All Tea All the Time

(That's hapless Tea Reporter Don Gonyea)

It's no secret that like Fox News, NPR is Tea Party friendly turf - even fairly unbalanced Tea Partiers like Lori Medina of Dallas find NPR fair - well, duh. Given that a recent poll shows the Tea Party suck factor growing (almost as high as for Democrats and Republicans-see the poll here), and given that a recent Tea Party rally in Washington, DC drew a minuscule 100-200 participants (Politico and Slate have a couple of photos - you decide) - no wonder NPR felt obliged to provide amplified and robust coverage to this far right army of Dick. So what does a dinky little DC rally of hardcore rightwingers get on NPR?

• A Thursday ATC story featuring highlights of your speakers and a description of the Sen. Rand "Civil Rights" Paul and the unhinged Michele Bachmann as bringing "some star power."
• More Thursday amplification of Tea Party talking points from NPR's Frank James on the "It's All Politics" blog.
• An April Fool's Morning Edition feature with Tea Party fool, Audie Cornish, who explains that "It wasn't a big group less than 250 people. But they had a big voice."
• A Weekend Edition Sunday feature where some of those several hundred attendees get to weigh in on US foreign policy in Libya - "...when it boils down to it, we are the country that's done the great things in the world; we are the leaders, and that's a role we still have to have."

So what gives? Even if one concedes that the Tea Party represents a force in American politics, one can easily argue that a group like MoveOn represents an equally powerful force in electoral politics. So take a look at how on-air Tea Party coverage compares to on-air MoveOn coverage on NPR. That's 789 for the Tea Party compared to 106 for MoveOn - very fair, very balanced.

Buffing Turds at NPR

Part I - School Daze

Mara Liasson - on Tuesday (September 8, 2009) ATC, tries to normalize the wingnut stupidity, insanity and virulence of the Republican-led attacks on Obama's live address to schools. Of his speech she says,

"Inspiring perhaps, but not very controversial. And not unlike the politically innocuous study hard, stay in school messages of previous presidents. Of course, those messages were subject to political sniping as well. Back in 1991, when George H. W. Bush gave a similar speech, Democrats called it political advertising."

Even though the chairman of the Florida Republican party stated that "I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology....schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans....an invasive abuse of power" - Liasson equates this rabidly stupid, hypocritical attack with the "political sniping" of Democrats who denounced Bush 41's school speech as "paid political advertising" and investigated the use of federal funds in producing the broadcast.

Part II - You Lie

Inskeep on September 10, 2009 ME weighs in on Rep. Joe Wilson's unprecedented interruption of Pres. Obama's joint session speech the evening before:

"Now, in the middle of that booing, you can hear Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina shout out, 'You lie!' There's been a lot of the coverage of the etiquette of this. Wilson has apologized, but let's ask about the substance. Was the president truthful in saying that his plan is not going to cover illegal immigrants?"

Well dang, there's a lot of reactions one might have had to Wilson's I-thought-I-was-at-a-Tea-Bag-Party outburst. Instead of questioning what role race - and decades-old Republican virulence and hypocrisy - played in Wilson's rebel yell, Inskeep wants to get to the "substance" of his squeal. At least if NPR was going to focus on the "substance" - it might have focused on the depravity of our political culture in general - where a supposedly liberal President is heckled for not being anti-undocumented immigrant enough when he is defending how hard-hearted he wants his healthcare reform bill to be toward those undocumented immigrants.

Blue Texan at FDL really captures the role that Liasson, Inskeep and NPR are playing: the American Right flings the most outrageous, dishonest, and ignorant poo it can and trusts that media outlets like NPR will work their hardest to shine it up as nothing but normal, mainstream, acceptable politics.

Tea Party Radio

Fox News makes no bones about endorsing the extreme-right, proud-to-be-stupid Tea Party Express, but NPR is a bit more subtle in its pro-Tea Bagger coverage. Over the last three days it has provided this reactionary tour frequent, uncritical broadcasting time:

On Sunday's Weekend Edition Liane Hansen introduces NPR's Jay Brady who is traveling with this road show. In a completely uncritical report Brady makes these statements:

• "Well, I've been to four rallies now, in two days, and talked with quite a few people. Most of them, I'd say they're over 40 years old, and in general, they appear to be folks who work pretty hard for a living." (unlike the dirty hippie crowd who show up at antiwar functions).
• "And they talk about all kinds of issues....But I think the one thing that just about everyone had in common is that they feel like they're not being heard." (No mention of the really thoughtful signs about "dictator" Obama, and his birth certificate.)
• [describing the "mood" at the rallies] "You know, they feel a lot like a small county fair. People are serious about what's being discussed at the rallies, but it seems like they're also there to have fun." (I can imagine time traveling Brady using the same description reporting on early 20th century lynchings.)

In case you didn't get enough of this poison tea, Jeff Brady is back on Monday morning, giving more love to these hard working, honest volk who no one listens to:

• "A political action committee from California is sponsoring the bus tour...the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. The goal is to bring together different groups concerned about what he calls heavy handed government policies."
• "At the tea party rally, there were few, if any, fans of Mr. Obama and plenty of critics."
• "...There were also people holding signs criticizing government involvement in health care and excessive federal spending. The scene a few hours away in Ely was similar. This is a place where people are comfortable using language most others left behind with the end of the Cold War." [followed by a woman claiming "We don't need a communist nation. And that's what Obama's taking us to."]
• "Tea Party Express Chief Strategist Sal Russo says people, who come to these rallies aren't super focused on specific issues. He says they are motivated by broad ideals."
• "A lot of people attending these rallies say they feel left out, as if no one in Washington is listening to them anymore."

Of course Brady and the Morning Edition hosts offer no check to the utter insanity of claims of socialism or communism - on the contrary NPR lends respectability and legitimacy to the extremist ideology of the Tea Bagger movement through Brady's repetition of the claim to "broad ideals" and his earlier remarks about participants being "serious about what's being discussed."

Still not sold on the salt-of-the-earth charm and idealism of these Tea Party know-nothings? Well, Tuesday evening's spotlight on the singing darling of the tea party mob should win you over for sure. Gosh, but golly, not only is he spouting the Obamunist-communist stupidity and encouraging populist reactionary zeal, but "he's black, has a ponytail and wears an earring"! Brady assures us that

"what's surprising about Marcus is that while he can be a little pointed at times, he also appears to have a lot of fun" and "Marcus knows what he believes and he's sticking with it."

One really disturbing angle of NPR's favorable coverage of the public face of this movement, is how it completely ignores how similar the ideology and rhetoric of the Tea Bagger movement is to the resurgent militia movement. Also, as readers have noted, compare this positive saturation coverage of the Tea Party reactionaries to NPR's negative and non-coverage of the anti-war movement and you can't help but notice how far to the right NPR's editorial preferences lean...