On my desk right now, I’m looking at a pre-printed poster, in black and gold, handed out at yesterday’s Market Square “tea party.”
“A movement is brewing,” it says — just above the KDKA 1020 logo, and its daily program guide.
I guess it’s not surprising KDKA embraced a one-sided political rally, where speakers repeatedly denounced the president. True, you could never imagine a local mainstream news outlet pandering to an anti-war protest this way. Handing out posters at a peace march would be … unpatriotic! But hey, it’s only talk radio, right? Nobody expects anything better — even if the station does claim to be “committed to … reliable, breaking news.”
Anyway, Fox News has been using the tea parties to juice its ratings. So why should KDKA be different? Especially considering its lineup includes conservatives like Fred Honsberger and Mike Pintek?
Nor is KDKA alone. The MC of yesterday’s events was Jim Quinn, of 104.7 FM (and formerly of a station owned by the family that owns City Paper). And the crowd was made up of people who could recite — in unison — some of Quinn’s blithering axioms. (Nothing says “independent-minded citizens” like the ability to regurgitate propaganda on cue!)
But the KDKA poster is a sort of visual reminder that this whole supposedly “grassroots” protest is nothing of the sort. It’s been co-opted by the special interests teabaggers want to depose … and by the politicians they profess to hate.
Consider that yesterday’s Market Square event was addressed by Glen Meakem, a local businessman who sometimes sits in for Quinn and has a radio show of his own. Meakem, long a political operator, has previously pledged to back any Republican who opposes Arlen Specter’s re-election last year. And guess what else happened yesterday? Patrick Toomey formally announced that he was taking Specter on.
Consider too that yesterday’s event was supported by FreedomWorks, who provided a speaker and some other posters I saw at the event. As I noted in the comments section of a previous post, the head of FreedomWorks is former GOP Congressman Dick Armey. Armey has been working as a — brace yourself — lobbyist for a prominent DC firm, DLA Piper. Among that firm’s clients last year: Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley.
The guy whose firm lobbied for bank bailouts, in other words, is pimping the backlash those bailouts caused. And these are the folks who are supposed to challenge the status quo?
That, more than anything else, is what made yesterday’s events so small and ugly and sad. This little “revolution” was sold out before it even got started. It’s like finding out the Founding Fathers were just trying to land a wig-endorsement deal.
Radio and cable-TV talkers pander to our darkest fears and deepest suspicions. The old politicians find new ways to bamboozle us, while a new generation of politicians steps up to the podium and promises to be different. Firearms dealers and the NRA rake in bucks as people make contributions and stockpile weapons. Everyone is making a quick buck off the enraged mob … except for the people actually in it. They’re getting used, and the seeds for next year’s pitchfork rebellion are being planted even before this one is over.
It’s easy to go to these rallies and dismiss the crowds as a bunch of paranoid fools. But maybe the real problem is … they aren’t paranoid enough.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.
I don’t have a problem with paranoid people exercising their right of free speech, but there are paranoid people with guns out there who pick on these slogans and don’t respond with more talk, but with action. In that sense, it does behoove the mainstream media to expose these cynical political ploys that prey on the impressionable and scared minds. Let’s not forget that everyone, from Jon Stewart to Fox News, lambasted the left-wing war protesters in 2002 and 2003 for daring to link Bush to a war for oil, or carrying puppets and posters warning of war crimes in a police state – boy, were those green-haired freaks ever so wrong!
Also, maybe read this:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/federal-agency-warns-of-radicals-on-right/
To put the above news report in context, the largest terrorist attack on US soil under the Clinton administration was NOT carried out by Al Qaeda, but by an impressionable mind who could only regurgitate slogans in his own defense.
CPR – But what about every attack on US interests, embassies, and ships overseas during the Clinton years? Ah yes, not on US Soil, so they don’t count, right?
And you’re right on Chris with your quote “Nothing says “independent-minded citizens” like the ability to regurgitate propaganda on cue!”
How did it go again, “yes we can, yes we can”. We just can’t name the VP candidate who we’re voting for along with Obama, but by golly, Yes, we can…
“that guy” said “CPR – But what about every attack on US interests, embassies, and ships overseas during the Clinton years? Ah yes, not on US Soil, so they don’t count, right?”
They do – and they were still not as large, in terms of US casualties, as the domestic terror attack. And “ships” – how many “ships” were attacked? I remember the USS Cole – which is one ship, what other ones are you talking about?
And to get back to the larger point here – the Clinton administration was deadly serious about Al Qaeda, and did as much as it could do over and above the Republican obstructionism in Congress, wherein the Republicans did not want to provide Clinton with ANY room to have a foreign military policy. Go back and read any of the archived news reports about foreign policy crises in the Clinton years and see how Republicans in Congress, time and again, refused to allow Clinton the room to have a more vigorous foreign military policy.
And let us not forget that Richard Clarke – the counter-terrorism intel expert on Al Qaeda – specifically warned the Bush administration in Jan 2001 to watch out for Al Qaeda attacks, and repeated these warnings over the subsequent months but never got a serious audience with the top officials.
So, there is where the divide lies – Bush supporters blame Clinton for allegedly not having done anything to stop Al Qaeda, while denying having played a role in tying Clinton’s hands in Congress. At the same time, they deny Clinton administration’s successes against Al Qaeda, and deny that they ever received any warnings about Al Qaeda, and deny that they were planning on a war in Iraq since before 9/11, and deny that the focus on a Iraq War in 2002 took away from the military needs in Tora Bora… and deny that their post-war Iraq plans, or lack thereof, led to a rise in terrorism worldwide…
The matter at hand, and the subject of my original comment, however, is whether the threat of domestic terrorism is a serious threat, and whether the news media should be more diligent in exposing the political opportunists who are exaggerating and reinforcing the irrational fears of their base – and I don’t believe “that guy” had anything to say on that account.