The “Tea Party” movement in the US: a right-wing media creation

The “Tea Party” movement, which held a convention last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, is largely a media concoction, aimed at shifting official American political life even further to the right.

The convention gathered “nearly 600 conservative activists,” according to ABC News, a weak showing considering the US media has been playing up this “grassroots movement” for the past 12 months.

The press coverage of the Tea Party movement begins from a thoroughly false premise, that wide layers of the American population oppose the Obama administration from the right, outraged over “socialism” and “big government” and the sinister possibility of “universal health care.”

The Tea Party business took shape in a typically sordid and fraudulent manner. One year ago, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli let loose with a rant from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade—cheered on by traders—against the Obama administration’s meager mortgage reform, denouncing attempts “to subsidize the losers’ mortgages … How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

Far from a spontaneous outburst, Santelli’s appeal for a “tea party” protest was a stage-managed event, prepared well in advance and backed by wealthy, extreme right-wing forces. In any case, how could such a reactionary and selfish attack on the millions in danger of losing their homes provide the basis for a “populist” revolt in any meaningful sense of the word? The various rallies organized by the Tea Party network have been attended by a combination of ultra-right activists and highly confused, primarily middle class layers. Again, the gatherings have attracted forces largely through absurdly out-of-proportion media coverage.

This continues. Last weekend’s convention, addressed by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, received front-page treatment in the leading US newspapers. The New York Times referred to the movement’s efforts to harness “the grass-roots anger that burst onto the streets a year ago.” The Washington Post noted the number of convention delegates, but assured its readers that “there are millions of Americans just like them.” This is a movement, declared the Post, “that is unmistakably people-powered.”

There are people and there are people. The “people” who organized and spoke at the Tea Party convention happen to be well-heeled scoundrels and demagogues...


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/teap-f09.shtml

That's exactly what they were after.

K&R

fellow travelers and useful idiots.

Something is really wrong when this group of stupid gets the coverage they had.

It matters little that the Tea Party movement is a complete fiction. It serves the purpose of its creators because it is propped up by a biased complicit media.