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Well, the funny thing is the attacks on the Tea Part is backfiring. So many people attend, or know those who do attend, that the are starting to see the media lies.
Gotta love that aspect if it.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/...lies/?hpt=Sbin
(CNN) -- When it comes to the Tea Party movement, the stereotypes don't tell the whole story.
Here's what you often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: offensive posters blasting President Obama and Democratic leaders; racist rhetoric spewed from what seems to be a largely white, male audience; and angry protesters rallying around the Cons ution.
Case in point: During the health care debate last month, opponents shouted racial slurs at civil rights icon Georgia Rep. John Lewis and one person spit on Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The incidents made national headlines, and they provided Tea Party opponents with fodder to question the movement.
But here's what you don't often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: Patriotic signs professing a love for country; mothers and fathers with their children; African-Americans proudly participating; and senior citizens bopping to a hip-hop rapper.
Last week, I saw all of this during a five-city Western swing as the Tea Party Express national tour made its way across the country. CNN was along for the ride, and I was charged with planning CNN's coverage for five stops in two states: St. George, Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah; and Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado.
This latest Tea Party caravan kicked off on March 27 in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hometown of Searchlight, Nevada. It is scheduled to make 45 stops before rolling into Washington on April 15, not so coincidentally on "Tax Day."
CNN was the only national news outlet on this Western leg of the tour. We had a full team on the ground: myself, correspondent Ed Lavandera, producers Tracy Sabo and Jim Spellman and the crew of the CNN Express bus. For Spellman, it was his third Tea Party Express tour.
Together, we beamed out images of the anger and the optimism, profiled African-Americans who are proud to be in the Tea Party's minority and showed activists stirred by "God Bless America" or amused by a young rapper who strung together rhymes against the president and Democrats.
The CNN Express traveled with the Tea Party Express buses for hundreds of miles, from rally to rally to rally.
Being at a Tea Party rally is not quite like seeing it on TV, in newspapers or online. That's the reason CNN is covering this political movement -- and doing so in ways few others can or choose to do.
It is important to show the colorful anger Americans might have against elected leaders and Washington. But people should also see the orange-vested Tea Party hospitality handlers who welcome you with colorful smiles.
There were a few signs that could be seen as offensive to African-Americans. But by and large, no one I spoke with or I heard from on stage said anything that was approaching racist.
Almost everyone I met was welcoming to this African-American television news producer.
And though speakers railed against the "lame-stream media," activists and their leaders praised CNN, especially for being the only national media outlet riding along for the post-weekend stops. Some of them e-mailed me after my trip, thanking our crew for fairly giving them a voice.
Speaking of stereotypes, I did get a few curious stares as I pulled up to the rallies. But not because of my skin color. It was because of my car rental: a Volvo.
I hadn't intended to rent a Volvo, a car stereotyped as the favorite of liberal elites. But upon arriving at the Las Vegas airport, the rental company was out of American-made cars with a GPS system and satellite radio. I had nearly a thousand miles of driving ahead, through desert, mountains and cities. Since it had GPS and satellite radio, the Volvo fit the bill.
Outside of the occasional stare, none of the real cowboys at the rallies came up to the Volvo and asked me, "Hey buddy -- where's your cashmere sweater and arugula?" If they had, I might have pointed out that until just recently, Volvo was owned by Ford Motor Co., an American icon.
Jokes aside, stereotypes can loom large when they're magnified through a television lens, on the radio, the pages of a newspaper or in the vastness of the Internet.
So, it's important that with a newsworthy, growing phenomenon like the Tea Party movement, viewers and readers fully understand what they see and what they don't.
Well, the funny thing is the attacks on the Tea Part is backfiring. So many people attend, or know those who do attend, that the are starting to see the media lies.
Gotta love that aspect if it.
Misleading headline. Were you afraid no one would read this powder puff piece if you didn't e it up?
Do you mean the OP is a lie?
I want to see the minstrel show too!Together, we beamed out images of the anger and the optimism, profiled African-Americans who are proud to be in the Tea Party's minority and showed activists stirred by "God Bless America" or amused by a young rapper who strung together rhymes against the president and Democrats.
And are those Tea Party Express buses part of the same grass roots movement that got behind Ron Paul, or is that the Sarah Palin sect?
EDIT: Having black people in your crowd automatically makes it legitimate.
I was just making a general statement outside the OP.
So now we have established the mainstream media portrays them in a positive light.. will the dead enders and fox news crowd stop whining like little es now about the tea bagger portrayals?
By "mainstream media", do you mean an article burried deep in the bowels of the CNN website?
Since you guys NEVER define mainstream media I will give CNN credit. Typically any article that you don't like you simply brush it off as bias by the mainstream media ..
Considering that the article presents a view that flies in the face of "conventional wisdom", I think the haute coutre OP was somewhat apropos.Misleading headline. Were you afraid no one would read this powder puff piece if you didn't e it up?
Who wouldn't pass up the opportunity to beat a CNN reporter. Too bad they passed it up.
I agree, I would love to kick a tea partyer's ass.. especially the one's carrying the stupid socilaism signs... I would knock some sense into them... pun intended.
True...
The impulse would be hard to hold back.
Yeah, since we all know CNN is a liberal mouthpiece this obviously falls into the category of "media lies".
Oh, I forgot, that the Tea Party people aren't racist/crazy doesn't meet the definition of a "wrong viewpoint".
Just for the record:
I don't think or assert that the Tea Party movement is driven entirely by racism or craziness, although I have personally witnessed some of the latter.
I think it is driven my a genuine sense that there is some disconnect between how the country is run, and the common good.
I DO think, based mostly on some anectotal evidence, that a lot of that is sense of disconnect is driven by ignorance and irrational fear.
I think no small number of people in the US are woefully ignorant of a lot of important data when it comes to thinking about various public policy issues rationally and in a balanced, logical manner.
Is everybody who attends these things crazy/racist/stupid/ignorant? No.
I do think that a lot of it is driven more by emotion than logic though.
lol c'mon sonit is important to show the colorful anger Americans might have against elected leaders and Washington.
inb4 that blatant racist boutons shows up
Not all teabaggers and their sympathizers are racist, but the ones who are pissed off enough to demonstrate, and to spread their hate and venom over internet and TV, are apparently mostly white, male, 50+, with weird, macho man facial hair, and long hair, and they make a LOT of racist signs and make a lot of racist noises, and damn proud of it, and wave their racist/birther/Muslim signs at the TV cameras.
They also seem to have lot of time on their hands, perhaps unemployed? on unemployment, Medicare/Medicaid?
Speak up apologists.
Calling them teabaggers makes you look like the .......WAIT. Bouttons is best troll ever on Spews politics.
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