Obviously this guy works for Fox News

Like many liberty-minded folks, I went and participated (ever so briefly) in the tax day Tea Party protest in my home town. I could only be there for about 20 minutes or so because, unlike professional protesters who live on the government dole, I had to return to work. It was quite a turnout. I’d estimate that over 500 people were in attendance (in a city of about 400,000). There were all kinds of folks there. There were elderly people, children, college students, blue collar workers, guys in business suits, and even bikers. After spending a little time taking photos and listening to speeches, I had to leave.

I was feeling good about the turnout.  I posted to my Facebook status that I just got back from the event and thought it was pretty sweet. Later, however, one of my friends posted a reply which read “Too bad it was sponsored by the evil empire Fox News.” Now, I wasn’t aware that Fox News was an empire, let alone an evil empire. Sure, Fox is the pulpit for the Republican Party, but referring to it as an evil empire is the kind of hyperbole I would expect from unhinged political partisans from President Obama’s cabinet. Besides, I wasn’t aware that Fox News was the driving force behind the Tea Party gatherings. As a matter of fact, nobody on Fox News said boo about these gatherings until after they were planned on a grassroots level.

These kinds of protests have been going on every April 15th for the last 20 years. Normally they are organized by libertarian activist groups who are largely considered to be on the political fringe. However, thanks to TARP and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, protesting the Federal Government’s insane habit of spending obscene amounts of taxpayer money is becoming more mainstream. These are the straws that broke the proverbial camel’s back. This wasn’t about Obama or Bush specifically. This was about nearly a century of fiscal and monetary mismanagement that has simply gone too far.

Fox News and the Republican leadership saw this as an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. After all, they’re smarting from the last election and think that if they latch on to the growing discontent brought on by both political parties, they could see some political victories in 2010. As it turns out, though, most of the people attending the Tea Parties weren’t talking heads from Fox News or Republican sycophants. Most of these folks were ordinary working people who know there’s plenty of blame to go around for both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress.  These folks were average working Americans who know good and well that a $12,000,000,000,000 deficit is an unacceptable mortgage on this nation’s future. They see the monkeys in Washington spending money like drunken sailors with syphilis. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

If one were to think the major news outlets would report these events objectively, one would be gravely mistaken. CNN sent a reporter to the gathering in Chicago where she sought out the craziest bastard she could find. She then went on to report that her conversation with this guy was indicative of the norm at this gathering. If you click the link you can plainly see that the reporter was constantly interrupting whoever she interviewed in an extremely antagonistic and unprofessional manner. After the camera cut away, she got into a discussion with someone who could articulately explain what the Tea Parties were really all about. This of course was not aired on CNN, and they’re trying to get every copy removed from youtube and flushed down the memory hole. After all, they didn’t want folks to see their reporter get even more flustered when her statist talking points ran dry.

As another example of “fairness” in the media, pseudo intellectual Janeane Garofalo appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. On this program she declared that those who participated in the Tea Party protests were racists. Olbermann of course agreed with her like the neutered lapdog that he is. With all of this fair and balanced reporting going on, it’s no wonder the Tea Party movement is being marginalized. No doubt the friend who commented on Facebook has been getting her news from these sources.

Suppose for the sake of argument that CNN was accurate in reporting that the Tea Party gatherings were sponsored by Fox News. So what? That doesn’t change the message. That doesn’t immediately excuse Congress for their complete lack of fiscal responsibility and transparency. Fox News may be the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Tea Party movement is a worthy endeavor. We the people need to hold our so-called representatives accountable. It doesn’t make a difference if the pundits at Fox News are for or against this. The message speaks for itself regardless of who the messenger might be.

The straw man arguments from CNN, MSNBC, and Jeneane Garofalo are so replete with logical fallacy it’s a wonder to me how otherwise intelligent people would give them any credence at all. It’s like saying “Hitler wrote a book” as a justification for banning books. It’s absurd. And calling the folks who attended these events racist is proof of these accusers’ intellectual bankruptcy. For one thing, I saw people of different races at the event that I personally attended.  As a matter of fact, one of the keynote speakers was “an American who happens to be black” (his words, not mine). For another thing, it’s the lowest form of intellectual cowardice to decry those who disagree with you as being racist or sexist, or using any other form of baseless invective. Any high school kid on the debate team could tell you that.

These so-called news sources are in effect saying it’s ok for the government to place the American people in debt to the tune of $12 trillion. And if any of you have a problem with that then you are a right-wing extremist nut job racist. I wonder why anyone even bothers with CNN or MSNBC anymore.