David Rosenberg’s letter (“Obama’s policies amount to tyranny,” July 8) recalls another time in our history when public discourse was in the toilet and the quality of political arguments was equally deficient. During the Depression demagogues like Huey Long, the Rev. Charles Coughlin, the Rev. Gerald Smith, Dr. Francis Townsend, and William Lemke were fond of throwing around the same kinds of accusations we see today from the tea party and its supporters.
The Rev Smith, ever the political opportunist, was associated with the Christian Nationalist Crusade, the America First Party and the Union Party.
In 1936 at the National Press Club, Smith called President Roosevelt a communist. He also accused Roosevelt of plotting Long’s death. Smith, who railed against Jews and socialists, drew up designs to build a full-size recreation of Jerusalem in the Arkansas hills and was known for other goofy notions, such as linking mental health care in Alaska to a secret government brainwashing program. An early prototype of Glen Beck, Smith was so nutty that even Strom Thurmond kept a healthy distance.
Father Coughlin, who became America’s first mass media (radio) demagogue, coined the phrase “Roosevelt or ruin” and referred to Roosevelt as the “great betrayer and liar” or as “Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt.”
Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice, the Christian Front, and was the pastor of the National Shrine of the Little Flower Church, which he ran as a multimillion dollar business until 1942 when the Vatican shut him down. Like Smith, Coughlin was a notorious anti-Semite, unlike today’s Fox pundits who have traded in 1930 slurs against “Judeo-Bolsheviks” for more up-to-date attacks on “Islamo-Fascists.”
Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?
David Rosenberg writes: “The Tea Party is a nonpartisan, grassroots movement of individuals united by the core values of our founders derived from the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights.”
If Rosenberg thinks that the tea party is nonpartisan and grass-roots, why are all its proponents associated with the Republican Party? Gallup Poll results published in April state that “Tea Party supporters are decidedly Republican and conservative in their leanings.” Republicans like Sarah Palin pose as if following the tea party, but they in fact are its featured speakers and its leaders.
More than that, they are the more extreme wing of the Republican Party. A case in point is the re-election defeat in Utah of Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican incumbent who had worked across the aisle with Democrats. “As I look out at the political landscape now, I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas,” Bennett told The Ripon Society.
“The concern I have is that ideology and a demand for absolute party purity endangers our ability to govern once we get into office,” he added. In our own state the so-called “Massachusetts Republican Assembly,” which calls itself the “Republican wing of the Republican Party,” is affiliated with the tea party movement but is clearly identified with the Republican Party.
But let’s explore the supposed “grass-roots” nature of the tea party.
Tea Party Nation is a Republican concoction that features Sarah Palin. Tea Party Express is the creation of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which in turn was created by Sacramento-based GOP consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates. Tea Party Patriots has a 10-item “Commitment to America” that no Democrats have signed onto and was created by Republican Dick Armey.
Armey, who has been affiliated with or created many more “grass-roots” organizations than the Depression-era demagogues mentioned, founded the Institute for Policy Innovation, Contract with America, Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, AngryRenter.com and FreedomWorks — which is a major financial donor and ideological leader of the tea party. Fox News commentators like Michelle Malkin and Glen Beck serve as the tea party’s free propaganda center.
A media watchdog organization, MediaMatters, summarized: “Despite its repeated insistence that its coverage is ‘fair and balanced’ and its invitation to viewers to ‘say “no” to biased media,’ Fox News has frequently aired segments encouraging viewers to get involved with ‘tea party’ protests across the country, which the channel has described as primarily a response to President Obama’s fiscal policies. Media Matters has compiled an analysis of Fox News’ promotion of these events.”
MediaMatters then went on to list dozens of video broadcasts and Web links which go far beyond reporting into the realm of promotion and political organizing. In April the bias was so evident that Fox stopped commentator Sean Hannity from starring in a Cincinnati Tea Party rally (Los Angeles Times, April 15).
“Nonpartisan” and “grass-roots?”
Surely, Rosenberg jests.
This was published in the Standard Times on July 17, 2010
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20100717/opinion/7170337
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