Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Media Understands The Coffee Baggers (Updated)

For those of you who don’t know, the brown baggers or coffee breakers or coffee baggers or whatever they call themselves held a rally yesterday in which the entire American progressive left tried to show that it could bring out more people (paid and volunteer) than Glenn Beck. They failed. More interestingly, however, the MSM didn’t seem to have any problems understanding their “message.”

After the Tea Party brought hundreds of thousands of real Americans (not professional protestors) to the Mall last year, the left became obsessed with trying to discredit those people. The professional left scoffed at the protesters and tried to denigrate them with an obscure homosexual reference. Obama pretended not to notice the 500,000 people camped out on his lawn. Pelosi saw Nazis under every sign, and a vast right wing conspiracy. She wanted these people investigated and those who funded them given the McCarthy treatment. The black lobby fabricated claims of racism. And journalists trolled the crowd looking for the one guy with the flat earth sign.

Indeed, try as they might, journalists just couldn’t bring themselves to figure out what it was that had upset this Tea Party crowd. Did they want socialized medicine? Maybe. Maybe they wanted Obama to go farther? Were they upset we had a black president? Probably. Some seemed to want a bigger stimulus, some a smaller stimulus. Some wanted Lyndon Larouche let out of jail. . . or put back in, and no doubt some of them wanted a return to slavery, the gold standard, and the monarchy. . . after all, they kept talking about something called a "Constitution"?? One thing was for sure though, this Tea Party “fad” had no message these journalists wanted to hear, and thus they were quite happy to declare that the Tea Party had no idea what it really wanted.

Armed with this self-imposed confusion, these journalists spent the next few months struggling to find the right words to marginalize the Tea Party. While ostensibly trying to solve this riddle of what these strange people wanted, journalists wrote books, commissioned polls (and recommissioned them when they didn’t like the results), hired leftist experts, and hypothesized a series of horrors and ambiguities, all with the intent of suppressing the message of the Tea Party movement. If you didn't know what the Tea Party stood for, you certainly weren't going to get infected with that knowledge from these journalists!

Yet, despite this elitist embargo on the obvious, the popularity of the Tea Party continued to grow because it was in fact sending one message, and that message resonated throughout America: government needs to be reined in.

As the progressives saw the public slipping away from their vision of utopia (a vision the public never even flirted with if we’re being honest), they set out to prove that they could be as relevant as the Tea Party. Hence they tried to form the brown baggers (later renamed the coffee party, and now one nation). And when Beck held his rally, to much lower turn out than the prior Tea Party rally, the progressives saw their chance. If they could beat Beck, they could declare themselves more important than the Tea Party! So they picked yesterday as the day for a rally. They chartered busses with union dues and arranged for paid leave for their protestors (at least the few with jobs) -- the unions even paid for the hotels for their members. And slowly, this collection of misfits made their way to the capital.

So what was the message put forth by this group of 400 different progressive groups? Pro-gay marriage, pro-green jobs, anti-global warming, pro-raising teacher pay, pro-union card check, pro-affirmative action, pro-reparations for blacks, pro-amnesty for illegals, anti-banks, anti-IMF, pro-world peace, pro-magic environmental technologies, anti-nuclear power, anti-oil, anti-corporation, pro-welfare, pro-tax hikes, pro-third world debt forgiveness, pro-world tax on banks, anti-genetically modified foods, anti-Big Pharma, pro-marijuana, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-Iranian, anti-military, anti-War, pro-abortion, anti......... You get the idea. The Communist Party USA was there, so was The War Resisters League, The Freedom Socialist Party, the NAACP, and every union you can name. You literally had 400 whiner groups, all specializing in very small single issues, without any care in the world for the other 399 groups’ causes.

And how did the media see this? Let’s quote the Politico: “The ‘One Nation Coming Together’ rally at the National Mall touched on themes of immigration reform, more funding for schools and equal rights for gays. But more than anything else, the day was about jobs.”

Yep, there you have it: the Eines Volk rally was about “jobs.”

It’s funny how 500,000 Tea Parties could speak with a united voice, but the media gets confused and distracted by three guys standing on the fringe of the rally who admit they really aren’t with the Tea Partiers. Yet, the media sees these 60,000 factionalized idiots screaming about 400 different issues and somehow clearly makes out one unified message: Jobs.

This is called advocacy, not journalism. The media is carrying the water for these groups by stripping out the pedophile groups, the eco-terrorists, the pro-socialist-“anarchists,” the militant feminists, and the militant racists, and instead packaging this collection of misfits as concerned about only one issue. . . the same issue the voters say is their primary concern. Yet, simultaneously, this same media acts intentionally blind to a genuinely public movement that is expressing a clear, single idea. That is how you sell one set of ideas over another.

Of course, we didn’t really expect anything different, did we? But it's still an excellent reminder of why the media has a lower trust rating with the American public than al Qaeda.

***************

As a final aside, now that even the AP has noticed that the crowd was "visibly smaller," didn't cover as far on the Mall, and wasn't as dense, the organizers claim that this rally was not in response to Beck and that they had no intention of trying to beat his numbers. Of course, that's a lie. Here is a quote from NAACP president Ben Jealous from just before the rally: "We believe that our satellite photos will stack up nicely to his satellite photos." Think about this. . . the entire American left couldn't beat the turnout produced by one entertainer, even though they paid people to be there. How pathetic.

********************** Update ****************************

Check out this photo comparisons and then ask yourself how the MSM could describe both as "tens of thousands."




27 comments:

Tennessee Jed said...

Nicely written, Andrew. You concisely summarize the history of the tea party, but more importantly, how independent professional journalism is dead. The Associated Press coverage bothers me the most, since they are theoretically the last bastion of supposed objective reporting. We, of course, know better, but I must admit that it pisses me off that in a center right country, leftists OWN newspapers, weekly news magazines, and all but one television news network, Hollywood, the works.

It used to be the m.s.m. tried hard to preserve the illusion of objectivity. With the emergence of Fox and much of the new online media, they cannot silence stories so they become more and more obvious in their attempt to cheerlead.

Joel Farnham said...

Nice job summarizing yesterday's rally, Andrew.

Just looking at the overhead pictures, this November will be a cake-walk. I don't believe it is going to be that easy though, but it is a nice objective look at what we are up against.

BevfromNYC said...

I was following the rally yesterday and late in the afternoon Yahoo! posted photos from the rally. Interspersed with the photos of rally speakers were aerial photos of Beck's rally complete with Sarah Palin. I saw the same photos on HuffPo that they were trying to pass off as the One United rally and all of the crowing comments about how Beck's pales in comparison. Didn't Ed Schulz brag that he could draw a bigger crowd than Beck just by waving his little pinky finger? He must feel really bad about himself today.

It will be interesting to see the if Colbert/Stewart's Let's Mock America rally on Oct. 30th will garner as much.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, I couldn't agree more. It pisses me off too, especially when you see the networks and the big newspapers claiming to be unbiased even though they all run mid-to-far left biased stories, all of their employees are leftists, and they see anything further right than center-left as "extremist conservative."

I know the MSM is collapsing because of this, but I wish it would happen sooner.

And the AP makes me even angrier. They are supposed to be an organization that provide FACTS to all these media outlets, who put them together into reports. Instead, they are now passing on opinion, and that's it.

They need to go down with the rest of the infected MSM.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I think it is just one more sign of a huge tidal wave to come. These are the ground troops who get leftists to the polls, man the phones, and do all of the leg work that needs to be done to make campaigns work. . . and they are clearly demoralized. And this rally just highlights that failure, it doesn't give them anything inspire them.

So while I try to remain cautious, I just see this as more evidence of their pending smackdown.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I saw that and it really angered me as well. In fact, the first picture I saw, I said -- "wow, they've got a lot of people." Then the next picture had Palin, and I said, "what the heck is she doing there?" Then it dawned on me, the MSM was trying to use the Beck rally images to make their own rally appear much larger than it really was.

And since then, it's been really, really hard to find any images from this rally, and certainly not any they aren't shot from angles intended to hide the real participation. For example, they always shoot from the stage and they cut off the stage. Why? Because it makes it appear that the rally has packed in everything from Lincoln up to the reflecting pool, when in reality, that whole area was empty stage.

Individualist said...

You know Andrew I have never heard of the "Coffee Baggers" until I read your article. I did a Google search and eliminating anything from a paid MSM advertizement .. er .. NY Times Op Ed peice I only found one thing.

There is a short statement from Juan Valdez that reads as follows:

"Please, these are NOT my people"

Hmmmm.........

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, On the Colbert/Stewart rally, I can't see more than a couple hundred people showing up.

But I think they're prepared for that. I think they have been vague enough about how real this rally is that if 100,000 people show up, they'll claim to be more important than Beck. . . but if only a couple hundred show up, they'll claim the whole thing was a joke and they're "flattered" that anyone really showed up.

AndrewPrice said...

Individualist, They don't seem to know what they want to call themselves.

First it was Brown Baggers, but that sounds like something you find on fire on your doorstep.

So then they called themselves the Coffee Party. But that didn't take either.

Now they're "One Nation" -- which is eerily similar to the Nazi "Eines Volk". . . so they probably should have called themselves "the Brown Shirts."

I just decided to settle the issue for them and call them Coffee Baggers. . . which is probably also an obscure sexual reference. ;-)

I can see Juan Valdez disowning these jerks.

Anonymous said...

Andrew: It's so hard to figure out which lie to believe. They tried to act as if this miserable collection of misfits and complainers was a huge spontaneous gathering that was so much more democratic than the Beck rally. But they actually had to coerce, pay or otherwise assist the welfare class to show up.

And in claiming the rally was not a response to Beck (in order to minimize how foolish their small numbers looked), Rev. Al unintentionally let the cat out of the bag.

When asked by amnesty-now, amnesty-forever Geraldo Rivera if he felt bad that the number of people at the rally was so low, Sharpton replied: "Oh, no, we weren't trying to out-do Beck. We planned this rally months before the Beck rally." Thank you, faux pastor, for pointing out that even with union money, Democrat support, freebies, and months longer to plan, you still couldn't come up with a decent-sized rally of normal Americans.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, I know! Their lies are only making the whole thing even more ridiculous. So this wasn't in response to Beck... except that you kept saying it was. And now you claim you had months to prepare, but you couldn't bring more than a handful? So are you lazy and pathetic or are you lying and pathetic?

And I honestly hadn't seen the "satellite" photos (usually an airplane), until I posted the update. I had no idea their rally was that ridiculously small! It looks like they barely managed to get 1/10th of what Beck got. We could probably pull off a bigger Commentarama rally!

So this is what the American left has come to, huh? Maybe they should pack it in.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew and LawHawk,

It is like that lie of over a thousand homeless are dying per day. Or the lie that one in ten are gay.
When the numbers were examined, they were proven wrong time and again.

Just like climate change.

Lies, lies and more lies. When challenged on them, they lie some more.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, Very true, but the left continues to believe them.

Take the gay number, that was created by Alfred Kinsey after a survey of prisons and mental institutions (back when being gay was considered a mental condition). When Canada included the "are you gay" question in their census in the 1990s, they found 1.5%-3% saying yes. Those numbers have been repeated time and again in surveys and everywhere else. Yet the media continues the 10% lie because it suits their purpose.

The homeless numbers got so ridiculous that if you did the math, the entire country would be homeless before the year was over, and the numbers of homeless dead doubled the number of dead in the country. . . yet the media repeated these mindlessly, even after they were shown to be utterly ridiculous.

That's how the left works: facts be damned.

Anonymous said...

Andrew and Joel: And worse, I'm not even convinced that most of the leftists really believe those numbers. But they really want other people to believe them so they can advance their agenda. They've done the same thing with the number of Muslims in America. That 12 million figure is just ludicrous, but it serves their purpose. The real number is somewhere between 1 million and 3 million, which is a ridiculously small percentage of the total population.

AndrewPrice said...

Good point Lawhawk. I'm not sure they believe the numbers either, but it serves their purposes to promote them because numbers are power in D.C. and the more people you can claim to speak for, or the more people affected by your cause, the more people will listen to you.

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew and LawHawk,

I also believe that it is worse for the Democrats. It has to do with the polls. Lately they have shown some movement towards the Dems, but when people check into them, it shows they get weighted outrageously. Like showing double the amount of Democrats that voted in Nov 2008.

It doesn't make any sense.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I saw an article on that. The most recent poll to show the Democrats catching up was weighted as if more Democrats would turn out in the same numbers they turned out for the 2008 Presidential election, whereas the Republicans turn out would fall 30%.

I think this is all an attempt to get their voters excited and to end the feeling of pointlessness. If they really feel that voting won't matter, then they will stay home and that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the Democrats and the fellow travelers in the media release fake polls to keep the sense of hope alive, hoping to raise turn out.

I'm not sure that ultimately works.

StanH said...

Liberal media sensationalism, if all you have is bullshit scream louder, inflate, and distort reality.

Like I’ve said since way back when Big Hollywood started, I see this as an opportunity, and the pitiful rally yesterday further exposes the lie. There are many, many more of us than of them. We finally have the left exposed and surrounded, no more hiding behind the “moderate” BS. We can see them clearly now, and I believe we’re going to clean house in the next few election cycles, it’s gonna be fun. My only concern is soon after the election we need some conservative leaders to emerge, and drive the dagger home.

Did you guys see the trash left on the mall by these freeloaders, despicable, but predictable.

Sorry I haven’t been posting as much, I’ve been really busy.

AndrewPrice said...

Stan, That does seem to be the media plan, just keep lying and hope that people will be fool. Hence the collapse in American trust in the media and the explosion of blogs and the "alternate media."

In terms of leaders, I think the will emerge. There seem to be a lot of people heading to Washington right now looking to shake the place up. I suspect that they will have problems the first couple months, but once they figure out how to overcome all the roadblocks by in their way by the establishment, then leaders will begin to emerge after trial by fire.

And even if this crop isn't good enough, I don't see the Americans who have become energized giving up and letting things go back to the way they were.

CrispyRice said...

Great summary and thanks for the picture comparison, Andrew!

AndrewPrice said...

You're welcome Crispy! I think it's a very telling comparison. It shows how weak the left is in this country and it shows the media bias when they try to claim these are equivalent.

Even more interesting, it shows that the crowds who went to Obama's nomination, which the left mistook for leftists, weren't anything of the sort.

Writer X said...

Thanks for the picture comparison. Naturally, you don't find that in the MSM. I'm surprised Soros didn't pay off more people to show up for the rally. What I'd really like to see is how they left the place. Usually it's the "green" groups that never know how to find garbage cans.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X, You're welcome. I guess even Soros' money can only go so far.

As for the trash... ask and yee shall receive. Here's a link with pictures from the rally. At the bottom (below the socialist signs) you'll see the garbage they left:

More pictures

Ed said...

I haven't seen these photos anywhere! Thanks. You're right too, everyone is saying "this was about jobs." Funny how none of them could figure out what the Tea Party wanted.

AndrewPrice said...

Ed, I would call it a real mystery, except that it isn't. We know what's going on. It's called bias.

Writer X said...

Thanks, Andrew. What a surprise. None of these shots (or anything like it) made it to any of the newspapers I read this weekend. The trash left on the Mall was particularly charming.

AndrewPrice said...

You're welcome Writer X. It doesn't surprise me. They are working hard to cover up the total failure of this rally.

As for the liter, what makes this even more interesting is that this group claims to be on the side of the environment, but they've proven to be entirely destructive and disrespectful of public property. Pathetic.

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