The right wing population in this area is small, but it has disproportionate influence with one of our institutions: the New London Day. Over the years the Day has been inundated with letters accusing it of right wing bias (while it was endorsing Republicans such as Simmons and George Bush). In response, the Day has gone to great lengths to appease its critics. Some time back it decided that it made eminent good sense to offer those critics regular gigs as op-ed writers, despite the fact that they had a lot of trouble constructing reasonably coherent sentences.
Today, on the front page, the http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=3ab94dd0-131c-436b-970e-a81143193f7c. (It is my understanding that the term “tea-bagging” has a sexual connotation that the demonstrators prefer to ignore. To be honest I’m not entirely certain of the mechanics of that kind of tea-bagging. In any event, I will resist the temptation of making any puns or cheap sexual wordplay. ) In any event, these folks will be gathering locally and “across the nation” in favor of positions that are contrary to their own interests, to the extent that they have a coherent message at all.
The Day plays it straight. This is a grassroots effort. Is the Day covering up the fact that this is an astroturf movement from first to last, or is it simply uninformed. Who knows?
The Day isn’t Fox News, but maybe it’s auditioning. Why else would it give handy directions for getting to these demonstrations “If You Go”? I can’t recall the Day being quite so accommodating when the protests concerned real things, such as wars. Isn’t it amazing how these sparsely attended gatherings are getting media coverage far in excess of that garnered by the literally millions of people who protested Bush’s Iraq adventure, or the demonstrations at both Bush inaugurals, each of which was ignored by the media and each of which drew a great number of participants (real grass above those roots, too).
I have no problem with the Day covering these events. They are news, of a sort. It wouldn’t hurt, though, if the Day would take the trouble to inform its readers of the folks that are behind these events: the usual suspects such as Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Richard Mellon Scaife, etc, with a healthy push from “fair and balanced” Fox News. The poor fools attending these demonstrations are wasting their precious time in order to preserve low tax rates for millionaires. This is not just an opinion, this is fact and it should be reported.
One Comment