Tea Parties

Want to know just how scared of the Tea Party America's media are? On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page published a column entitled "Is The Tea Party Over?":

MSNBC's Al Sharpton on Friday was being tremendously rude and dismissive to his guest the always well-mannered Tony Blankley. So discourteous was Sharpton that at the end of the discussion, Blankley sarcastically said, "You are a very polite gentleman" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Last week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said conservative views about the debt ceiling should be censored from news reports. On Friday's "Morning Joe," Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) took this a step further calling on media to stop giving "equal time or equal balance" to Tea Party ideas that people like him consider "absurd" and "not factual" (video follows with transcript and…

Huffington Post's Howard Fineman veered into left-wing heresy on the Rachel Maddow show the other night. Fortunately, another leftist was on hand to point out Fineman's apostasy, which he duly renounced. You see, over in MSNBC land, nothing is worse than the tea party -- or "teabaggers" as more unhinged guests such as ambulance chaser Mike Papantonio still like calling them. To MSNBCers, the…

You can tell the liberals are really sweating the politics of the debt-limit talks when NBC puts on a special “Dateline NBC” devoted to politics. This is normally a time slot devoted to “news” topics like Casey Anthony or Lindsey Lohan. But last week, viewers were “treated” to anchorman Brian Williams actually covering a real news topic. It’s just too bad he forgot he was supposed to be a…

At the conclusion of a fractious national debate about the debt ceiling, a truly marvelous moment occurred Monday when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) returned to the House floor after being shot in the head almost seven months ago. Apparently unable to control himself, the sadly getting more and more disgraceful Chris Matthews chose to mar the emotional homecoming by connecting…

Three noteworthy spins, charges and/or claims made on the Sunday morning interview shows. > ABC’s This Week, with “ALL CUTS, NO TAXES?” on screen: George Stephanopoulos hit White House senior adviser David Plouffe from the left on how “this enforcement mechanism would not include revenue increases, would be just across the board spending cuts.” He fretted the deal “all but guarantee that…

Speaking on the floor of the Senate Saturday, Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) said, "If we had a billion dollars for every time I heard the words 'Tea Party extremist,' we could solve this debt problem." Proving his point about the vitriolic name-calling of conservatives so prevalent now, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman began his most recent piece, "Watching today's Republicans being led around…

Throughout his tenure, there have been several facets in which President Obama has been demonstrably weak on leadership, with the debt debate coming to the forefront in recent months.  Now however, lost in that news cycle has been another failure of leadership for the President – his own request to tone down violent rhetoric in this country.  For it was mere months ago that Obama stood in front…

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said Tuesday that as a result of how the debt ceiling negotiations are going, the Tea Party freshmen in Congress "may just have proved to be the most cunning and rational of all players in Washington, D.C." The host of "Morning Joe" told former Democrat Congressman Harold Ford this comes despite media depicting them as radical, reckless extremists (video follows with…

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski asked the co-host of "Morning Joe" Monday if Republicans holding the line on the debt ceiling are "so stuck to their little contract and the Tea Party that they cannot even think outside the box for the good of the country." Somewhat less surprising, Joe Scarborough gave a pretty good answer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fareed Zakaria on Sunday blamed the Tea Party for the "extraordinary polarization in Washington today." "It's ideologically extreme, refuses to compromise, and cares more about purity than problem solving," Zakaria told viewers of the CNN program bearing his name (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan got into quite a heated debate on Monday's "Hardball." At issue was the battle of the debt ceiling with Matthews calling Tea Partiers opposed to raising it "crazy protesters" and telling his guest, "You want to join" them (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Cokie Roberts got quite a lesson Sunday on why compromise can be a dirty word in politics. When she asked Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) why compromise isn't a "message that you hear," the Tea Partier responded, "Why is it that compromise always means increasing taxes today and doing cuts in ten years from now?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):