Teabaggers, or, The Legacy of William Randolph Hearst

I've not paid all that much attention to the teabaggers, aside from resenting the fact that they've co-oopted a perfectly good word that had a nice, rich meaning to it and made it into something tacky. I figure if the media is hyping something, it's probably not that important, and it turns out I was close to being right. From Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog:

Early on, the organizers had predicted millions would attend. Not even close. I was at the inauguration and saw what millions looked like. This was very far from it. Very far. The Washington Post reported there were "tens of thousands." Teabaggers have been tweeting a fake picture (of a sunny day and today wasn't sunny) apparently to claim they had a bigger crowd. Mike Stark has a video showing the size of the crowd, which really didn't extend too far down the Mall. In fact, the National Black Family Reunion took up most of the mall today. Yes, that event was taking place at the same time the teabaggers were protesting. (At 14 seconds into Mike Stark's video, you can see the white tents for the family reunion on the other side of a big patch of empty lawn.) Quite a juxtaposition.

I've been rooting around to find photo galleries of the protesters. Josh Nelson captured the essence of the event here. And, I did see that "Obamacare" hearse. Huffington Post has an array of photos, as does Think Progress. My overall take: The teabaggers were a very white, very angry and older crowd. There were a smattering of confederate flags around. The only thing missing was the white robes and hoods. Let's just say, if one of them had a concession stand selling white robes and hoods, they'd have made a bundle.

If you've been reading the blogs at all, you know that the corporate media reports of the disruptions at the town hall meetings in August were wildly exaggerated. Most of them were attended by people who had genurine concerns and who know how to behave like grown-ups, and the forums wound up being just that -- forums where concerns were discussed and actual facts presented. (I think we have to omit anything run by Chuck Grassley's people, though.) I forget where I saw the story of one congressman who was told point-blank by a reporter that if his town hall didn't explode, it wouldn't be covered.

Once again, boys and girls, the corporate media are not reliable sources of information, and their influence has become a negative factor in public discourse. They've been stenographers for the right for over a decade now, they are not interested in reporting what's actually happening, they will only challenge Democrats (and frankly, with this particular Democratic administration, that's a good thing, but it would have been helpful to see some of that spine in the last one), and their idea of "balance" is built of false equivalents, treating red herrings as a meal, and burning straw men. They don't fact check, they don't look under the surface of what's being given to them, they don't do any real journalism.

Think for a minute where people like Sarah Palin and James Dobson -- not to mention the likes of Pat Robertson -- would be if the media had ever questioned them, had ever fact-checked anything they said, had ever challenged them to support their assertions, had ever, in fact, done their jobs. Right -- they'd be nobodies, and quite deservedly so. Instead, Van Jones, who by all accounts was an excellent choice for his post, but who made the mistake of signing a perfectly innocuous petition seven or eight years ago, becomes a scapegoat for all the sins the right sees in this administration. (And they are very good as seeing sin in otheres.)

It seems that the main function of the blogosphere has come to be keeping the corporate media honest, to which the corporate media resonds with disdain for bloggers who do better at the journalists' jobs than the journalists do. It's a pity there are so few journalists working at newspapers.