The New York Times wrote a post about the Tea Party history and apparently it wasn’t good enough for liberal Twitter. They complained that the paper didn’t portray these activists as racists. My eyes cannot roll any harder. Yes, let’s call millions of Americans who wanted a smaller government that doesn’t overspend racists. Yes, lower taxes and less job-killing regulations are white nationalist action items. It’s ridiculous, but The Timescaved. Our friends at Twitchy captured this insane concession (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
In the late summer of 2009, as the recession-ravaged economy bled half a million jobs a month, the country seemed to lose its mind.
Lawmakers accustomed to scheduling town hall meetings where no one would show up suddenly faced shouting crowds of hundreds, some of whom brought a holstered pistol or a rifle slung over the shoulder. One demonstrator at a rally in Maryland hanged a member of Congress in effigy. A popular bumper sticker at the time captured the contempt for the federal bailout of certain homeowners. “Honk if I’m Paying Your Mortgage,” it said.
Organizers convened mass gatherings across the country called “tea parties,” and they had a specific set of demands: Stop President Barack Obama’s health care law; tame the national deficit; and don’t let the government decide which parts of the economy are worth rescuing.
[…]
… the bare-knuckle, brawling style that the Tea Party brought to American politics, Mr. Brandon added, is still very much intact. And in Mr. Trump, the movement has found a champion who is temperamentally suited to its way of practicing politics — even if he cares little for its founding ideas.
One significant limitation to the Tea Party is the contradiction in its DNA: It was a mass uprising based on notions of small-government libertarianism that are popular with think tanks but not so popular with most Americans. And as Mr. Obama’s allies saw the movement, its outrage over the debt and deficit had another purpose: giving cover and a voice to those who wanted to attack the first black president — people who in some cases showed up at rallies waving signs with racist caricatures and references.
Repeatedly letting itself get bullied into changing its coverage for the left is not a good look for the NYT. https://t.co/nIHWZEfWUO
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 28, 2019
Twitter = the refs. https://t.co/XTUssWw4kZ
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 28, 2019
lmaaaooooooo NYT is edited by twitter what a joke https://t.co/J1BzM1OiL0
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 28, 2019
Yeah, that’s not a fact, NYT. Sorry—but this is just trash. I’ve been to many a Tea Party rally. I have no clue what these people are seeing. Maybe we can thank the liberal media for once again distorting the aims of people who, you know, just want a government that can live within its means. One of the grossest examples of trying to insinuate a racial element with the Tea Party occurred over at MSDNC, where then-anchor Contessa Brewer was triggered that an activist had a rifle slung over his shoulder, protesting at an Obamacare rally where President Obama was present. This was in 2009. What was left out: the man with the rifle was black (via Newsbusters):
MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns." Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: "...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president....we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that." Ratigan agreed: "...then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black. The man appeared at a health care rally outside of President Obama’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Arizona Republic reported: "A man, who decided not to give his name, was walking around the pro-health care reform rally at Third and Washington streets, with a pistol on his hip and an AR-15 (a semi-automatic assault weapon) on a strap over his shoulder. ‘Because I can do it,’ he said when asked why he was armed. ‘In Arizona, I still have some freedoms.’" A picture accompanying the article showed the man was African-American.
Yeah, another manufactured media lie. What else is new?