Why is this a big deal story rather than being treated an the non-event that it is?
Politics in the Zeros
"A republic, if you can keep it."
Politics in the Zeros
"A republic, if you can keep it."
Because, my friend, she had the audacity to mock Obama’s use of a teleprompter.
Personally, I’d rather see Obama use a teleprompter and make eye contact with the audience, than have Palin stare at her hand like she’s trying to cheat on a high school math test! And she needed notes of some sort more than ever; she could barely speak in a full and coherent sentence!
In contrast, Obama took on GOP questions for a full hour without any notes and cut Pence, Price, Boehner, McConnell, and “beg a charity for what you need” Cantor…down to size.
Well, countries in Europe are on the verge of default, surely this is more important than notes scribbled on hands. Yet just before I went to bed last night, it was the main story on memorandum by far, with much frenzied blogging from all sides.
What I genuinely don’t get is why the liberal blogosphere foams at the mouth so much about her. Yet they do. It’s like Pavlov’s dog. Why not just ignore her, at least some of the time instead, instead of giving her all that free publicity.
I’d say one good reason is that she was paid $100,000 to give this talk and what the audience got was about $2.95 worth of her time to prepare the speech. Not to mention there’s nothing wrong with having notes so you’ll remember some key points in your speech, but if those “key points” are so few they’ll fit and your hand and you still can’t rely on yourself to remember them, you’re an idiot.
It infuriates me that the Tea Baggers and their Convention get so much mainstream coverage through the highly financed right-wing echo chamber and others that pick up on that. The Green Party has been at this 20 years in CA (i’ve been there for 10 of it since the “Class of Nader/LaDuke 2000”) and we just had our 20th Anniversary Celebration in Berkeley this past weekend http://www.cagreens.org/action/Anniversary.2010.php
Over 100 people attended our event (and many more would have if not for the size of our state and time/money constraints due to travel) and it wasn’t covered in the mainstream. 600 people paid $500 for the Tea Baggers Convention and Palin got a big chunk to speak. Big Deal. How many people do they really represent?
Sure there is anger and frustration out there, but it ain’t just with Tea Baggers; as I said we’ve been building a third party for 20 yrs. At one point we had over 300,000 registered Greens in the U.S. and the most our National GP Convention would get is an hour or so on C-SPAN and virtually no mainstream coverage.
Hundred of thousands more people agree with our platform and vote for us (e.g. Camejo in various CA Gubernatorial runs, etc.) but I don’t have to tell you Bob, the reasons why they don’t register/vote for us and all the barriers third parties and independents face in our screwed up electoral system.
Here is KPFA coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Green Party of California
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/58425
it starts around 15:35 minutes in.
Yes, 600 people at a meeting gets national coverage. Am not quite sure why they’ve grabbed attention so well, but they have.
One reason, more than a few of them have read Alinsky and use his tactics. Another, they’re the only thing happening now in politics given that the hard left is snoozing (I don’t mean the GP)
Well, the teabaggers came in dead last in Republican Gov Primary. Maybe there is less to the movement than either the media thinks or the liberal bloggers fear, but she is a story that is easy to write.
One of the problems that Greens have is that we don’t give the media a story to write. After all, conflict is a story, consensus isn’t. Fighting internal battles does not count for much; standing up for Green Justice would make the front page.