Republican Mob Rule: I Was There at the Birth

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/23183

Republican Mob Rule: I Was There at the Birth
by Stephen Pizzo | August 7, 2009 - 11:18am


I was there when it began, the ugliness, the ever-so thinly-veiled racism, the attacks on the press.

It was August, 1992. The place, the Houston Astrodome. The occasion, the Republican nominating convention.

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On the floor were squads of young men and women, many in their teens, dressed in red, white and blue straw hats, red vests, white shirts and black pants. I assumed they were some kind of Republican youth group, the kids of GOP officials, or both. To say they were squeaky clean-cut would be an understatement. They looked like they'd just been bused in from the Salt Lake City Mormon temple.

I only mention this because of what those clean-cut kids were up to. After each particularly fiery speech they would march en masse to the foot of the press gallery wall and begin chanting, "Be fair, be fair, be fair."

American reporters laughed it off as a childish bit of political theater. Our European colleagues were not laughing. They looked worried, especially those from Germany, Austria and France.

snip//

I got a permission slip for the floor just as Pat Buchanan began his speech. It was the first shot in what would become known as "the culture war". The crowd clearly would have preferred him over the guy who was actually going to get nominated. They roared their approval to every one of Buchanan's now disturbingly familiar xenophobic, homophobic, racist thrusts. I could feel the energy level on the floor hit a kind of psychic redline. And that's when I saw them -- scattered through the crowd, not a majority, but more than a few, right-arm raised, hand flat, palm down, the Nazi salute. There was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.

And I saw no one try to stop them. I heard no one admonish them.

(Molly Ivins later observed of Buchanan's speech, "It was better in the original German.")

snip//

Over the years that followed I was not surprised to see the seeds of hatred, paranoia, xenophobia and racism, cultivated and nurtured by those empowered by that convention; Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, et al.

So, when I see clips of GOP brownshirts disrupting town hall meetings I figure among them might just be some of those squeaky clean GOP youth that serenaded me and other working reporters with the ironic chant, "Be fair, be fair." Because, had we been truly fair back then, maybe the nation could have been forewarned, and forearmed. But we, the media, were not fair. We pulled our punches. We were too timid to tell the truth about everything we saw, we heard and we knew about what was happening inside the Republican party. Had we reported all that, they would have accused us of being unfair. The media knew that, and blinked. We put on our blinders and let it go, unreported. Because we wanted to be seen as being "fair", while not being balanced.

And the media learned nothing since. Because, if it had it would be reporting, not just that groups of conservatives were disrupting town hall meetings, but exactly who was orchestrating those fake "grassroots" protests. But if you want to learn about that, you can't turn to CNN or NBC or CBS or ABC... you have to turn to comics, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert or activist news shows like MSNBC's Countdown and Rachel Maddow. Kudos to them, but they are too easily dismissed as biased.

The decline of civil discord and honest political discord declined steadily after that 1992 convention. And, unless the regular working press starts doing their jobs, it's headed further south - which is a terrifying prospect.

So, please, media, be fair... for real this time.

I need to show someone that is defending the rights of these mobs to do what they do, that this is a serious game that they're playing. I just want to post it in another thread.

Not gonna happen. Obviously when C-Span and NPR are controlled there is little chance that NBC ABC CBS and the rest will be objective. Our ABC affiliate in Columbus Ohio has a nightly commentator that is as bad as Rush Limbaugh himself.

And I hear some on here suggest "Why do you watch TV? I never watch TV." Well, to me this a dangerous thing. We must know what they are feeding the public.

But man o man, that writer needs a proofreader.

The biggest problem I have with my fellow progressives is that they tend to dismiss things like this as a small "fringe" group of wingnuts. I believe underestimating one's opponent or enemy is dangerous.

I've actually seen posts by some of them today, chastising those of us who feel this is a much bigger problem than they do, and they do it in a most condescending and arrogant manner. I find their methods as, if not more than, offensive than the radical right. I guess I expect more from us.

:scared: