NYT's Gail Collins: Tea Party Only Latest 'Crazed Right-Wing Upheaval'
New York Times columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks talked about “The Long Stagnation” in their weekly online chat posted Wednesday.
When Brooks, the paper’s idea of a conservative columnist, said he wasn’t impressed by the numbers participating in the Occupy Wall Street protest, compared to the figures generated at Tea Party rallies, Collins, the paper’s former editorial page editor, indignantly replied the Tea Party had no principles besides a "crazed" refusal to accept the idea of Democrats in power:
It’s two different things entirely. The Tea Party, whatever it pretends, is just the latest manifestation of the right wing’s refusal to accept the idea of Democrats running the government. Every time one gets elected, there’s this crazed right-wing upheaval. The Wall Street protests are a cry of pain from a generation that feels it’s been cheated, and for good reason. But the one thing I learned from my own misspent youth is that a movement without any clear political principles is better at producing music than change.
Brooks didn’t challenge Collins’s characterization of the Tea Party.
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Comments
Situational ethics
Submitted by scrubjay on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:03am.
If Democrats are in power then it's a "crazed right-wing upheaval".
If Republicans are in power then "dissent is the highest form of patriotism".
That's it exactly
Submitted by Marcus Porcius on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 4:30pm.
Dissent is patriotic against a Republican president.
Dissent against a Democrat president is "treason."
"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." G.K. Chesterton
www.theconservativereview.com
Just another unhinged
Submitted by Bodini on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:14am.
Marxist DEMwit fretting November 2012 which will see a restoration of sanity to our REPUBLIC!
Just the latest.....
Submitted by almostacowboy on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:25am.
in a long line beginning with those trouble makers, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, etc. Rabble rousers, all.
Really, folks...
Submitted by KyWriter on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:27am.
...should anyone as delusional as Gail Collins have any right to comment on mental hygiene?
Collins would be more honest
Submitted by kg on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 12:28pm.
Collins would be more honest if she stuck with fantasies of Bill Clinton.
"DumbAssity of Dope"
my ideology...
Submitted by dmacleo on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:29am.
has not changed in decades. its just more people like me are speaking up.
we have always been here. we WERE the silent MAJORITY.
Tea Party is a populist movement - not Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Gary Hall on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 11:50am.
Los Angeles Times, a day after it's own lead editorial glossed over the OWS protesters, appears more than pleased to allow this op-ed in today's paper:
Certainly didn't see such wishful thinking for the Tea Party movement, did we?
The OWS crowd may share a few populist views with hurting Americans during this great recession, but so does the Tea Party. This OWS movement is a fringe group of "nationalize big business radicals.
Polls have long demonstrated that the Tea Party is deeply in bed with super majority views of the American People - "populist views."
These would be populist views broadly supported by the Tea Party:
These and many more major populist issues are dominate within the Tea Party - not the Occupy Wall Street radicals.
Call your local Tea Party group - push them to call themselves what they are -- populists.
(;`> gary
Oh, for crying out loud!!
Submitted by motherbelt on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 12:07pm.
It doesn't matter what you're protesting, just protest.
But that certainly doesn't make the Wall Street Mob the Latest Crazed Left-Wing Upheaval.
Of course not.
I would call it the latest crazed left-wing temper tantrum.
This just in...
Submitted by WhoIsJohnGalt on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 1:17pm.
The Wall Street Protesters have added one more demand to their list of ten demands that they recently agreed upon. Considering that the list of ten demands was not enough to satisfy the Vegan contigent, demand # 11 is:
"Everyone gets a puppy. No, a kitten. Wait, no, everyone gets a puppy AND a kitten!"
My fourteen-year-old and I had such a laugh together last night...even he knew how completely ignorant these preposterous "demands" are.
Boy, the parents of those idiot protesters must be so proud!
The idiots at the NYT need to
Submitted by jessieH on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 2:14pm.
The idiots at the NYT need to check history. The Democrats, when in the majority, have always, always, screwed things up. No, the GOP hasn't been much better. That is why the Tea Party formed in the first place. We are fed up with the moronic bickering between both parties.
the Tea Party will never see equal time in the MSM
Submitted by kata on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 3:03pm.
They will never be correctly interpreted either. They will be marginalized and even denigrated no matter how concrete the message. If more people would just shut off cable the MSM would no longer be the cool kids on the block.
But this 9.1% of the 30% of the the 46% already has had representation for a LONG TIME - and whether they choose to believe it or not - those congress members (state, federal and local) and this media are the reason why they are where they are today.
Though I honestly thought we had another decade before it came to this.
This is hardly shocking. It's annoying, but hardly shocking.
You mean like the "crazed refusal" of the Democrats with Bush?
Submitted by drsamherman on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 3:14pm.
Could you be more of an ostrich, Gail? As the odds are heavy in favor of you being a Democrat with remarks like that, your own (presumed) party did everything it could at every turn to undermine Bush. If you really want to talk about a "crazed refusal", shall we return to your own writings and to the images of Bush as Hitler and the overt assassination rhetoric that your side used?