WSJ: Health care mini-mobs are just like liberal activists
August 20, 2009 4:06 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
The media continues to produce stunning bouts of false equivalencies while covering the wholly unprecedented mini-mob phenomena, as protesters storm town halls, turn them into free-for-alls and make sure public policy is not debated. As they hang politicians in effigy, swarm around their cars in the parking lot, issue death threats, and show up brandishing Nazi posters and loaded guns.
According to the WSJ's Jake Sherman, the right-wing is simply copying what liberals have done for years. (They always arrived at anti-war rallies armed, right?) Indeed, his article's headline says it all:
Conservatives Take a Page From Left's Online Playbook
There's nothing new in the ugly hatred and violence the mini-mobs have sparked, according to the Journal. It's just politics in America people. Both sides do it! (In fact, the Journal never even alludes to the mayhem unleashed by the right-wing in recent weeks.)
Sherman's false equivalency is doubly lame because he pretends that the conservative blogosphere has been a key player in whipping up the mini-mobs; that after trailing liberals for years, the mini-mob movement is the right-wing blogosphere's coming out party.
Except, of course, it's not.
As Peter Daou correctly pointed out at Huffington Post this week, the entire mini-mob crusade was built around the GOP's age-old media strategy--right-wing radio, Drudge and Fox News. i.e. It's 'Old Media.' In terms of new technology, the mini-mobs are very 1990's. And no matter how hard Sherman tried in his article to spin it differently, the conservative blogosphere has been a spectator in the mini-mob movement, not a leader.
UPDATED: The Journal held up Americans for Prosperity as an example of conservative "online activists" bubbling up from the grassroots. Really? the pro-tobacco industry Americans for Prosperity is grassroots?
I doubt it:
The AFP is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation...Koch Family Foundations is funded by Koch Industries. According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company, and the largest privately owned energy company, in the United States. Koch industries has made its money in the oil business, primarily oil refining. Presently, it holds stakes in pipelines, refineries, fertilizer, forest products, and chemical technology.
Ironic: In an article about how conservatives are (supposedly) building a grassroots movement online, the Journal couldn't even find an actual grassroots organization to profile.
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Left Hook! The Blog
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I do believe the term and the tactic were produced and refined under the tutelage of one David Axlerod.
Secret side of Astroturfing
Should the press have called Mr. Axlerod out when he "Astroturfed" for dem cause celebre? The point is now that dem tactics have been co-opted and used against them they don't like it so much.
I will disagree that a grassroots movement hasn't sprung up though. Our local Town Hall was an outdoor setting with plenty of common folk who behaved and did not shout anyone down. The media has blown some over the top and high profile TH's out of proportion making them indicative of ALL TH's. I'm betting more were like the one back home.
So they are now resorting to repackaging Comedy show ideas! LOL!
Stay classy WSJ.
I'm all for people being passionate about issues and expressing their opinions, but it really seems like wasted energy when entire movements seem universally confused about what they're mad at.
This does seem to be the latest ingenious approach by the wingnuts, to somehow convince the yokels that these people, while in total agreement with the Real Stoopid Americans fears and paranoia, have been subject to the bad influence of those awful leftys.
Just in the past few days I've seen-
The unstable woman carrying the Nazi sign and getting the treatment she deserved from Barney Frank described as a "LaRouche Democrat".
One of the trolls at this site suggesting the teabaggers must have been influenced by Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
While LaRouche has moved more to the right since his Marxist stuff in the 70s, his ideas are all over the place. He seems to hate and be suspicious of everybody, right and left. The only relevant issue right now is that his followers (if this woman is one) seem solidly aligned with the far right fringe(aka mainstream) of the GOP.
And to compare Alinsky's methods of disruption for the have-nots to assert some power over the haves with the corporate-backed suckers at the town halls is too weak to take seriously.
Some rumors about that they will be directed against Golbal Warming next. Its sure to be a torturous route to allow yelling and screaming on this topic. Organized TeaSun Rallys?
(In important ways, of course, he is "old media"--Drudge is a very top-down, broadcaster-to-audience model. But still, it's weird to see a web site described lumped in to the "old media".)
(In important ways, of course, he is "old media"--Drudge is a very top-down, broadcaster-to-audience model. But still, it's weird to see a web site described lumped in to the "old media".)