Leftist media types were eager to discredit the Tea Party protesters who assembled on Tax Day earlier this year to voice their objections to rampant government expansion, exponential deficit spending and the burdensome tax increases to follow.
Commercial Appeal Metro Columnist Wendi C. Thomas posted an update on Twitter, reporting that she was “driving past the Tea Party in Memphis,” but still felt qualified to offer a judgment based solely on the gathering’s signage and skin color. Apparently the Rush Limbaugh phrase “drive-by media” is literally true.
Upon confrontation, Thomas refused to elaborate and attempted to silence criticism by blocking access to her status updates. It was a curious move, since her Twitter account is prominently advertised on the newspaper’s website and can still be viewed publicly, even without logging into the site.
In another display of willful ignorance, the Memphis Flyer’s Jackson Baker wrote that the gathering was “a nationwide Fox News-generated ‘protest’ against — just what?”
Without bothering to lift a journalistic finger or attempt to actually discover anything resembling a set of facts concerning the event’s genesis or purpose, Baker was content to consult only his own crusty, ideologically-biased assumptions. That’s how he determined that the Memphis Tea Party “was as much a gathering of cranks and ideologues responding to a news conglomerate’s marching orders as it was a bona fide conclave over the issue of taxation.”
In an adjoining report, Flyer colleague Chris Davis amended this allegation and downgraded Fox’s role, saying it had only an “apparent, if not actual, partnership” with the event’s organizers.
Davis attended the rally long enough to document some homespun signs and photograph a young man wearing an offensive t-shirt. If these rather embarrassing props seemed to lack the polish of a rally professionally staged by the nation’s top cable news network, this was lost on our intrepid alt-weekly reporter.
But Davis reportedly took an early leave from the Memphis Tea Party on orders from an “aggressive middle-aged woman” who allegedly commanded him to put away his recording equipment. She must not have detected the other 999 people doing likewise, since everyone else was allowed to stay at the free and open event, held in a public park.
Is that really all it takes to rid ourselves of biased journalists? She apparently accomplished more with one well-deserved scolding than thousands have been able to achieve with frustrated letters to the editor, canceled subscriptions and general contempt for the entire floundering news industry.
While the media was busy peddling these deliberately misinformed notions to its dwindling readership, state and federal legislators were preparing their own assault — new tax bills unwittingly tailor-made for the tea party activists to expose and defeat.
Now we wait to see if they, like the Boston radicals before them, are determined to turn a grievance into a real political movement.
For more on that topic, see my editorial in the upcoming June issue of the Main Street Journal (subscribe online).
