overly conservative to you, but that’s just because you’re comparing it to the blatantly liberal mainstream media (ie CBS abc msnbc)
April 29th, 2009 at 1:37 am
To Smiles’ first comment: I think these people weren’t protesting during the Bush administration because Bush’s destruction of the Clinton surplus (the origin of which is arguable) was slow and steady, rather than the all-at-once blitzkrieg that Obama is doing now. This is barely 100 days, and this is billions of dollars. So that’s why I think these protesters are legitimate. If there is any bias, it’s certainly not racial. Sorry to all of the crisis mongers out there, but this isn’t 1960. If these people are protesting because of a bias, it’s Republicans protesting Democrats, not whites protesting blacks.
To Pete’s comment: What I was criticizing about John Stewart was what he opened the segment with: mocking the Tea Party protesters for protesting taxes. He mocked them as if they were protesting taxes in general, which they weren’t. I watched the rest of the video, I know what it was about – that’s why I posted it. I agreed with most of the segment, just not the opening criticism.
I also agree with you about Wired – they’re going to have to get somehow political, but they should keep that to technological politics, not using insulting monikers for conservatives that were created by liberal news commentators. It’s just unnecessarily partisan. There is no need for Wired to express their “liberalness” by calling Tea Party Protesters “Teabaggers.” It’s just stupid.
To James K’s comment: Although I agree with you that FNN did play a large part in the protests, I do believe that the core of the movement was a grassroots expression of a national tension that has arisen from citizens’ disapproval of the Federal Government’s fiscal actions as of late. Was it politicized, publicized, overblown, overdramaticized, and damn near ruined by FNN? Probably. Was it a movement completely devoid of merit, passion, meaning, knowledge of the issues, or true concern with the decisions being made by the current administration? Absolutely not. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you do, you’re getting teabagged. Just kidding.
To J Will’s comment: Thanks for your insight and your experience. I’m glad to hear that my assumptions about the Tea Party Protesters weren’t completely unfounded.
To Smiles’ second comment: Bro, don’t comment when you’re wasted. Your grammar wasn’t even right. And just because you’re in Europe doesn’t mean you have to be liberal. Come on dude.
To Mary B’s comment: There truly exists no true news outlet. It is all laced with corporate news bias and every twist that can be pulled to sensationalize every story in order to mobilize the community into giving a damn. Why else would people care about Bristol Palin’s baby if the story wasn’t sold like it was a national security issue? I suppose we the people are just as guilty – the media outlets wouldn’t be providing 24/7 news if we weren’t demanding it.
To Peter M’s comment: It’s not even that FNN is overly conservative, it’s that they don’t express their conservatism intelligently. They fall back on sensationalism and emotionalism to get their message across. If you doubt that, just look at http://www.foxnews.com – I read it every day (as well as CNN and other news sites to balance it all out) and I am always disheartened by the ridiculously sensational headlines they have on the top story. They’re destroying the credibility of conservatism by turning conservatives into a mob of frothing-at-the-mouth idiots. Change needs to come to conservatives because it has already come to liberals.
To Every Reader: Sorry this article wasn’t really funny. A lot of factors led to me needing to rant and as the article got longer, jokes got cut in favor of coherence and clarity. It won’t happen again on TTM.
cheers.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:38 am
To Peter M – if you think Fox presents relevant, informative news at all – you must be crazy – that you think they present “both” sides equally quite honestly scares me.
Conor – Though I admit Janeane is nobody to be getting a serious political opinion from (and this certainly is no exception), I’m going to defend her here. The whole thing about conservatives having a neurological disorder is a Joke, though I’m sure she does believe they are mostly driven by fear, emotion and tradition. Her implied generalization that everyone who went out to protest Obama’s spending bill is a white racist is certainly irrational, but you must see that she’s basically ranting about those that you yourself know ARE crazy, not about the minority who present well thought out arguments for more conservative policy. You write:
“The most ironic thing about Garofalo’s statement is that she is actually the one being racist. The protesters are not protesting Obama’s skin color, but his actions. They are evaluating Obama based on the merit of his decisions, in which they have found fault. Garofalo, on the other hand, defends him based not on the merit of his decisions nor on his actions, but on his skin color. These protesters are wrong, she says, not because Obama has made the right decisions, but instead because he is a black man. If President Obama were white, she’d have no argument to present”.
I’m not sure how you came to rationalize this to be completely honest, unless you missed her point. She is claiming that although they’ve chosen this particular issue to complain about, most of them are just using it as a way to protest him, without really knowing what they’re protesting. It isn’t racist to suspect that these protesters are, and she’s in no way ‘defending’ Obama – she’s just calling these people racists because that’s what she believes they are. It’s quite probable that she’s totally incorrect in her claim, but it’s not that far-fetched. I really can’t think of any other reason people at McCain-Palin rallies would scream ‘kill him’ whenever Obama’s name would come up or call him a muslim terrorist or an Arab (to the point where McCain actually had to start defending his rival), other than racism. Also, if Obama were white, she Might have an argument to present, because if she observed a group of black people protesting the president on spending who, for the most part, didn’t know what they were talking about, alongside people who are comparing him to Hitler, she might be inclined to call Them racists.
I hope I’ve been somewhat clear – feel free to grill me on this as I enjoy the argument. I like your writing, keep it up!
April 29th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I like the Story Highlights addition. Do the rest of you find it useful?
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:17 am
You are all wrong, in my country you would all get a thorough teabagging. Then we would all play halo and I would continue teabagging, as I would be doing all the killing.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
conor, i will not stop drunk posting. it is my constitutional right. and i will teabag anyone who says otherwise.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:15 am
To Sahak’s comment – Sorry it has taken me a while to respond. I have been busy job searching.
I’m disappointed that of all of the points you could have chosen to dispute, you chose Janeane. If the “neurological disorder” thing was truly a joke, it was delivered very poorly as such. Which isn’t surprising, because Garofalo isn’t funny. I’m going to take issue with the beginning of your argument, because you immediately begin with a fallacy. In referencing the Tea Party protesters, you say “the minority” that know what they’re talking about, immediately assuming everyone present is completely psychotic and racist. That’s a pretty ridiculous operative statement, Sahak. You assume from the get-go that all people who claim to be conservative are racist assholes that are just pissed that a black man is President. You are, in fact, just as, if not more, prejudiced as the minority – which I assure you it was – of racists present at some of these rallies. You give conservatives no benefit of the doubt at all. That’s disappointing.
You see, policies such as Obama’s happen to be exactly what conservatives would and should protest. Conservatives, at their dogmatic foundation, are opposed to a large, high taxing federal government. That is the kind of government Obama has created. Black, white, asian, Mexican – it doesn’t matter. These are policies that conservatives should be against. The fact that you assume the immediate worst about conservatives “quite honestly scares me,” revealing that you have left rationality at the door and replaced it with the liberal party favor of “hate those other FoxNews watchin’ guys.” Very disappointing indeed, Sahak.
It happens that Bush actually had similar spending and governmental expansion policies, but he implemented them much more quietly and in quite the opposite context, hence the lack of an uproar. The economic climate happens to be the right one for a Democratic Administration to spend and expand quickly, and the media coverage of all of that is indeed what inspired the Tea Parties. Have you even watched the Rick Santelli video? I doubt that you have, since it’s something that we racist conservative neanderthals are into.
The end of your argument kind of fizzles way and becomes hard to follow. You – again – bring up the example of the minority who were irrational at the McCain-Palin rallies. You say “to the point where McCain had to start defending his rival” – as if to say that each McCain-Palin rally digressed into a pitchforks and torches party, burning effigies of Obama. At best it was a few exceptionally moronic, ignorant people (the ones that you and Garofalo rightly criticize) and at worst it was a staged pathetic attempt to show just how “bipartisan” McCain truly was. And your closing argument really doesn’t contribute anything either – again, it operates on the assumption that “for the most part” the Tea Party protesters didn’t know what they were protesting, which I wholeheartedly refute. It’s hyperbole Sahak, and I’m disappointed that you would jump on Garofalo’s dumbass bandwagon in resorting to it. Furthermore – don’t even dare bring up that some people compared Obama to Hitler. Liberals compared (and continue to compare) Bush to Hitler all the damn time, you have no place to speak.
Thanks for commenting. Hope you continue to enjoy the argument.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Now while I agree with you on aggregate about the lack of intelligent conservatives articulating their views on cable, I would like to point out that Neil Cavuto, Andrew Naplitano, and Megyn Kelly at Fox are all quite intelligent; but they do not dominate the coverage like Sean, Oreilly, and Beck do. We also have Stossel at ABC. However in T.V. news who are the titans of liberal intellect? I don’t see them, they have people like Paul Krugman in print, whom I despise but still is a Nobel Laurette, but we have smart people like Art Laffer, Steve Moore, Tom Sowell and others writing in print publications too. In addition I find that the conservatives/libertarians (which are the conservatives minus the moralism) have better think tanks like CATO, Goldwater, Acton, AEI, FEE, and Heritage. Hit up http://fee.org/ and check out the videos of their seminars ranging from undergrad to graduate and just be amazed. Sure liberals kind of have Brookings but they aren’t anywhere near as far left as most prominent Democrats. I would argue that anti intellectualism is more of a symptom of 24 hour news in general and not unique to conservatism, one can sell Keith Obermann v Ann Coulter much easier than Milton Friedman v Paul Krugman, because the former is more entertaining to many and does not require much of an education to comprehend.
Regardless, I thoroughly approve of your goal to try and articulate more intelligent conservatives views out to the general public. This website is pretty great.