Imagine for one second if the 2003 anti-war protests had a 1/10 of the coverage Teabag rallies have

I was out there in the streets with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and saw where millions demonstrated all over the World leading up to the beginning of the Iraq War in March, 2003.

Sure, there was some coverage. A two-minute news package here... a three minute news package there... all while there were hundreds of hours dedicated to trying to drum up the wars.

Rarely did you see a pundit who was against the Iraq War on a news show, let alone two at the same time like there were two teabaggers on the Chris Matthews Show and other 24/7 shows.

Now we have the day-after coverage after we had the day-before coverage of the Teabag rallies.

From my perspective, I saw the local rallies last year and this year. The crowds were smaller, the signs were monitored more and people seemed to have been coached on not acting too nutty, or like they were last year or the August anti-health care rallies in front of local legislators.

Nowhere is there any indication why the crowds were smaller, less angry and no indication as to just how a "local grassroots effort" can somehow have large video screens, concert-level sound systems, large tents all on public, government-run locations monitored by government employees like the local police.

Yet, we are to just assume that this shrinking group is somehow more important in their quest to attack our President while those who marched in the streets against the Bush lies and wars were dubious because they "were attacking the President".

Of course, the same people in the teabag rallies screaming about privacy being lost and large amounts of money being spent were nowhere to be found when the Patriot Act was signed and trillion dollar wars were waged for oil profits and corporate piracy.

They were all at home watching Fox News and mad that people were attacking the President.

And SQUARED would not equal the number of people who marched against the war.


I remember... yes, I do.


Think about it... these puny "crowds" are all that the GOP fueled machine can produce! That's a good thing!

In a talk about it, then put on right wingers to demogogue people for it, call them unpatriotic and say they were "enabling our enemy's ..."

I said it before he even won the office, the WOT and the commander in chief BS would come to a SCREECHING halft in January of 2009 ...

We still have troops in Iraq, we have MORE troops in Afganistan, we are still dealing with radical muslim extremists ... But, the same arse hats who railed on people for being unpatriotic and supporting terrorists 4-5-6 years are are NOW saying people are being true patriots for the vile and dispicable, and frankly baseless crape the tea baggers are doing ...

Simple partisanship ...

Stay on message.

It was so infuriating to have tens of thousands of people on the National Mall to protest the Iraq War, with C-SPAN devoting huge block of time to it, and what did the speakers talk about?

FREE MUMIA!!!

FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!!

FREE TIBET!!!

Jeez, it was like every far-left concern had to get its allotment of time at the podium.

Meanwhile, people sympathetic to the anti-war cause were confused and disgusted, figuring there was no point in joining a movement that couldn't decide what it was about.

If the Teabaggers were "pure" in their message of a libertarian, non-theocratic view... that would be one thing.

But even in the more tempored Tea Party rally I saw, there still was the Birther crowd, the Obama is a Marxist-Socialist-Nazi crowd and the other flavors of Poor Loser Religious Reich nonsense on the stage as well as the crowd.

Any rally that gets large numbers of people to actually show up has to cater to all the subset issues that are even distantly connected to the "main cause".

It's the coverage that is the issue. The Teabaggers can suffice to say they get out their message more effectively BECAUSE THEY HAVE 24/7 NEWS CYCLES to get their message out.

The Anti-War/Peace/Etc. protests had LITTLE coverage comparatively. The reasons are obvious if you follow the money.

So faux reports it because it fits their politics and they're funding it. CNN just likes it because it's an easy story to keep repeating. MSNBC reports it so they can mock it which ultimately keeps the story going. It's a cycle. In 03 msnbc's parent company General Electric got government contracts for weapons and support services for the war so they supported it. The war fit Faux news's political agenda. CNN was looking forward to reporting the spectacle of war since that's how they got their name in the first place in 1991 during the first Iraq war. There was no chance to broadcast a real protest movement because the fix was in from the start.

biggest protest ever.

Christofascist media scrambled to hide it, or only gave us the jeebus people's opinions on it..

Wow, that must have really been something! Wow!!! *pause to say wow to myself a few more times.... *

Yes, here the local conservarag was unsurprisingly vomitous. The march was stuck in a tiny box at the bottom of the third page, complete with underestimated numbers and remarks by local jaysus-fetus-fetishists-on-the-street who of course did not attend, but certainly had opinions the editors felt the public needs to know.

The funniest thing was the front page--I remember it was a Thursday. Above the fold was Gloria Vanderbilt's obituary. Below the fold was ----sit down for this-------
A long personal interest story about a local KKKristian evangelical couple and the struggles of being evangelical.

Actually, I avoid that paper, but that time I wrote a letter to the piece of crap paper which, like another letter I once wrote to them about their KKKristian slant, did not get published. Imagine that!

follow idiocy around and ignore intelligence.

Catapulters of Propaganda.

We have to fight to keep this country now that we've won it back..and the gNOp doesn't have to do anything but tell the corporatewhores how to act bc they are one.

It has obviously been well documented over the years, but this particular chapter in journalistic shamelessness is troubling if only because the irony couldn't be more obvious.

Sure, I can spin socio-economic-political theories about the MSM and the RW, but none of it really makes sense in my heart. I don't get it. One thing is for sure: I don't blame Obama.

Hekate

clowns being investigated?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/threats-and-coverage.html

Threats And Coverage

by digby

After the all day teabag news orgy yesterday I thought I'd do a little research on the coverage of the antiwar rallies before the invasion of Iraq to see if I remembered the blase attitude correctly. I did. The New York Times, for instance, didn't just fail to publish in-depth polling of the movement above the fold on page one, they just put a small story about the marches (which featured hundreds of thousands of people all over the country) on page 8 claiming they were smaller than the organizers had hoped for.

But I had forgotten about this from 2003:




The teabagger rallies don't seem to have activated any of these alarms despite the fact that we know for a fact that sympathetic members of the far right are currently plotting violent activity, which the anti-war marchers had no history or intention of doing. Hell, the antiwar protesters didn't even get any coverage in the press despite having millions take to the streets all over the world.

more...

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/threats-and-coverage.html

At no time during any protests that I attended between 2002-2003 (mostly in Bay Area) were signs calling for the overthrow of the government like the Teabaggers and their ilk.

Because "God" told him to.

They feared being accused of disloyalty, so they abetted the Bush administration.