The Tea Party phenomenon, in stark contrast to the Wall Street protest, was brazenly built-up and slickly marketed by the corporate media itself. It’s debut starred Wall Street media figure Rick Santelli, who initiated a rant on the corporate media channel he worked for, CNBC.
The rant he became famous for
encouraged a protest centered around the fact that the Obama Administration had dared propose measures offering a lifeline to help ordinary citizens on Main Street, who were losing their homes due to the mortgage financial meltdown. Although some mistook the Tea Party rant as a call to protest the bank bailouts (which occurred in 2008), that was never its intent, and Santelli made that clear at time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQfzXQ6UjA&feature=relatedMichael Barrone, a conservative writer, explained it quite well in his nolstagic tribute to Rick Santelli, over a year later.
“The government is promoting bad behavior,” Santelli began.
The object of his scorn was the Obama administration’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan providing aid to homeowners delinquent on their mortgages.“This is America!” Santelli declared. “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”snip
Ever since, the Tea Party Movement has been pumped up as a powerful political factor. It played a significant role in limiting the reform negotiations in the Affordable Care Act, by cowering many Democratic Blue dog congresspeople to vote against a key element of the original plan, the public option. The “movement” was also partially responsible for the loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, which ended in GOP hands. The 2010 defeat of Democrats all over the country is directly attributed to the Tea Party’s fanaticism, but was only made successful via a generous and relentless helping of national media coverage (while the media also worked hard to dampen Democrats’ enthusiasm).
In other words, what started as a rehearsed televised rant against a new administration that was attempting to help people who were suffering the most, ended up bringing Republicans back to power in our national politics and in our state legislatures. This, then, resulted in other extreme actions of union-busting, the systematically diminished value of our teachers, firemen and police officers, and the lay-offs of 500,000 government employees,adding to the unemployment numbers – a GOP wet dream for their “One Term Plan” for our current President, and the never-ending assault on anything our President proposes to help this country. Again, all brought to fruition by one rant cultivated by the so-called mainstream media into a well-financed movement. That, folks, is the true breadth and strength of our mainstream media. That is what they do.
More...
http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2011/09/25/what-the-media-is-doing-to-the-wall-st-protest-is-what-they-are-paid-to-do
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
