Rachel Maddow began by discussing the media’s love affair with the 2009 town halls, “Cable news could not get enough of screaming town hall meetings for Democratic members of Congress. The Senate would return and get berated by conservatives screaming at them over the health reform bill and how god would judge them for it. Cable networks cut out of their regularly scheduled segments to go to these things live. Hey, there’s Arlen Spector. Watch him get screamed at or hey, there’s John Dingell. Watch him getting screamed at…Cable news was absolutely transfixed by the screamy scream screaminess of these town hall events in the summer of 2009.
She noted that the screamers were often brought in by corporate-funded buses, given talking points and instructed on how to go about disrupting the town halls, none of which was covered by the media.
Maddow then explained that history is repeating itself, “A year and a half later, the same thing is happening. This time with congress on recess, town hall events across the country, are, again, lighting up with anger and frustration, but this time it’s about the official Republican Party budget plan. The Paul Ryan budget plan which drastically cuts taxes for the richest Americans back to what they were in the 1930s. It drastically cuts taxes for corporations it gives billions of dollars to oil companies, the poor, orphaned hard-luck oil companies and it also incidentally ends Medicare. It repeals Medicare. It turns Medicare into a coupon system. It makes senior citizens buy private health insurance. That is really unpopular. It’s clear in lots of different polling done over the last few weeks. what’s different this week is that Republicans who just voted for the kill Medicare, cut taxes for the rich plan, last week, Republicans who voted, now it’s the Republicans who have to go back to their districts and defend what they did. It’s turned out to be a mighty challenge starting with the man who authored this budget.”
The difference here being that the reactions and town hall disruptions this time are organic and not scripted by right-wing puppeteers.
Rachel Maddow said TV is ignoring the story in 2011, “You would not know this was happening all across the country if you just read the beltway press or watched most cable TV right now. It’s only thanks actually to liberal websites like Think Progress, Daily Kos, and thanks to reporters like Jason Linkins at Huffington Post, which used to be liberal, but who knows anymore. These are the folks who have been doggedly chronicling these events. Those are the only reason this stuff is getting out there at all right now. There are not network news crews going out to cover these town hall events like they did back in 2009. The beltway could not get enough of it back then, but it is happening again right now, the same thing. And because it’s not angry conservatives, it’s angry everyone else, the beltway press could not care a less.”
Maddow then blasted the mainstream beltway press for not covering liberals, “It’s why you haven’t heard about this… It’s sort of an embarrassing thing to admit. People get mad at me and write letters from Washington every time I say it from within the business every time I say it, but I am just going to say it. The beltway press does not cover liberals. When the beltway press covers liberals, it’s not only not political science, it’s not sociology. When they cover liberals, its anthropology, they might as well be putting tags on our ears and watching us in a mating season. The beltway press right now says the deficit negotiations have to be between President Obama and the Paul Ryan plan. Why not between President Obama and the progressives? If this really is about fixing the deficit, why is the most fiscally responsible budget plan that’s been submitted and introduced? Why is it not on the table?”
The article goes on to cite some of the recent instances where the M$M has further ignored "liberals," and I would claim true, organic protests made up of wide spectra of Americans from every political spectrum and every demographic. The article cites the massive protests in Wisconsin and, I add, those that sprang up all over the country. What about the One Nation rally in D.C. in October? The Iraq war protests?
More at the
Politics USA link, including the RM video segment.
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