Tea Parties

Pop-star and courageous anti-toilet-paper crusader Sheryl Crow apparently has a new political concern: Tea Partiers. The country crooner told CBS journalist Katie Couric that Tea Party members are uneducated, angry and potentially dangerous in an interview with Glamour magazine this June.After Crow complained in the interview that Americans have become too blasé about politics, and that nobody…

Violent protesters set fire to police cars and shattered store-front windows at the Group of 20 economic summit in Toronto this weekend. How did the New York Times, so skittish about the hypothetical threat of non-existent Tea Party violence from the right, react to actual violence committed by political protesters by the left-wing and anarchist groups? With more snort-worthy apologias for left-…

It's well known liberals don't particularly care for Fox News host Glenn Beck, but wouldn't be comparing him to al Qaeda be a bit much? On Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center claimed the lives of over 2,700 people. So what does that have to do with Glenn Beck? Well according to liberal talker Bill Press, Beck's plans to hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28…

"Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model," Chris Matthews told his Friday "Hardball" audience. "Just kill everything, destroy everything, blow it up, nothing gets done. You're dead, but who cares?" he added, referring to conservative Republicans running against Democrats in the 2010 midterms.The comment came at the end of a segment featuring Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Politico's…

Newsweek blogger Ben Adler thinks the national media are giving the Tea Parties gentle treatment. "Unfortunately," Adler wrote in a June 21 post, "what appear to be false notions of objectivity - or perhaps a lack of interest in policy - is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered." Adler complained that a recent…

Actress and author Carrie Fisher, revered for her role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies, granted an interview to the website Pop Eater. Late in the interview, they asked "Is there anyone you haven't met that you've always wanted to?" She said Barack Obama. They expressed surprise she hadn't met him. "I know. I love him. Hopefully I'll meet him sometime. I'm just happy he exists." Then…

What do Tea Partiers, Truthers, birthers, Birchers, militias, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Barry Goldwater, Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Rand Paul, Alex Jones, Orly Taitz, and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh all have in common? Approximately nothing, but don't tell Chris Matthews.The MSNBC "Hardball" host…

"You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting." That's how the biblical prophet Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall that heralded the imminent demise of the Babylonian Empire. It could also sum up journalist Sarah Pulliam Bailey's take on Lisa Miller's "Saint Sarah" piece in Newsweek (emphases mine):Journalists have long been puzzled over Sarah Palin’s popularity. In November,…

CNN's Jack Cafferty ripped the Democratic-controlled Congress for their inaction to pass a budget during a commentary on Thursday's Situation Room: "The Democrats in Congress can't be bothered to pass a budget for next year. That's their job....It's simply outrageous." Cafferty also channeled the Tea Party and strongly condemned the federal government for "taking us down the road to financial…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews's ratings lag  far behind those of his competition, Fox News' Glenn Beck, on a regular basis. So is he perhaps trying to become the anti-Glenn Beck to bolster his stature in the cable news world? On MSNBC's June 9 "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Matthews commented on the Gadsden flag, as if it represented an attitude that viewed the federal government as a occupying force,…

On Wednesday's CBS Early Show, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer provided analysis of Tuesday's primary elections across the country, describing the South Carolina gubernatorial race "where they continue to draw their political plot lines from, you know, 'Desperate Housewives' or something" and how Nevada Democrats were "very happy" with the victory of tea party candidate Sharron Angle.  …

Timothy Egan, liberal New York Times reporter turned very liberal Times online columnist, thinks that Americans will be better off when the old, tired, hypertensive Tea Partiers depart the scene for good and let the lively youth take over saving the world, in "Save Us, Millennials," also featured in Friday's print edition.When an electorate is red-faced and fist-clenched, when the collective…

A promo for a new Chris Matthews special on the "Rise of the New Right" is pretty much what you'd expect: Rand Paul, 9/11 Truther Alex Jones, and lots of militiamen shooting guns. That is the doctrinaire leftist snapshot of the Tea Party movement, so it stands to reason that Matthews will extrapolate it into some dire warning about our political future."There is a rising tide on the right,"…

The movie "Prince of Persia" hit theaters this week.  And although it's based on a decades-old video game and set in the sixth century, reviewers across the nation have identified a very contemporary link: The Tea Party.McClatchy Newspapers's Connie Ogle writes that Alfred Molina, in the role of Amar, "plays a sort of cross between Han Solo with dental-hygiene issues and a Tea Party supporter." …