The numbers don’t lie folks. As MSNBC and CNN talking heads alternated between sobbing over and deriding tax payer protests – an issue people actually care about – a funny thing happened. People changed the channel, despite attempts from Anderson Cooper, David Shuster, etc. to convince everyone that they don’t/shouldn’t care about taxation and responsible spending.
Per Drudge:
FOX RATINGS SURGE ON PROTEST COVERAGE
8-11 PM ETFOXNEWS 3,390,000
MSNBC 1,210,000
CNN 1,070,000
CNN HEADLINE 909,000FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,980,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,239,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,947,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,740,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,401,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,185,000
COMEDY DAILY SHOW 1,777,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,499,000
COMEDY COLBERT 1,446,000
CNNHN GRACE 1,336,000
CNN KING 1,292,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,149,000
CNN COOPER 1,021,000
Incidentally, this is one of the major reasons why newspapers are dying at a record pace. People now have a choice in their consumption – and they perfer not to injest bullshit. One or two or three big companies can no longer set an agenda and decide for us what should be news and what we shouldn’t be interested in.
Fascinating in all this is the repeated theme of projection and hypocrisy from people who call themselves “Progressive.” A Few examples:
Free speech
Over the last 8 years or so, people took to the streets and screamed themselves hoarse about how they don’t have their voices heard. They did it until our ears bled. Who was shutting them up though? Nobody was. Read Greg Gutfeld’s fantastic mockery of “speaking truth to power.”
Over those 8 years it was interesting to see who actually was being shouted down and intimidated – and who was doing the shouting. There are practically endless examples, but here are a few:
There were more, but you get the point.
Now just recently, in happens again. From Alphecca:
Tom Tancredo didn’t make it through his talk. In fact, he left campus early after protesters interrupted his speech and broke a window.
Protesters who weren’t allowed into the room where the speech was being given gathered outside the door and chanted, “There’s no debate, no space for hate.”
………
See, it doesn’t matter what your arguments are. It doesn’t matter that you are against something based upon principle or ethics or religion. All that matters is that if you don’t embrace or agree with the liberal, leftist agenda, be it on illegal immigrants, gay marriage, Islamic terrorists, personal responsibility, et cetera, whatever it is that you have to say is simply “hate speech” and you will be shouted down. This is the new liberal interpretation of the First Amendment.
Progressives are a funny animal. They embody essentially the exact opposite philosophy as their title would indicate. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter playfully points this out on the House floor.
Anger
Quite often Liberals portray Conservatives as angry white males. The party of the angry guy. Yet, whenever I see someone wig out in a political discussion it happens to be someone like this:
Latent homophobia
In this clip, first we have the witch hunt into a gay man’s personal life and outing him. Second, we have the contributors imply that his view points on Iraq are no longer valid because??? Oh, he happens to be gay.
Blumenthal claims Sanchez was “Unmasked as a hypocrite.” What exactly was he being hypocritical about? Being in support of a war and being gay? It wasn’t as if Sanchez was campaigning for anti-gay marriage legislation. He was talking about Iraq.
They go on to imply that Republicans don’t allow gays “into their club” (Logcabin Republicans apparently don’t count.) Then just moments later claim that there is an underground movement of gays in the Republican party. So which is it? In a hilarious moment Blumenthal’s last statement (starting at 4:25) of the video he makes absolutely no sense by saying Sanchez has helped to advance homophobia on the right. How? By being a gay Republican. Oh, and being in favor of the war. Yeah… The best part is Blumenthal clearly looks like a deer in headlights, you can see in his eyes as he’s saying it that he knows what he’s saying makes absolutely no sense and ends akwardly with an all time classic rube look on his face.
Of course Blumenthal is no stranger to looking like a horse’s ass on camera. Take this incident where he confronts Michelle Malkin about a book he never read.
“That the–, that the uhhh….”
So basically Sanchez was exposed as gay by bloggers and therefore is guilty of….something. They’ll get back to us I’m sure. We now know this, his opinion on military protests is now considerably less valid.
Oh and Jeff Gannon is gay.
By the way, did you know he is gay? Zinger. He’s gay!
Common theme “I don’t care so-and-so is gay, I’m enraged about all the Conservative voters that were lied to.” Yeah, that would be a first. Especially considering the snobby attacks on Conservative “Peasants” who are upset about being mislead on issues of finance this week.
“But let me reiterate to all you Conservatives out there – and I can’t stress this enough - Mark Foley is definitely gay and Charlie Crist might be! Just remember that when going to the polls.”
Sincerely,
Media members who claim to be for gay rights. (But we want to reiterate we don’t care that they’re GAY.)
Between gay jokes, Olbermann asserts Larry Craig should be gone, not over legal issues – but because he is a hypocrite.
He isn’t a hypocrite for being gay and being against gay marriage. In fact, he isn’t the only one. Privately supporting gay marriage and publicly denouncing it is being hypocritical. Just because I’m LDS, it does not make me hypocritical if I opposed legislation that included LDS victims as victims of hate crimes. It just means I think hate crimes legislation is stupid. Larry Craig thinks gay marriage is a bad idea. That’s all. In fact, being gay gives him more credibility on the issue.
If he is a hypocrite for not trumpeting to world he was gay, I guess we can throw in Lance Bass, Clay Aiken, Jodie Foster, Ellen Degeneres and Wanda Sykes for their years and years of apparent shameful “hypocrisy.”
We also get the occasional insistence that Lincoln was gay. Okay. Is the first gay President really something you want to concede to Republicans?
Anti-Semitism
This one is easy. Liberals have often called Conservatives anti-semitic while simultaneously blaming everything in Bush administration on the “Neo-Cons” which is a fairly well understood code word for “Jews.”
Found in much of the anti-war protest footage available on youtube is the underlying message that Jews are to blame for, well, everything.
Fairness in reporting
One of the mostly commonly mocked things in news is FoxNews slogan “Fair and Balanced.”
Interesting Olbermann had no defense for his own show or network. In fact, I can’t think of a single time Olbermann had a guest on that disagreed with him in the slightest – and I’ve watched more Olbermann than any sane person should. Same goes for Rachel Maddow. And I can tell you right now having listed to Ed Schultz on the radio, he won’t be any different.
The MO of these clowns has been to have their guests on solely to “back up” whatever nonsense they happen to be spewing. Fox’s (admitted) blowhards on the other hand at least have real debate on their shows constantly. They will take any liberal comers. Happens every night.
* An amusing side note to this is Olbermann citing Pat Buchanan as an example of equal time on CNN. He and many other “conservative guests” on CNN are angry with the Republican party and are likely to harshly criticize them on any given appearance. I have no problem with this, being infuriated with the Republican party myself, but the point is that it is not a fair representation of the current Republican positions (as much as I disagree with them.)
His attack on Alan Colmes is also unfortunate considering Alan is probably the most likeable and persuasive Democrat alive. He argues with class, wit and intellectual honesty. In fact, in high school I used to listen to his old radio show (before he was on tv) after school everyday – and he actually convinced me to support the re-election of Bill Clinton over Bob Dole – though I was too young to vote.
But if you aren’t angrily spewing red-green vomit on an nightly basis and sacrificing a goat at the alter of the Olberfuhrer – you are the Washington Generals.
Racism & Sexism
Conservatives are all racist. We all know that. Some people told us so after all. Let’s start with the cartoons:
Let’s not forget Colin Powell being depicted as a monkey and being called a ‘house slave’ or worse repeatedly. And it’s one thing to hear it from an African-American (while I still take offense) but to hear from whiter-than-white Janeane Garofalo that you can’t think a certain way because of you skin color or sex is more than a little off putting.
Also, apparently you can call Michael Steele and ‘uncle Tom’ and throw oreos at him simply for being a Republican (and a moderate at that) by a bunch of white kids!?
Here Olbermann admits his racist hypocrisy to the world.
As far as Women go, there were a lot of attacks from the Obama camp on Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro during the primaries that bordered on sexism.
And not to forget the free-game attacks on Sarah Palin months later.
We thank mother of 3 Norah O’Donnell for reminding us that Palin should be at home cleaning up after the kids.
In a mixture of three different categories, we have Condoleezza Rice constantly having her sexuality questioned, compared to Aunt Jemima, and being an emotional and hot-tempered Woman. The minority hat-trick!
Important to note the outrage about Barack Obama’s large ears, and by drawing them, one somehow becomes racist. Intriguing since George W. Bush was constantly drawn with even bigger ears consistently.
Ah-ha! But what about this clearly racist attack on Barack Obama?
Oh wait, Presidents don’t write the bills, they sign them.
Lets not forget the Democratic party has a long, proud history of out-and-out racism. Examples:
This all-around good guy:
“I’ll have them n*ggers voting Democratic for two hundred years”
- Lyndon Johnson
And this douche:
Former KKK member who happened to have some kind of a seizure moments after Obama was inaugurated. Coincidence?
And thank you Janeane for bringing us the most predictable moment of the year. People opposing Obama are doing so solely based on their racism:
Garofalo actually called Party-goers “a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” adding “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”
Mysterious Groups Backing Protests
This one is total projection. Liberals assume that because they have intricate protest calling tree networks that mobilize professional protesters funded by shady groups (moveon.org, ANSWER, La Raza, etc.) pulling the strings that Conservatives must have them too – because that is all they know.
Got news for you. We don’t have them. We might in the future, but this protesting thing is new to us. This was totally grass roots to start and it was bandwagoned by some corporate interests and opportunistic politicians – as will happen with any winning issue. But the people started it, and they weren’t happy about the leaches who glommed on. For example, Michael Steele wanted to speak at the Chicago Tea Party and was told “hey buddy, maybe you ought to sit down and listen to what we’re saying here instead of telling us what we want to hear and then shanking us when we turn our backs.”
This is what most of the media failed to understand. These protests were not exclusively anti-Obama or even anti-Democrat. They were pro-fiscal responsibility – period. Most protesters were fully aware that the Bush administration coupled with 6 years of concurrent Republican majority in the house and senate helped spiral the country into debt as much as anyone else has – and they voiced these opinions at the time and now. This is evidenced by California protesters absolutely savaging Republican legislators (instead of Democrats) over record tax increases because they should know better.
So why now? Why protest when Obama has the reigns? Because it has come to a head. It has little to do with Obama, he’s making wrong choices, but he also happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are the days of bailouts and wasteful stimulus packages.
I’ve read a criticism that the tax rate is going down from 39.6% to 36%, so why complain? Firstly, it isn’t just about taxes its about how they are spent wastefully. In fact, 36% is too high when you consider that we see almost none of that money put to good use like infrastructure. If you’re going to spend the first 10% of the top on absolute garbage, you might as well cut taxes by another 10% right now.
Secondly, people see what is coming. Obama claims a goal of paying off the national debt – and in a relatively short period of time. If he is serious about this, taxes are going to go way, way up – not to mention the money soon needed to cover a looming social security discrepancy.
Bottom line, people are frustrated that the Government is creating money out of nowhere and by doing so is basically taking cash advances on inevitable future tax raises all while making everyone’s saved dollars worth less. And what are they doing with these advances? Essentially taking it to the casino and betting on black in the form of corrupt companies with untenable business models who are being held in a choke hold by ridiculous union contracts (that they moronically agreed to.) Problem is, that roulette ball is going to land in the red and so are we.
And the blame of the tax raise will go to whatever poor sap happens to be in office holding the bag when the stuff hits the fan. Perfect example of the pass it along mentality.
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A final word about the media. I’m sure most people saw this weepy report from CNN’s Susan Reosgen.
I love how she justifies what’s going on by telling the guy how much pork his state gets in the whole deal. Oh, okay. Kewl! Plus you eligible for a $400 credit. Wow, I guess that makes all the waste okay now! A quote from Alexis de Tocqueville comes to mind:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money”
I’ve never seen a reporter be that antagonistic to a protester. Never in my life. Certainly not a war protester or global warming protester. Consider her sorrowful reaction to a sign that ridiculously equated Obama with Hitler:
“Why be so hard on the President of the United States with such an offensive message? Do you realize how offensive that is?”
This is funny in light of her previous coverage of an angry post-Katrina protest.
From Newsbusters:
City officials aren’t the only ones wondering when federal money will materialize. Catholic school girls marched on Jackson Square. They and their teachers say more money is needed to fix the levees, and they hoped the President would stop by after his meeting with business leaders. But while a look-alike showed up with a wad of cash, Mr. Bush did not.”
That look-alike? This guy:
I’m not good with voice inflection – but she didn’t sound too offended by it. VIDEO HERE.
She went on to grumble that the protesters were – gasp – Anti-CNN! NO! NO NO NO! Please no!
Since when has CNN become an arm of the US Government? Not even FoxNews made this claim.
I’ve already blogged about the low brow humor in place of real debate on the merits. You didn’t see Glenn Beck or any of his ilk put on their best Bevis and Butthead impression and say “Huhh…huhh, they said taint” whenever anti-war protesters went on and on about our “tainted reputation around the world.” That would have been childish.
It is sufficient to note that the stuff that was said this week was lower than the stuff you normally see on the Daily Show and Colbert. That is sayin’ somethin’.
