‘I Don’t Think We Can Possibly Fight Them if We Don’t Understand the History’
“Media have been slow to recognize the degree to which the Tea Party represents perhaps the furthest right of the Republican Party.”
Mark Trahant on Indigenous and the Election; Tea Party Revisionism
Election Focus 2020: The historic Native American Presidential Forum was ultimately less about the candidates than about the 5 million Natives across the country, and the possibility of their seeing government as representing rather than oppressing them.
Racism in Politics Too Often Goes Unreported
National GOP and Tea Party groups descending on Mississippi to scrutinize black voters seems like a pretty big story–but it also provides a confirmation of the charge that the GOP has a serious problem with racism.
Michael Dorsey on COP Climate Talks, Rick Perlstein on Tea Party
This week on CounterSpin: The COP 19 climate talks in Warsaw were filled with intrigue, secret memos and walkouts by green groups and delegations from developing nations. What was accomplished at the summit? We’ll talk with Michael K. Dorsey, the director of the Joint Center’s Energy & Environment Program.
Also on CounterSpin: Is big business breaking up with the Tea Party? Some political observers and pundits seem to think so, seeing a growing divide between the Republican Party and its corporate backers. But historian and journalist Rick Perlstein suggests this storyline isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
David Gregory’s Curious History of the Tea Party
To suggest that the Tea Party exists to express dissatisfaction with both major parties and the national security state, and that Obama’s presidency just so happened to coincide with the rise of this movement, stretches even the most active imagination.
Imara Jones on Government Shutdown, Ryan Koronowski on IPCC Report
This week on CounterSpin: The government shutdown has pundits lamenting the same old Beltway dysfunction. But who’s actually to blame for the shutdown? And who’s affected? We’ll speak to Imara Jones from ColorLines.
Also on the show: The U.N.’s latest climate report is out, and its findings are alarming. According to the scientists, they are as certain that we are causing warming as they are that cigarettes cause cancer, and the problem is not getting any better. So why are some outlets reporting the IPCC’s findings as good news? We’ll talk to Ryan Koronowski of Climate Progress about what the report actually says.
FAIR TV: Syria and Skepticism; Crossfire’s War ‘Debate’; WSJ Sees Tea Party Comeback
This week on FAIR TV: Is Syria Iraq all over again? Plus a look at the CNN “debate” over military strikes that didn’t have much debate, and the Wall Street Journal sees a big Tea Party “comeback.”
What Tea Party Did Tom Friedman Go To?
Friedman’s garbled recollection of a major U.S. political movement is a reminder that someone who doesn’t understand the politics of his own country is probably not going to give you a lot of help understanding the politics of other people’s countries.
No Protests From the Left—According to Progressive TV Guest
Here’s something you don’t see very often—a progressive person of color on a Sunday morning chat show. There was Van Jones on ABC‘s This Week on April 1. Also there? Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter. Huh. But it was something that Jones said that caught my attention. Well, you know, I think that probably the majority […]
When Right-Wing Tax Spin Goes Unchallenged
The Republican Party is in something of a bind. Many oppose White House efforts to extend–and perhaps increase–a Social Security payroll tax cut next year. This might sound strange, since if conservatives are supposed to be fond of anything, it’s tax cuts. So they have some explaining to do. They’re given a valuable assist when […]
Occupy Charlie Rose!
With the bad news we’ve been talking about on the public broadcasting front, it’s worth pointing out a bright spot: On Monday (10/24/11), Charlie Rose featured a discussion of Occupy Wall Street with Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman. Goodman made an important point about media coverage of the protests: CHARLIE ROSE: Does it have anything […]
Tea Party Makes News—Even With Nonsense
Today the New York Times (1/18/11) reports a big scoop. A “Tea Party commission” convened by Freedom Works is set to announce its crowd-sourced $6 trillion debt reduction plan—”A copy of the preliminary findings was provided to the New York Times,” Kate Zernike reports. The story’s second paragraph critiques the plan from the right for […]
Michael Moore on Progressive Protests and Media Blackouts
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (9/19/11): Or, if you prefer reading: But last week when Wolf Blitzer and CNN had that debate, the CNN/Tea Party Express debate, and Wolf sat there and called them his partners–I just thought, this was amazing, because would you ever see the CNN nurses union debate […]
More on CNN’s Tea Party
The New York Times reported today (9/13/11) on the controversy, citing FAIR: But the CNN debate on Monday was the first event hosted jointly by a major news organization and a Tea Party group. And their partnership left some questioning whether the network had gone too far in reaching for centrist credibility. “Is there really […]
Action Alert: Why Is CNN Partnering With Tea Party Express?
Send a message to CNN about the cable network’s partnership with the Tea Party Express, a far-right group with a history of virulent racism, to produce a Republican presidential debate: See “CNN Throws a Tea Party,” FAIR’s latest Action Alert. Please post copies of your messages to CNN, or comments on this Action Alert, in […]
O’Keefe’s Bogus NPR Sting Lives On
Jesse Jackson had some tough criticism for the Tea Party movement at a Martin Luther King event on Thursday. USA Today‘s Melanie Eversley covered his remarks, getting a Tea Party activist to respond to his criticism. The piece then added this, presumably in order to add some context: The group has faced criticism of being […]
Tea Party: Raging Against the Wall Street/DC Machine?
Time‘s Michael Crowley deserves some credit for saying this about the Tea Party movement, in his piece about how they largely won the debt standoff: The Tea Party movement has proved not only that people can have their own facts but also that they can use them to vast tactical advantage, crashing through the taboos […]
To NYT, Tea Party’s Talk Is More Newsworthy Than an Actual Progressive Budget
“Tea Party Plans Its Own Debt Panel” reads a headline in today’s New York Times (6/27/11), where reporter Kate Zernike described efforts by the well-financed right-wing lobbying group FreedomWorks to organize a debt commission that will come up with yet another right-wing fiscal blueprint. They don’t have a plan yet–they’re merely talking about having meetings […]
Tea Party: Anti-Corporate Corruption Fighters?
Some in the press still seem to have trouble defining whatever it is that motivates the Tea Party movement. I noticed this in an L.A. Times piece last week (6/5/11): Americans possess a long-standing wariness of power and its potential as a corrupting influence, especially in the hands of large institutions. That instinct bred our […]
Not Tea Party? Not News
Protests were held across the country yesterday to pay tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King and to push back against attacks on workers’ rights. Alex Seitz-Wald at Think Progress provides this take on one DC rally: In Washington, DC, today, an estimated 2,000 protesters marched on Koch Industries’ Washington, DC, offices, and […]
