Media Double Standard: Only the Right's Signs Are Worth Covering

After systematically ignoring the outrageous and offensive signs used by leftist protesters at anti-war demonstrations journalists and bloggers are now devoting an immense amount of attention to a small minority of Tea Party protesters carrying signs far outside of the mainstream.

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews think the Tea Party goers are racists, CBS's Nancy Jiles called the protests "a frightening mix of disrespect and bad behavior," CNN suggested in an on-screen heading that there was a "racial tinge to TEA movement" and MSNBC's David Shuster wondered, "as civility gives way to shouting, what’s fueling all this anger" at this "intolerance festival"?

Liberal bloggers were also incensed with what they claimed were the hateful (and racist) intentions of the protesters. Matt Yglesias at Think Progress noted the miniscule presence of Confederate Flags and pondered why demonstrators were "waving flags of treason and slavery". Other bloggers at TP complained of the "hate at the protest."

Think Progress, the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog and the Huffington Post published their own versions of the most offensive tea party protest signs.

I thought it would be a good time to remind these "journalists" of the despicable events that they neglected to cover, so, complements of Ringo's Pictures and Zomblog, I've found some of the more outrageous signs that you've never seen.

Ringo prefaces his leftist photo album:

Over the past six years, I've attended numerous anti-war / anti-Bush demonstrations and have photographed thousands of crazy signs and banners; not only signs comparing President Bush (and Republicans in general) to Nazis, but also signs comparing the State of Israel to Nazi Germany, as well as countless signs and banners promoting the idea that President Bush and /or Israel were the "real" culprits behind the attacks of 9/11. These kinds of messages are so prevalent at leftwing protests that it would be impossible for any journalist to claim not to have seen them; they are literally everywhere one looks. And so I've always been amazed that the newspaper and television coverage of these protests never (and I really do mean never) showed, or mentioned, any of these outrageous images. I could only conclude, because the overtly offensive or blatantly anti-American signs that dominate these events cannot possibly be missed by any person with eyes, that the journalists sent to cover these demonstrations purposefully obfuscated the reality of what they saw. No doubt they did this because they sympathized with the anti-war or anti-Bush sentiment, yet were also savvy enough to understand that most Americans would find the behavior of the protestors appalling.

Now that a Democrat is President - and the protestors are presumably conservatives - we find the very same photojournalists who couldn't be bothered to notice an inverted and defaced American Flag or a "Bush = Hitler" placard, suddenly scouring "tea parties" and townhall protests in search of the most objectionable signs they can possibly find. …And, I'm sorry to say, they've found some.

 

Some of Ringo's juciest pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outrage from the left is an extension of the media's derision of town hall protesters, who, Katie Couric claimed, were promoting "fear and, frankly, ignorance," and were, in Matthews's considered judgment, "upset because we have a black president."

Keith Olbermann claimed that town hallers were "contributing to this climate of paranoia and violence enveloping our political system," conveniently leaving out the fact that the majority of violent incidents at town halls were perpetrated by those on the left. As noted by the Weekly Standard,

Despite the left's insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics.

But the left's tactics were apparently not worth covering at the summer's town hall meetings. Nor were they worth covering, for the liberal media establishment, at the multitudes of leftist protests during the Bush administration. Now that we have a Democratic president, however, reporting on offensive protest signage is once again permitted.