Obama Appreciation, Tea Party Bashing on the Cover of the NYTimes Sunday Book Review
Diversity, New York Times style. “Bipolar America,” the cover feature for the Sunday New York Times Book Review, compiles reviews of three new books on Tea Party-related politics, one reviewed by veteran liberal journalist Michael Kinsley, two others judged by Timothy Noah, veteran liberal journalist for The New Republic.
Noah says Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of the strongly titled Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party: From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, "argues persuasively that Republican moderates remained a powerful, even dominant, political force well into the 1970s." But, Noah argued:
Then came Watergate, which alienated moderate donors in the ’70s; direct-mail campaigns for the Republican Ripon Society, an influential liberal group, soon began losing money. At the same time, wealthy conservatives like Joseph Coors, John Olin and the Koch brothers were stepping up their contributions to conservative causes. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the party lurched farther right, and modern Republicans became scarcer still.
Today, nearly all political centrists are Democrats.
Kinsley gave Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank qualified approval. In 2004 Frank wrote “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” questioning why conservatives in the heartland were allegedly voting against their economic interests by going Republican. Kinsley called him “the thinking person’s Michael Moore,” but quibbled with Frank’s harsh attacks on President Obama, a man of "courage" who has provided America with so much, like "health care reform."
It seems to me that a Democratic president who gets us health care reform and tough new financial protection for consumers, who guides the economy through its roughest period in 80 years with moderate success (who could do better?), who ends our long war in Iraq and avenges the worst insult to our sovereignty since Pearl Harbor (as his Republican predecessor manifestly failed to do, despite a lot of noise and promises); a president who faced an opposition of really spectacular intransigence and downright meanness; a president who has the self-knowledge and wisdom about Washington to write the passage quoted above, and the courage to publish it: that president deserves a bit more credit from the left than Frank is willing to give him.
- Clay Waters's blog
- Login to post comments
Comments
And the lemmings at the NYT
Submitted by celator on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 11:49am.
And the lemmings at the NYT continue to walk off the cliff.
Who knew?*
Submitted by cajun2 on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:01pm.
The TEA Party movement was a group of Americans joining together at various sites for a day to voice their concerns that their hard work, liberties, is slowly being taken from them.. They brought their children, American flags. Gathered together, said prayers for guidance, held hands, and sang patriotic songs in thanks for being able to live in freedom in the greatest country in the world. They then went home to their families and their jobs. EVIL people, racist, ignorant and dangerous was the media interpretation of this movement.
OWS is a mixed group of communists, marxists, NAZI's, anti-semites, and far left progressives who HATE capitalism. They hate anyone who is accomplished and wealthy because they do not SHARE their wealth with others except those that WORK for them. They "occupied" public lands for weeks and months, leaving behind their human filth, disease, crime, the refuse from their hedonistic lifestyle. Their hate was so obvious, they deliberately and disrespectfully attacked small businesses in the area's of their "occupation" to the point some of them went out of business. Many who of course were not in the 1%. Their message had no meaningful substance except HATE for all things traditional American. ALL things capitalistic, all rules, all moral boundaries. Their anger and HATE encouraged them to firebomb businesses, attack anyone who disagreed (?), and attack police who basically were trying to protect these people from themselves.
The OWS "movement" costs communities millions that could have gone to people in need. Instead, the taxpayers money must go to clean up the mess of spoiled, naive, useful idiots, entitled lay- abouts. Part of their incoherent message is that they will return and revolution through violence is their ultimate goal. Revolution for the purpose of destruction not simply a movement for change. Still we are not yet sure of the goal of revolution they seek The media cheerlead this group as the voice of ordinary Americans. The violence is merely because they are "desperate" and angry.
It appears to me that the protesters for the OWS movement are not aware that the leaders who are setting the actions and the goals for them ARE THE MEDIA. We all should be afraid.
I'm not sure a more signifcant comparison can be drawn...
Submitted by krendler on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 12:35pm.
...going into the 2012 elections: Tea Party and OWS.
Message, interviews, behavior (including, in the case of OWS, clashes with police and each other and property destruction), images, and video. How a person could review any of that and still vote Democrat is beyond me.
BTW, still waiting for Jon Stewart to do an event in Washington, spoofing OWS, like he did with the Tea Party. Hey, Jon: What's the hold up?
Vote
Submitted by jpalm32 on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 2:15pm.
Keep bashing us all the way to the voting booth!