Tea Parties

  On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, liberal FNC analyst Alan Colmes asserted that the Tea Party was a "bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs." As a debate ensued pitting Colmes against the other three panel members, he later defiantly asked, "How many blacks did they elect?" leading Jim Pinkerton of the New America Foundation to fire back: "The Tea Partiers elected two - Allen West and Tim Scott, Florida and South Carolina."

Host Jon Scott began the segment by assuming that the liberal Colmes would not have any complaints about the mainstream media’s coverage of the elections. After Colmes voiced his approval of the media, Scott sarcastically posed: "For instance, the Tea Party. Tea Party always got favorable coverage, right? Or fair coverage?"

Colmes then unleashed on the Tea Party: "Oh, they got, look, the Tea Party was a bunch of angry white guys who went around and put up racist signs at these at, these events on lawn chairs who had nothing better to do on weekends than sit on lawn chairs with signs suggesting Obama was a Muslim who wasn’t born in this country."

 As the broadcast network morning newscasts on Thursday each interviewed former Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell regarding allegations that she misused campaign money, in the setup piece on each network, the correspondent failed to inform viewers of credibility weaknesses on the part of O’Donnell’s accusers and omitted O’Donnell’s contention that she did not use campaign money to pay for rent on her home. Additionally, only CBS’s Jan Crawford informed viewers that the group pushing for an investigation - the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) - is a "left-leaning" group, as NBC’s Norah O’Donnell vaguely referred to a "watchdog group," and ABC’s Rob Nelson did not mention the organization.

Although both accusers who used to work for the O’Donnell campaign were fired - one after less than two weeks on the job - all three networks failed to inform viewers of these details that would suggest they may be disgruntled, and NBC’s Norah O’Donnell on the Today show even suggested that the accusers have greater credibility because they, like Christine O’Donnell, are Republicans, while the NBC correspodnent failed to inform viewers that the group CREW is liberal. NBC’s Norah O’Donnell reported: "O'Donnell calls them phony, but it was members of her own party who first raised the issue. During this year's bitter primary battle, Delaware's Republican Party paid for robo calls where O'Donnell's past campaign manager accused her of breaking the law in her failed 2008 Senate bid."

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein appeared on MSNBC's Daily Rundown, Thursday, to mock the incoming Republicans for their stated fixation on the Constitution, asserting that the document is rather old and "confusing." MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell dismissed the GOP effort as "lip service" and wondered if it was a "gimmick."

After playing clips of Republicans claiming they would reject legislation that couldn't be justified constitutionally, Klein complained, "The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done."

(It was actually written 223 years ago, which is a slightly "more than 100.") Klein didn't expound on which parts "confuse" him the most.

[MP3 audio here. See video below.]

Ending Sunday's "Face the Nation" in poetic fashion, CBS's Bob Schieffer gave a year-end commentary where he portrayed John Boehner as the flustered "orange-faced" leader of a divided House GOP. Schieffer also snidely criticized the Arizona immigration law.

"His face was bright orange, a sun-tan hall-of-famer. / I knew in a flash – it must be John Boehner," spoke Schieffer, painting the soon-to-be Majority Leader as the head of a herd of reindeer, the House Republicans. "He hollered, cajoled, oh how he did plead, / But the deer wouldn't listen, each wanted to lead."

Composing his end-of-show commentary to verse, Schieffer summarized the 2010 political scene and provided some insight of his own as to how the next two years in Washington will unfold. Though Democrats met a bitter fate this November, Schieffer implied a possible downfall for the GOP with a split between Tea Partiers and incumbent Republicans.
 

 Appearing as a panel member on Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Time columnist Joe Klein predicted that the Tea Party will be the "biggest losers" next year after he agreed with MSNBC’s Howard Fineman that the conservative movement represented the "biggest winners" this year. Klein: "I'm going to go with the Tea Party, with the caveat that even though they were the biggest winners of this year because they set the debate, they're going to be the biggest losers of next year because they're going to have to vote."

A bit earlier, after Fineman accused Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle of running a "frankly racist ad about immigration against Hispanics," and alluded to the Republican Party’s challenge of winning Hispanic voters in the future, Klein predicted that opponents of the Dream Act would "suffer" as he chimed in: "I'm going to go with the Tea Party, with the caveat that even though they were the biggest winners of this year because they set the debate, they're going to be the biggest losers of next year because they're going to have to vote."

  Appearing as a guest on Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, Steve Roberts - who has worked for both the New York Times and U.S. News and World Report - after conceding that the Tea Party movement is important, dismissively asserted that the movement "didn’t win. You only won a couple of seats." Roberts:

I think that they are an important part of the American landscape. Now I don't think they're as important as they think they are. I mean, you had people coming into Washington this week and saying, wait, we won. No, you didn't win. You won a couple of seats, and you got to deal with everybody else.

After host Howard Kurtz wondered "did the media kind of turn on" President Obama and claimed that the media had not spent enough time giving credit to Obama for his recent legislative successes, leading to guest Thomas Frank of Harper’s to bring up complaints against Obama by disaffected liberals, Roberts asserted that there is no liberal media bias:

Time's Joe Klein, ABC's Christiane Amanpour, and CBS's Lesley Stahl were just three journalists to see an outrageously biased quote of theirs land in the Best of Notable Quotables 2010.

A panel of 46 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers chose the winners, and our news analysts introduce them and a few others in this highlight lowlight reel put together by Media Research Center video producer Bob Parks:

It's time to play "imagine if a conservative had said it." For today's edition, we present Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.:

If they [Republicans] think it's okay to raise taxes for the embattled middle class because they're gonna pout if we don't give more money to millionaires, it really is time for people to take up pitchforks.

Phrased differently, McCaskill essentially claimed that if Republicans refuse to support the class warfare codified by Democratic tax proposals, a populist revolt would be an appropriate response on the parts of the American people.

Those Tea Partiers – is there anything in this nation they can’t spoil? They’ve already gummed up the president’s agenda with their rallies and signs and voting. Now, they’re trying to ruin “Dancing with the Stars!”

So says the left and many in the media agree. Now that newly resurgent conservatives have handed them a crushing mid-term defeat, liberals are seeing nefarious Tea Party plots everywhere – including in silly entertainment shows. And they’re taking plenty of shots at Bristol and, predictably, her mother.

Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, 20, has done remarkably well in this season’s “Dancing with the Stars” competition on ABC. As she’s advanced from week to week, buoyed by viewer voting, entertainment reporters and liberals have become increasingly frustrated.

Video below the fold.

 Appearing as a panel member on Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the BBC’s Katty Kay suggested that Tea Partiers are willing to go against the "country’s interest" rather than to "deal" with President Obama. Kay: " And if there is going to be a wing of the Republican Party that says, do not on any issue, on any case, even on its merits, compromise with the President, it’s gonna be the Tea Party. And if the Tea Party is driving the energy in the Republican Party ... Republicans in Congress are going to have to look very carefully at how they deal with them. And the Tea Party is saying we don’t care about whether it’s in the country’s interest, in our foreign policy interest, in our economic interest necessarily to deal with the President."

A bit later, as she speculated about whether obstruction by the GOP would be rewarded or punished in 2012, she seemed to suggest that "competence" would involve compromising with President Obama as she used the word as the alternative to standing on "principle" and opposing Obama. Kay: "I think this is the biggest point that, I mean, the point that Dan raises about in 2012. Will voters more reward competence and actions that have been seen to be effective for the country? Or will they reward politicians who stood on principle and oppose the White House expansionist agenda, as they see it?"

Catching up with the New York Times’s Tea Party beat reporter Kate Zernike at a post-election conference sponsored by the “Bipartisan Policy Center” in New Orleans on November 9, where Zernike claimed she “very consciously tried to come up through the middle” in writing “Boiling Mad,” her book on the Tea Party. Her defense of her own objectivity came nearly an hour into the discussion, aired by C-SPAN.

Kate Zernike: "What I worry about, honestly, is that what you’re saying is correct, that there is, that people are so hungry for something that’s on either side. I mean I’ve just written this book that very consciously tried to come up through the middle, and look at the Tea--that we, you know, the publishing house and I made a very conscious decision that there was a lot of polemic out there. I’m not a columnist so I couldn’t write a polemic about the Tea Party. What I could do is be a reporter. And we made a decision that we felt that there were a lot of people out there who just didn’t understand what the Tea Party was And so there was merit in saying, OK, we’re going to take as objective as possible a look. And certainly, you know, conservatives think I’m not objective. Liberals think I’m too objective, whatever. You can’t win on this score. But we were really gonna try and I think we produced a pretty good, balanced effect. And you know, I think, I worry that people are not that interested in it."

On Thursday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Nancy Cordes reported on Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski declaring victory in her write-in bid for reelection and portrayed her as a victim of the GOP: "[She's] in a very unique position, not beholden to the Republican leaders who turned their backs on her when she decided to run and not beholden to the tea party, which did everything it could to defeat her."

In reality, it was Murkowski who turned her back on the Republican Party after losing the primary and continuing to run against GOP nominee Joe Miller. Cordes sympathetically declared: "This was a huge uphill battle for Lisa Murkowski, who was urged by Republican leaders not to wage this campaign after she lost her primary bid....It was a risky bid and the risk paid off."

 On Monday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric filed a report on Senator Lisa Murkowski in which she highlighted the Alaska Republican’s criticism of the Tea Party movement requiring a "purity test," and of Sarah Palin being "not worldly enough" to be President. After describing Murkowski as "one of a dying breed of moderate Republicans," without noting that Tea Party Republican Joe Miller was dragged down by personal scandal, Couric passed on that "Murkowski claims she’s winning because she represents all Alaskans."

A clip of Murkowski complained: "I do not pass the purity test that the Tea Party has set out. ... But I don't think most people in my state pass that. There's a lot of people in Alaska that are pretty anti-government, but I think they would also agree that, well, maybe the best thing is not that we shut government down."

A clip of the Alaska Senator was shown in which she asserted that she does not wish for President Obama to fail as Couric relayed Murkowski’s desire to "compromise":

Roland Martin brought his full-blown Palin Derangement Syndrome to Friday's Anderson Cooper 360, labeling the former Alaska governor "the Kim Kardashian of politics." Martin continued that Palin is "making a ton of money. We're trying to figure out why. It's the same as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton....She quit her job because she wanted to go out and be a celebrity."

The CNN contributor actually first tried out his questionable label of the Tea Party favorite on his Twitter account. At 5:12 pm on November 9, Martin posted the following Tweet: "Palin slammed then-Sen. Obama as a celebrity in 2008 campaign, and she's more of a celebrity because she doesn't hold office." Mind you, at that time, Palin was Alaska's governor and the Republican vice presidential candidate, but the liberal continued by complaining in a second Tweet that "the media goes ga ga over whatever she says. Palin is often wrong. She's a former governor who quit her job rather than tough it out." During his third Tweet, Martin added, "She holds no position; wants no accountability; and wants to sling arrows and then gets angry when called on the carpet 4 her nonsense." The CNN personality completed his rant by comparing the Republican to the curvy celebrity most infamous for making a pornographic video: "At the end of the day, Sarah Palin is the Kim Kardashian of Politics. She's a celebrity with no real purpose other than picking up a check."

[Video below the jump]
 

"Think of a caged rat, a cornered rat. What does a cornered rat do? It instinctively goes for the jugular. That's where the media are going right now," following the November 2 elections, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Ernest Istook in a radio interview.

The  Media Research Center founder appeared by telephone on the November 11 edition of Bill Bennett's Morning in America, where Istook was substitute hosting.

[Link to audio below page break]

On Thursday's CBS Early Show, news reader Erica Hill used loaded liberal terms to describe a Texas pro-life event that Sarah Palin attended on Wednesday: "Palin shared the stage in an anti-abortion rights rally with Texas Governor Rick Perry."

Hill touted how despite making no announcement to make a 2012 presidential run, Palin "was looking an awful lot like a candidate," adding that the appearance with Governor Perry represented "a dream ticket for some tea party supporters." However, after playing a brief clip of Palin, Hill noted how "A just-released Associated Press poll finds of all the potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, Sarah Palin is the most polarizing."

CNN's Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer endorsed Matt Taibbi's bashing of conservatives on their Monday program. Spitzer marveled over the Rolling Stone editor's "brilliant" label of the Tea Party as "15 million pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid." This was the second straight evening that the network brought on an anti-conservative author to promote their latest work.

The two hosts devoted 12 straight and uninterrupted minutes during the first half of the 8 pm Eastern hour to their interview of Taibbi. Parker mentioned Taibbi's new book, "Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids and a Long Con that is Breaking America,"  in her introduction of the author and labeled it "a scathing and often hilarious account of the financial crisis...it's hard to make the financial crisis funny, but you did that successfully." She continue by quoting one of the writer's attacks on Sarah Palin: "I want to read you a description that you wrote of Sarah Palin. You called her a 'narcissistic money-grubbing hack.'"

After laughing at this label, the pseudo-conservative writer sought her guest's take on Palin: "She's got the Republican establishment scared to death, so there must be something more to Sarah than just that, huh?" Taibbi replied with some guarded praise of the former Alaska governor, along with the Tea Party movement:

UPDATE (1:52 PM) - Check below the fold if you're convinced this is hyperbole.

Dylan Ratigan seemed to tacitly endorse violent revolution on his show Monday. He hosted far-left radical Ted Rall who, when he's not comparing "idiot" American soldiers to suicide bombers, is lauding the necessity of political violence. Ratigan opened the segment by claiming the nation may need "more drastic solutions" to our problems than political action.

"Are things in our country so bad that it might actually be time for a revolution?" Ratigan asked. "The answer obviously is yes," he added, and "the only question is how to do it."

At no point in the segment did Ratigan reject his guest's wild notion that violence is the only possible remedy to our political problems.

CNN's Don Lemon tossed softballs at leftist writer Tim Wise on Sunday's Newsroom, mostly reading back excerpts from his latest column, which the anchor labeled a "withering rebuke of...the 'white right.'" Lemon even twice emphasized how Wise has apparently received death threats over the column, where he slammed "conservative old white people [who] have pretty much always been the bad guys."

The CNN anchor interviewed Wise for nearly eight minutes during a segment 10 minutes into the 7 pm Eastern hour. Lemon began with "withering rebuke" label and continued that the author "begins with a disclaimer that he is not referring to all white people, and that his essay is not anti-white. He says it is addressed to- quote, 'The white community that is right-wing.'" He then turned to his guest and seemed to compliment him before asking his first question: "I was actually- I have to be honest- a little bit stunned when I read this because your language is unusually rough and raw. We know that you tell it like it is. You called the election results a temper tantrum and you sound mad as hell....do you regret using any of this fiery rhetoric?"

The leftist writer emphatically stood behind his incendiary column:

The historic "shellacking" that Democrats suffered on Tuesday night brought out the worst in Obama's acolytes in the mainstream media, giving NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell plenty to talk about on Sean Hannity's eponymous November 4 program.

Appearing via satellite for the popular recurring "Media Mash" segment, Bozell and Hannity first tackled who else but Chris Matthews. Clearly frustrated with the 2010 midterms and anticipating the 2012 presidential race, Matthews all but called former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) an illiterate.

"Would she look like an imbecile" on "Jeopardy!", Matthews asked Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) Tuesday night during live election coverage on MSNBC. 

[Video after page break]

Tea Party members, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan wants you to know that he’s just like you.

Except of course that he’s not a pyromaniacal lunatic hell-bent on destroying America.

That’s how the MSNBC anchor leaned forward, no, make that leaped, into insanity during a November 3 segment with Nicolle Wallace. The former George W. Bush staffer told Ratigan that, like him, Tea Partiers who fueled last night's electoral shakeup were furious at the direction of the country the past few years.

[Video embedded after page break]

Assuming you’re a free-market oriented individual and you’re tuning into CNBC’s “Your Money, Your Vote” election coverage, this is probably not what you expected to hear.

Anchor Carl Quintanilla asked CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer about the Tea Party movement, which by many measures is what has propelled a hugged Republican wave on election night.

Video Below Fold

There is a fine line between tasteful political comedy and crossing-the-line crudeness, and the Huffington Post’s new song “My Girl's A Republican” just leaped over that line. With lyrics such as “Dick Nixon sucking lips” and “she made her oil money last, and now I’m tapping it,” even the most liberal among us could agree that the attack on Republican women is downright revolting.

Hailed as an “ode to right-wing ladies,” the three and a half minute song and video by Rap duo “It’s The Real” (and proudly displayed on the Huffington Post Web site) does nothing but smear conservative women like Christine O’Donnell, Michele Bachmann, and of course, Sarah Palin. The HuffPo write up on the “tribute to conservative women” song claims “it does a pretty solid job of both mocking and admiring right-wing conservatives.”

(Video below the fold)

On Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith continued to fret over government gridlock in the wake Republican electoral gains, asking Ann Coulter: "...big Republican wave just rolls in there. There'll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the tea party guys are going to say, 'over my dead body.' And the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?"

Coulter responded by predicting how the liberal media would spin such a scenario: "Well, the media will blame the Republicans. But, it's no longer 1995. That was the last time there was a government shutdown. And America, when there's a government shutdown, they're all responsible. The President is as responsible as Congress. But now we have the internet, so I think the Americans are going to know it this time."

Democrats have worked overtime attempting to paint Tea Party-backed candidates as politically extreme, personally nutty, or both. But  in most cases it doesn't appear to be working, and it's even backfired in Kentucky's Senate race, a Newsweek writer admitted yesterday.

HBO's Bill Maher spouted his usual anti-conservative and anti-Fox News rhetoric on Monday's Situation Room on CNN, attacking the Tea Party movement as "teabaggers [who] are all carrying the banner...of corporatist America" and accusing CNN's competitor of "filling people with misinformation." Maher also labeled Republican voters "far right" and a "fringe group of people who are very forceful."

The left-wing HBO host appeared for two segments starting at the bottom of the 5 pm Eastern hour. Anchor Wolf Blitzer began with an election-related question: "Let's talk a little bit about what's going to happen tomorrow. A lot of Democrats are worried. They're sitting on a potential political disaster tomorrow. Here's the question to you: why? What happened?"

Maher actually first blamed the Democrats: "Well- I mean, partly, it is the Democrats' fault. They don't do very good at bragging about their achievements. This Congress, which I'm sure is going to be tarred as a do-nothing Congress, actually was one of the more successful congresses in recent memory, probably not since Lyndon Johnson in 1965 has a Congress achieved so much." The guest predictably cited health care "reform" and financial reforms as his examples.

Blitzer followed-up by asking, "So is it just a matter of communications?" Maher launched his attack on Fox News in his reply:

CNN led their hour-long documentary "Boiling Point: Inside the Tea Party," which aired on Saturday and Sunday, with the regular accusation from liberals that racism is "running rampant" in the Tea Party movement. Host Shannon Travis highlighted the NAACP's resolution, disgraced former Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams's self-described "foolish satire," and played up two racially-charged signs.

Before raising the racism charge, Travis raised another liberal stereotype perpetuated by the mainstream media: the angry Tea Party: "This is what you know about the Tea Party Movement: rallies like these, angry protesters demanding that lawmakers spend less of your money and spend more time adhering to the Constitution." After stating that "rallies like these across the country, don't tell the full picture" and that "there's a lot you don't know about the Tea Party movement," the CNN host stopped briefly to give some poll numbers on the partisan breakdown of the movement before proceeding to the race issue: