I'm really sick of all the media attention the teabaggers are getting.

[bluethruandthru]

The news is full of teabagger "anti-tax, anti-big government" rallies. I live outside DC and even the local news has been full of stories about the huge crowds expected downtown today as the "teabagger express" makes it's final stop on it's country wide tour! There may be traffic jams and long delays on the Metro!?
Really? Really? Where they hell were they when ten of thousands/hundreds of thousands of us were on the mall protesting these damned wars? :rant:

[ShortnFiery]

1. We had MILLIONS out in the street to protest the Iraqi Invasion. Even after the invasion

I went to a protest that pulled in over 250,000 in D.C. Hell, we covered the place when we marched - it wasn't as awesome as the pre-invasion March but it was at least 10x larger than these piddly assed teabaggers. Did the M$M give us much more than a brief nod. NO!

I loathe the M$M. :grr:

[DCBob]

5. I was there for three of the protests and they were all enormous and hardly covered by the media.

MSM sucks.

[OnionPatch]

15. Not only did we have millions here

but there were millions of concerned people all over the world protesting Bush's war. You'd think the teabaggers were the first people to ever stand up for their beliefs.

[Lost4words]

2. makes you wonder,.... nt

[JohnnyBoots]

3. The lady on Channel 4 said there might be some delays, but defintely NO road closures. I think

that about sums it up. I agree that they get too much coverage, hopefully it leads to overexposure and eats up the clock for their 15 minutes.

[chelsea0011]

4. And M$NBC kept saying 10,000 were in Boston yesterday but the actual

"count" was a few thousand. Honestly, some said it was 5,000, but I have been at concerts at the Commons, and I saw no pictures that would even show that many. And this is The Commons. Hundreds upons hundreds are there anyway. I can't tell you how mnay times I've meandered on up to some sort of gathering just to watch. So why should M$NBC make it more than it was? And I can only imagine that Faux called it as 10's of thousands.

[janet118]

19. A lot of people in Boston were protesting tea baggers . . .

and there were a lot of vendors and media. Most of the TPers were from out of state. The Boston Globe says a "park ranger" estimated the crowd to be around 6000. That might have been true when Sarah Palin spoke, but not before or after. Boston.com estimated 3000 on the day of the rally, but the Globe upped it to 6000 for today's edition. I would say that's quite generous from the aerial photo I saw. On Hardball, Chris Matthews stated that Palin attracted "10,000 fans" on the Boston Commons. I would say that's an outright lie.

The numbers are all over the place, but I'm thinking that 3000, including gawkers, vendors, cops and anti-tea baggers, is about right. The big question is: Why does the non-Fox media inflate the figures and contribute to the mystique of the "rock star" Sarah? What the anti-war progressives need is a controversial "rock star" to get media coverage. Gee, I wonder if Tiger Woods is a progressive? :evilgrin:

[Xenotime]

6. The RW terrorist are show us who the are.

[newtothegame]

7. Who gives a Fu** what the media says or does?

:shrug: It didn't stop us from having our rallies, so who cares if we got to be on tv or not?

[bluethruandthru]

10. The problem with all the media exposure is it legitimizes the teabaggers.

The more coverage they get ...especially with all the talk about their "big" rallies...the more people think they are a major force in this country.
I rarely hear any media coverage that portrays them as a fringe group..or even right wing. They are being presented as a mainstream organization.
Like it or not, that kind over coverage molds the opinions of many in this country.

[SocialistLez]

16. +1 nt

[Walk away]

8. The only thing progressives can do is continue to marginalize them...

and reiterate their connections to the Militia movement and racists groups. Their entire ideology is based on a hatred of non-whites. We have to keep pushing until the media finally has to admit it.

[City Lights]

9. Me too.

And I'm even sicker of the whiners claiming the teabaggers are being ignored or smeared by the media.

I despise the media. :nuke:

I despise republicans/conservatives/teabaggers.

[SoCalNative]

11. I'm just hoping

simultaneous meteors fall from the sky in every location the teabaggers are gathered and take out all of them.

[Bgno64]

12. You have to understand,

the media overstates the importance of the teabag rallies for one reason only:

They believe it will inoculate them against the charge of being the "liberal media."

It won't, of course. But this is another reason the mainstream media in this country is doomed - they don't have the stones to point out that 5,000 people in Boston, a metro area of 4.2 million people, is pathetic; they have to pretend it's a triumph.

[Blue Owl]

13. Will this finally be the M$M's "emperor wears no clothes" moment?

I've been waiting for the critical mass to turn on their fabricated, propaganda-riddled version of the "reality."

Quite shameful, really.

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. Well, look at the owners of the media and you will see why. n/t

[otohara]

17. When They Scream No One Is Listening to Them

I have to laugh - because they get far more coverage than the WORLD WIDE anti-Iraq war movement ever got -

They aren't called Media Whores for nothing and then there's FOX their unpaid corporate sponsor.

[Sheepshank]

18. So here's what I think

The media has their own agenda, well duh!

How is it not possible to see so may news channels providing the same slant and wonder at unbiased news delivery? The media's desire for short sighted sensationalism is geared with as much effort provide to their public (imho) news that gets them riled up, as it is about trying to press a conservative agenda with an attempt to influence the political leaning of a nation. What a power rush, huh?. Hey the Dem's are a good target right now! Can't say I didn't see the same thing happening with Bush. The media should never be considered wholly a noble profession for the distribution of honest unbiased information on behalf of the public.

The majority of the news slant is not about necessarily about truth or justice. For the media, the tea party seems to fulfill a gap where attention is shed on the tea bagging activities (sensationalistic activities) rather than have dead, calm air time. No way is the media ready to provide positive news about anything Obama. That's not the type of news the media has trained the general public to want. The public has been well groomed to want news that satiates a visceral craving for vicarious conflict. And in a grand play, giving the media what they want and achieving what they want, the Tea baggers, ESPECIALLY the extreme right wingers, are not going to give up the limelight in any hurry.

Radical, fundie, extremist, militant (you pick) right wingers have felt too fringy for too long. They find a visible group (tea party) where they can openly state their opinions, vocally interact with like minded. The zealots, have found a group that has received much media attention....they are feeling like they are right (as in correct). They are feeling vindicated and suddenly not so fringy. Political celebrities are listening to tea baggers, and in many cases bolstering the ego and legitimizing the tea baggers, with Palin/Bachmann'esque speeches.

These tea baggers are not about to disappear back into the woodwork, not now that they have had the spotlight shed on them.

The GOP leaders nurtured this hunger and thirst for attention by right wing extremists. They can just suck it up and deal with their abomination of a creation. I suppose they could risk throwing them all under the bus and alienating two thirds of the group. I'd be ok with that too. But in all actual fact, the extremists they have nurtured can no longer be ignored. They will have to address these groups one way or another. I think it's called a lose/lose situation.

[arcadian]

20. If you are sick now, wait til 2012

If Obama loses they are gonna give the tea baggers credit, you just watch.