Harvard Crimson misses Tea Party scoop

"Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off," former journalist and newly minted Pentagon adviser Rosa Brooks (above, sweetly spinning Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright last year) wrote in her final LA Times column last week. Frightening to think that a mind so out of touch with the imperatives of human nature will now be advising our top military planners.

"By engaging in such puerile antics, the tea partiers only perpetuate the perception of their intellectual bankruptcy," write the Harvard Crimson editors in a fact-challenged regurgitation of mainstream media talking points about last Wednesday's Tax Day Tea Parties:

Tea-party enthusiasts claim that the tea parties were supposedly a spontaneous, nonpartisan, grassroots movement [which they are] fashioned after the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773 … The only problem is that the tea parties of Tax Day 2009 were neither spontaneous nor, in fact, very much related to the original tea party.

… However, the greater existential question for these spontaneous tea parties than the legitimacy of their spontaneity is the legitimacy of their claim to the title “tea party,” for it is not entirely clear what the protesters were protesting.

As we snorted in high dudgeon in the comments:

Perhaps had you been on the scene and talked to some of us "hysterics" in person last Wednesday — rather than rely on biased media screeds -- you might have gotten a clue.

For many of us tea partiers it wasn't about taxes per se. Instead, it's the Rahm Emanuel thing about "taking advantage of a serious crisis" by ramming through big-government initiatives that citizens would never approve were they not distracted.

Sticking to the party line, the Crimsoneers echo Senior White House adviser David Axelrod's shock, shock at the ingratitude of us unwashed:

"The thing that bewilders me is that this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people," Axelrod argued. "I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face."

He said the TEA Party events, which were organized by the conservative group FreedomWorks, comes from a dissatisfaction with the economy that "can mutate into something that's unhealthy."

A classic case of misdirection, as Fred Barnes recently characterized Obama's signature tactic, "pretending to head one way while going another." We little people are supposed to be satisfied with government handouts and not bother our pretty little heads about the power grab that's going on behind the curtain. It may not be "entirely clear" to the Crimson editorial board "what the protesters were protesting," but the self-organizing "smart crowds" of tea partiers ourselves — soldiers of Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids — know exactly what's got our dander up. Mark Steyn explains:

That’s why these are Tea Parties — because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining “your interests” and then announcing that he’s giving you a “tax credit” as your pocket money.

As we wrote a couple of years back in another context, "It's naive to believe [citizens] should be content to have physical comforts handed to them on a welfare platter. No man — no creature worth its salt — can bear the shame. Come to think of it, that's exactly what's wrong with the liberal project." Talk about intellectual bankruptcy.

Update: Maggie's links.

Comments

[goomp]

Production of material goods is the basic generator of financial well being. Food, housing, and all the things we use and enjoy have to be produced. They are not produced in the halls of academia or the other useful but non-productive pursuits, and certainly not by politicians. These areas of non-productive endeavor can serve a useful purpose, but to think that without an incentive-driven culture life can be other than bare sustenance is folly.

[me]

my butt smells

[Gayle Miller]

This is typical leftwing thinking and propoganda: If you cannot mount a persuasive and intelligent argument against some activity or belief of the right wing - just call them stupid or neanderthal or something of that ilk and move on hoping that nobody will notice that you never ever responded to the question.

[Micha Elyi]

Uh, explain to me again why taxpayers, including low income taxpayers who've never been to college, are squeezed by the Federal government to subsidize Harvard's tuition?

Let's have separation of education and state. It's far more justified under the U.S. Constitution than any ACLU-imposed wall dividing church and state.