rssTea Partiers Want You to Remember the Days When the Left Was Crazy
Thursday, April 01, 2010 at 3:20 pm
- 11 Comments
Here’s a video making the rounds on the right — a compilation of outrageous scenes from 2002 and 2003 anti-war protests. The editor: Evan Coyne Maloney, a documentary filmmaker who cut his teeth on these videos and went on to make the education expose “Indoctrinate U.”
Conservatives haven’t given any ground on this since the end of the health care debate, and that strategy seems to have worked — interest in the “Tea Parties gone wild” narrative has petered out. But as someone who watched these Maloney videos way back when, seven and eight years ago, I both understand why conservatives think they’re being covered unfairly now and why liberals think that they, at the time, were covered unfairly.
“Anti-war protest invites kooks” in 2002 was really a dog-bites-man story — the wild-eyed types who showed up at big events in New York and San Francisco had been acting out like that for, well, decades, to the great irritation of the moderate liberals who were getting out into the streets and swelling the attendance of these rallies. But the Tea Party movement is really something new under the sun. The number of conservatives (if you don’t count social conservative extremists like Randall Terry) who’d show up to protests waving signs was, in the modern media age, negligible. Because they’re so new, they get (now, if not initially) largely explanatory “what makes them angry” coverage from the press — the left, seven and eight years ago, was getting pro forma “liberals on the march” coverage.
Another angle here is that the wave of threats against Democrats last week is hard to compare to anything that beset Republicans (and Democrats) who backed the Iraq War — although it’s really not fair to tie those threats to Tea Party activists.
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Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
Another big difference is guns — who has them….
The old lefites have been pretty harmless since the 1970 townhouse incident and they don't tend to talk about their guns. Some of the tea party people seem like they are serious about doing stuff and shooting people with their guns.
Good luck at the Post
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Saying it's O.K., just because “lefties” did it isn't justification. Count in the extremist “militia” groups who feed off this, too. Where is the footage of “leftist” “militia” groups? In fact, where ARE the “leftist” “militia' groups?
Another pathetic attempt for credibility.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 7:46 pm
Not sure the tea party folks should make the comparison. I believe Democrats did quite poorly in '02/'04.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 9:14 pm
Maybe the teabaggers could get together and make some puppets, and a few could dress as mimes.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 9:17 pm
This video should include the commentaries and banter from Fox News (& even the mainstream media of the era) to demonstrate what the talking heads were saying should be done to any & all anti-Bush/Cheney protesters——everyone from Scarborough to O'Reilly were calling for more tazers, more pepper spray & more martial law to shut up and lock up these “traitors”
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 9:27 pm
Did the millions of protesters world wide get nearly the coverage the Teabaggers have? Granted, the protesters in '02-'03 didn't have their own cable news network, but the discrepancy in quality and quantity of coverage is pretty stark.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 11:38 pm
there you heard it ! it's time for a revolution to take back the peoples country. it's not far off and I suggest everyone to start getting ready . there's more militias out there than I think our government knows about and remember the people of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is the worlds most armed people. Thomas Jefferson said and I quote GOD FORBID WE SHOULD EVER BE TWENTY YEARS WITHOUT SUCH A REBELLION unquote. I hope this never happens but if this government of this country don't get their shit together it's going to happen and sooner than a lot of people think. We need help in this country really bad and today Hillary Clinton says billions more going to Haiti what about your own people! WAKE UP CALL TO THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN OR WE WILL TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS!
Comment posted April 2, 2010 @ 12:24 am
See my remark below: in 02/03, Fox talking heads said that people who talk like you talk belong in a concentration camp. What has changed since then? I bet you hated Hillary long before she was Secretary of State, didn't you Dewey?
Comment posted April 2, 2010 @ 8:39 am
Its absurd to assume that protest against the war is equivalent to protesting healt-care reform. The two issues are TOTALLY different.
Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and many of us knew his administration was lying long before the stunning revelation that the WMD myth was just that, a myth.
Anyone with a even a cursory understanding of Middle-East politics would know that the idea of Baathists in league with Al Qaeda is about as non-sensical as Glenn Beck cavorting with the RCP. It's absurd.
The war has created untold misery on both sides, has murdered countless innocent people, displaced more and tortured even more still. Young service people have come of age knowing nothing but unjust violence for a cause they connot properly name.
The war has gutted our economy, and has showcased the worst in our ability to cope with adversity. There was no reason for it. The people who started that war wanted it to happen decades before it did.
Bush's cronies prostituted the awful tragedy of Sept 11 to get a war they already wanted.
That's VERY different from trying to get health-care to those who cant access it because of an unbalanced system that prioritises big insurance companies.
Anyone who is so daft as to think that Bush's invasion of Iraq is equivalent to Healthcare reform ought to be made to fight in that war… i think a few rounds outside of the green-zone would dispell any illusions as to their equivalence.
Tea baggers have proven themselves to be outlandish and idiotic in their rhetoric.
You can try to clean it up all you want, but anyone who thinks that HealthCare Reform is tatamount to the horrors of Triblinka isnt just ignorant and uneducated, he is DISRESPECTFUL OF THE VERY VICTIMS OF THAT GENOCIDE!
Health reform is NOT the same as destroying a country with weapons, nor is it the same as pushing ethnic/religious minorities, immigrants, gays and leftists into gas-chambers (as had REALLY happened in the Holocaust).
BTW, Hitler was a social conservative who scapegoated on minorities, gays and leftists. He explicitly valued purity of race, heritage and religion, and believed that the Military was the salvation of the people. Barack Obama is a man of mixed-ethnicity who tries even to reach out to his embittered antagonists on the right.
Take a step back and honestly ask yourselves who has acted more like the Nazis of actual history had.
Comment posted April 3, 2010 @ 2:22 am
Maybe I wasn't watching closely enough, but it didn't appear that any of the folks calling for the government to be overthrown back then were elected representatives to said government.
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