I lose. For thinking you would understand why there is a world of difference between “don’t have a pat answer” and “don’t know why they were there.”

But then you can’t speak to that, can you? Because I caught you red handed and you had no cogent response. So you turned it on me, like I’m the bad guy. Really skilled on your part.

Your inversion is the sort of rhetoric used by people who are very used to having blog discussions where their first objective is to win an argument. Or who have already made up their minds about something and placed everyone in the appropriate baskets.

I think your re-frame actively subverts the spirit of the description that Dennis provided. And that’s a shame.

Mona Charen of National Review Online notes that major media outside of Fox News either ignored the tax day tea parties or took an adversarial tone in reporting on them.

If this was true she might have a point. But that wasn’t what I saw and since I was home from work ill I saw several different news reports on the local events.

She once called me “Hillary Clinton” as a pejorative because I don’t expect businesses to pay a living wage out of the goodness of their hearts.

She considered going to tea parties because she’s adamantly opposed to government intervention, not because she’s racist, homophobic, or dangerously religious. Ultimately, she couldn’t take the time off work.

She’s just an anecdotal fer-instance, but I wonder how many other legitimately concerned voices got covered by the hype.

Which then leads to the question; Did the hype actually hurt there cause?

If the majority of people spoken with (20+) didn’t really know why they were there – then where is the relevancy claimed so as to not dismiss the movement? That statement argues one point while corroborating another. If the big money and big media hadn’t been involved then most of these people wouldn’t have been involved either. So what was the event really about? Mostly just some angry people with no where to go and big money and big media taking advantage of the situation in order to create some news.

Come back to me when you have a citizen funded, Ron Paul style movement and I’ll cover it with the seriousness that it deserves.

COMPLETELY different than the 60′s. Most of the folks I talked to had taken time off from jobs to be there. There were a couple of idiots (“look at me!”), but everyone ignored them as best as possible. The thing that really struck me was the sense that most of the folks I talked to were uncomfortable about being there. They weren’t the protesting type and didn’t want to be seen as idiots, but felt it was important enough to be there. The majority I talked to (20?) didn’t have a pat answer to what it was they were there for exactly. A lot of no tax signs, but the verbal conversations always fell back to fiscal conservatism. People are worried. Not so much about the present, the economy up here is still pretty good, but about the path we are likely to wind up on as a nation if we don’t reign in government spending. I think everyone I talked to realizes the complexities even they aren’t familar with them all. Not that I have any painless solutions, let alone anything that has an absolute guarantee of working.

The thread is here

I think that while funding by organized conservatives and plumping by Fox news is definitely worth noting, these facts do not comprise the long and the short of the story. They are relevant facts, _AND_ they are insufficient rrason to dismiss the movement.

They will have staying power to whatever extent they have a legitimate beef and reasonable adherents with some resolve.

Political figures, talk radio, and Fox were reactive to tea parties. Did they help gin up extra people? Sure. But they did not drive this bus. They got on to one that was already building up a head of steam.

More tangentially, and less interestingly as media bias is a boring conversation, I like how the wingnuttier elements of public protests now speak for the entire group for many media organizations This is precisely the opposite of how it was for anti-war demonstrations.

I love seeing people stand up for what they believe in. I’ll listen to anyone explain why they believe what they believe… so long as they understand it. Far too much of the coverage showed that there were people there who have little understanding about the government- other than that they want more military spending, but somehow want to pay less in taxes to get that accomplished.

Hopefully they can break away from Fox and some of the more mainstream conservatives- so that they can actually start speaking THEIR message and not the message that Fox News wants to be heard.