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Can (does) the Tea Party exist without Fox News?

August 30, 2010 9:39 am ET by Eric Boehlert

Glenn Beck and his supporters are no doubt happy with the turn-out for Saturday's rally in Washington, D.C. Whether the actual crowd number was 100,000 or three or four times that, there's no question that a lot of people showed up to hear Beck speak.

So that means the Tea Party is alive and well, right. (And make no mistake, Saturday's "Honor" rally was Tea Party through-and-though.) That means that the Tea Party is able to draw impressive crowds and remains a growing force in American politics, right?

Not quite.

What the weekend rally proved (once again), is that when Fox News gets behind a "grassroots" Tea Party event, it's a success. (Think 2009 rallies.) And when Fox News, for whatever reason, decides to sit out "grassroots" events, the attendance is always a disappointment.

For instance, earlier this month Andrew Breitbart headlined a Tea Party rally in Philadelphia; a rally Fox News did not hype on the air. Organizers expected 3,000-4,000 people to attend. But just 300 showed up.

Also, from earlier this month:

"An Evening of Hope with Sarah Palin," an event featuring the former Alaska Governor, was supposed to be a minor blockbuster in Jacksonville, Florida, next week, but not everything has gone as planned.

Slow ticket sales have forced event organizers to move the function from the 2,936-seat Moran Theatre to the significantly smaller 609-seat Terry Theatre.

And of course, back in April, Palin headlined an anti-tax Tea Party event on April 15, in Boston, but just 5,000 showed up.

This weekend that losing streak came to end, thanks to Fox News, whose involvement all but guaranteed a big turnout for the Lincoln Memorial event.

And yes, I understand that Fox News executives made a point of announcing they were only going to cover the Beck rally as a news event and that it wasn't going to go 24/7 on the coverage. But the day-of coverage was almost irrelevant. The point is Beck used Fox News air time for weeks (months?) promoting and marketing his rally. Beck used his Fox News platform incessantly to pitch the rally and at times to practically beg people to attend.

So in that sense, the 8/28 rally was co-sponsored by Fox News thanks to the invaluable air time Beck set aside on his cable show to hype the event.

That was good news for the Tea Party. But what the Tea Party has yet to demonstrate is that its rallies can succeed on their own. What the Tea party has not shown is that it can draw big crowds without the help of Fox News artificially boosting the numbers.

 

 

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    • Author by nerzog (August 30, 2010 9:40 am ET)
      5 1
      Short answer: No.
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    • Author by nerzog (August 30, 2010 9:43 am ET)
      3  
      Slow ticket sales have forced event organizers to move the function from the 2,936-seat Moran Theatre to the significantly smaller 609-seat Terry Theatre.


      "Moran Theatre"? Okay... that can't be the theater's real name, can it? That would be too delicious.
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    • Author by New Frontier (August 30, 2010 9:45 am ET)
      5  
      Let's just call it the Fox News Channel Party and be done with it. Everyone knows that's exactly what it is anyway.
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      • Author by nerzog (August 30, 2010 9:50 am ET)
        2 1
        They will eventually drop the pretense and consolidate FOX and the RNC. They can spend the money they save on office space to hire more propaganda writers.
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    • Author by epkklk851 (August 30, 2010 10:00 am ET)
      4  
      When I have talked to or overheard people talking at these things, they don't seem capable of discussing facts, they just reverently mouth Faux talking points. I saw a woman give a sitting Congresswoman a Cloward and Piven lecture, which she claimed as her own. I heard people looking for Congressmen or staffers to yell at back in March. I heard a nasty, and angry woman demanding to know why all Liberals were so angry at a Town Hall last summer. I hadn't been angry or even annoyed until she started, but she was contagious and I wasn't as cheerful or excited as I had been. I spoke to her out of shock and disgust, and then she accused me of being angry. And then there were the taunts yelled at the House back in March. "Nancy, come out and play!" It was chilling, and really caused me to leave.
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      • Author by Major Tom (August 30, 2010 10:15 am ET)
           
        Have any rich pictures of the event to share?
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        • Author by epkklk851 (August 30, 2010 11:19 am ET)
          1  
          I was a good little environmentalist and took a steel water bottle to the rally. I got overheated and tried to take a drink, I dowsed my shirt and my camera. My camera is drying out in a bag of rice in the warm sunshine of my kitchen window. I will try this evening to turn the camera on again. There weren't a lot of signs at the rally. Lots of overweight, older White people dressed in red, white, and blue. Most of the signs I saw were counterprotestors, and they got picked on. A number of people in colonial dress, too. And some local color. The LaRouchies were there with their famous Hitler moustache poster. There were some Oath Keepers in motorcycle colors. There was a PT Cruiser covered in stickers that I saw last year. The person must be a local, they drove around the edge of the rally for hours. I also saw a Second American Revolution flag and another variation I hadn't seen before but I think it was a 3% flag. (Betsy Ross flag with II or III or a temple-ish figure in the center.) I did not see any Molon Labe crap. I was happy about that.
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          • Author by Major Tom (August 30, 2010 12:14 pm ET)
               
            Yikes... Sucks about the camera... The silca bead packs they put with shoes works well at drying out electronics if you have any lying around... I saw what websites like MMFA have posted, and although I would have loved to people watch and just be a fly on the wall for the conversations occurring out there, I was glad I couldn't go... Truthfully, the whole 'revival' seemed capable of putting a dead man to sleep... Glad nothing violent occurred though. This could have been worse, if for example, Beck hadn't told the faithful not to bring their guns or (hateful) signs.
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            • Author by epkklk851 (August 30, 2010 12:19 pm ET)
              1  
              I was able to get the camera to turn on, but my daughters scolded me, and said leave it for a day or two. The pictures are there, I saw a couple of them. I feel a bit foolish. My daughter shot some video, but it is really bouncy, and a lot of the time, the camera was being carried at wrist level. The sound though was pretty good for a camera that fits in the palm of my hand.
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    • Author by Meremark (August 30, 2010 12:43 pm ET)
      2  
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      No, there would be NO 'T. Party' without FUX News.

      There would be NO 2000 Florida ballot-count news blockade, and hence NO Prez Dumbo without FUX News.

      There would have been NO blackout of millions of street-marching anti-war demonstrators who might have stopped the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, except that FUX News blacked them out.

      There would be many treason and sedition trials of Bush Administration figures, and war crimes trials for torture murders, and impeachment would have been on the table except that FUX News wiped it all away -- and then character- and career-assassinated anyone in the massmedia who set it up again.

      There would be NO Breitbart and such 'collateral damage' without FUX News.

      There would be NO broken Wall Street Journal without FUX News.

      *
      AND, there would be NO FUX News without EVERY Cable TV SUBSCRIBER paying FUX channels some dollar-percentage for each channel in the Basic BUNDLE where FUX News is embedded -- Cable TV buyers PAY FUX News whether or NOT they watch a single nanosecond of the brainwashing, as long as the monthly cable bill is paid.

      When Cable TV SUBSCRIBERS choose to bankrupt FUX News and obliterate the 'T. Party' (and its diabolic predecessor look- and act-alike 'single-issue groups' all spawned from the loudmouse televangelism talk begun in cable TV's BUNDLED watch-one,pay-for-all channels, since 1975), then the savvy SUBSCRIBER chooses: BOYCOTT Cable TV (until FUX is excised and excoriated from the bundle).

      Cable operators: Do a FUXectomy.


      There was never a 'religious rightwing' or religion-flapping ANYwing in US politics until the cable TV bundle came along with preachers in the marginal 'spare' channel slots. Cable TV subscribers have funded the entire rightwing ReichBuild from 1980 Reagan/Bush, onward.


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