Tea Parties

Survivalists: Paranoid right-wingers or a shrewd, far-thinking, and diverse urbanites? The New York Times can't decide. Editorial board member Lawrence Downes' Thursday morning post, "Jesus, Freedom and Guns," used a YouTube video from a left-winger to mock gun-rights supporters as Christian paranoids fearing government tyranny: Here is a video shot at a gun-rights rally on Jan. 19 at the…

The liberal media's handling of any conservative political organization is a four-phase process, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Tea Party News Network reporter Scottie Nell Hughes in a recent interview in the MRCTV studio. "It begins by ignoring them, and if you can make them go away that way, you're done," the Media Research Center founder noted. "If that doesn't work, then you go to…

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell seemed unsure about the extent of Tea Party's political influence. During an interview of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, O'Donnell first indicated that the movement was a potent force: "I want to ask you...about how powerful the Tea Party is. Is the Tea Party holding back House Republicans and Speaker Boehner from agreeing to additional…

Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) announced Thursday that he will be trading his Senate seat in January to assume the helm of the Heritage Foundation. Covering the surprising development in its Friday edition, Politico dismissed DeMint as a mediocre politician with an undistinguished record who is moving on to captain a conservative think tank that has become "predictable, uninspiring, and often lacking in…

During a discussion of the new film Lincoln on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, documentary film maker Ken Burns ranted about one of the supposed lessons he took away from the movie: "Race is always there in America....Do you think we'd have a secession movement in Texas and the other places, faddish secession movement, if this president wasn't African-American?  Do you think the vitriol that came…

Even though Republicans kept the House, CNN was trying to bury the Tea Party on Wednesday. Anchor Carol Costello asked if the movement was dead while CNN's headline proclaimed the "end of the Tea Party movement." "Is the Tea Party dead?" Costello ridiculously asked GOP strategist Ana Navarro. She took a shot at Fox News after Bill O'Reilly blamed some liberal media for "promoting ideology,"…

Obscure cable 'news' network Current TV's aptly named show, Say Anything with Joy Behar concluded an episode on Monday night by putting forth a different perspective on Mitt Romney that was of course related to all the worn-out liberal judgments of him. Behar justified her endorsement of President Obama's re-election by comparing his Republican challenger to a "horny guy doing speed dating."…

When CBS’s longtime Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer sits down in Boca Raton, Florida, tonight to moderate the final 2012 presidential debate, he’ll be following three journalists who became targets for criticism over how they handled their moderating duties. Upset liberals scorned PBS’s Jim Lehrer for taking a hands-off approach in the first debate on October 3, with MSNBC analyst Howard…

Drifting around the dial this morning, I happened on MSNBC's Weekends With Alex Witt.  Within minutes, I was stunned by two Witt whiffs, to wit: 1. Criticizing the Tea Party's lack of "diverse thinking," she asked Joe Scarborough "how much has the Tea Party damaged the Republican party?" Joe gently explained that far from damaging the GOP, the Tea Party propelled it to historic landslide…

Jake Sherman at the Politico is suffering from the same detachment from reality I found his colleague Anna Palmer in this morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Palmer's piece asserted that an election win by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would herald the return of l-l-l-lobbyists, who have supposedly (not actually) been a rare presence in the pristine and pure Obama administration…

In an obituary for former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter on Sunday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O'Donnell summarized his shift in political allegiance this way: "Specter's views, supporting abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun control, made him too liberal for the Tea Party movement...Under assault, he bolted to the Democratic Party." Introducing O'Donnell's report,…

Corrected from earlier | Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel appeared on the September 27 Morning Joe to give viewers a preview of the latest issue of the magazine, the cover story of which is devoted to Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. At the tail end of the segment, teasing other articles in the issue, Stengel plugged Bobby Ghosh's interview with Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the son of Omar…

With Occupy Unmasked being released today in select theaters, this morning’s edition of CNN’s Early Start with Zoraida Sambolin invited David Bossie, producer of the film and President of Citizens United to discuss the film.  However, things got hazy towards the end of the interview where Sombolin shamelessly tried to convey the narrative that Occupy is a “peaceful” movement.

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams brought on political director Chuck Todd to give a "damage assessment" for Republicans in the wake of the Todd Akin controversy. Todd attempted to blame the conservative grassroots for the uproar: "...the Tea Party effect....will maybe cost Mitch McConnell a shot at controlling the United States Senate. Their own infighting has done this." […