Welcome to the Fox News

By Weekly Archive On Apr 22, 2009

When
is a protest not a real protest?

When
it’s all about partisan politics rather than issues, when it’s staged
by the media, and when nobody knows why they’re there. And that’s
exactly the case with those so-called "Tea Parties" held
around the country on Tax Day, April 15.

Organizers
proudly called them "grassroots" protests. In fact, there
was nothing grassroots about them. As economist Paul Krugman noted,
they were more like Astro-turf. The tea parties were hatched,
planned, and paid for by three right-wing organizations:
FreedomWorks, headed by former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey;
dontGo, which organized last year’s GOP public-relations blitz in
support of offshore drilling; and Americans for Prosperity, headed by
Ralph Reed’s former business partner, Tim Phillips.

Having
organized the parties, Republicans then showed up to pour the tea.
Speakers at various locations included Newt Gingrich, Armey, John
Boehner, Alan Keyes, Joe the Plumber, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, several
Republican members of Congress, and hooker-bait David Vitter.

The
tea parties did make history, in one sense. They represent the first
time a television network has actually moved from covering events to
creating events. For an entire week before April 15, Fox News
exclusively hailed the upcoming tea parties, broadcast their
locations, and encouraged viewers to participate in "FNC Tax Day
Tea Parties." For those unable to attend an event in person, Fox
News even conveniently hosted a "virtual tea party" on its
Web site.

Host
Neil Cavuto vehemently denied that he and fellow Foxers had become
event sponsors, not just event reporters, insisting that Fox had
given just as much advance publicity to the Million Man March in
Washington. There’s only one problem with that: The Million Man March
was held in 1995. The Fox News Network wasn’t launched until 1996.

The
truth is, the tea parties were a Fox News creation and would never
have happened without Fox. Between April 6 and April 13, as
documented by Media Matters for America, Fox News featured at least
20 segments on the upcoming "tea parties" and aired over 73
in-show and commercial promotions for their coverage of the events.
Not only that, on April 15, Fox anchors Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity,
Neil Cavuto and others actually went on the road to host various tea
parties around the country. In Washington, Fox News analyst Tobin
Smith welcomed participants "on behalf of Fox News Channel."
Clearly, the old slogan of Fox News — "we report, you decide"
— has been replaced by the more accurate "we create, you
participate."

Even
with Fox’s blessing, however, the tea parties were a bust. Organizers
predicted that millions of Americans would attend over 2,000 events
around the country. In actuality, there were only about 300 tea
parties, and attendance, based on reports from sites across the
country, was in the tens of thousands.

And
no wonder. For one thing, nobody could quite explain what the
assembled protestors were really protesting. Talk about confusion. I
attended the rainy tea party in Washington’s Lafayette Square. Not
even protestors knew why they were there. I saw signs ranging from
"No Queremos Socialismo" to "Hey, Big Brother. Show us
your real
birth
certificate" to "Obama bin Lyin." One lone ranger even
showed up to protest the programming schedule on Fox News: "Move
Glenn Beck to 7 p.m."

Since
the tea parties took place on April 15, you might think they were
held in opposition to higher taxes. Yet over 95 percent of those
protestors just received a big Obama tax cut, not a tax increase.
Others said the protests were held to release express bipartisan
anger over big government spending. If so, where was this gang when
George W. Bush, the biggest spender in history, racked up the biggest
budgets, biggest deficits and biggest national debt ever? How many
tea parties were held on April 15, 2008? Zero.

No,
the evidence is clear. The Fox News tea parties were neither genuine
nor spontaneous. And they certainly bore no relation to the original
Boston Tea Party protest against "taxation without
representation." This year’s events were pure partisan political
rallies, staged by Republicans and promoted by Fox News, to embarrass
President Obama.

In
the end, that’s what protestors were most unhappy about: They lost
the last election.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "Train
Wreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too
Soon)."
You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his Web site:
billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com.