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Tea Party to Peggy Noonan: It's not rage but disgust!

"Comical: Journolistas Matthews and Joan Walsh hurriedly retape 7 pm broadcast to change Sherrod narrative," twittered new-media mama grizzly Dana Loesch early morning, linking to John Nolte's Big Government post "Who Got to Chris Matthews?: 'Hardball' Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed." The last throes of a dying Cultural Marxist meme?

"For better or for worse, the profound cultural changes in American life during the past half century are testament to the enormous influence exercised by our cultural guardians," writes the estimable Lee Harris in a trenchant if slightly flawed analysis of "The Tea Party vs the Intellectuals" [via Isegoria, who excerpts Harris's totally excellent summary of Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, blogged here early and often]:

Intellectual critics of the Tea Party movement most often attack it for its lack of ideas, especially new ideas — and these critics have a point. But the point they are making reveals as much about them as it does about the Tea Party. Behind the criticism lies the implicit assumption that comes quite naturally to American intellectuals: Namely, that a political movement ought be motivated by ideas and that a new political movement should provide new ideas. But the Tea Party movement is not about ideas. It is all about attitude, like the attitude expressed by the popular poster seen at all Tea Party rallies.

Yes and no. We agree with Harris's point that intellectual elites assume "a new political movement should provide new ideas," but he's dead wrong when he asserts that "the Tea Party movement is not about ideas." He may have been spending too much time in the company of Northeast Corridor fuddy duddies, "polite company conservatives" like Peggy Noonan, whose latest lame WSJ effort, "Chris Christie, not the Tea Party, is the model for the Republicans," gets it half right. Papa grizzly/teddy bear Chris Christie is definitely "da man," but as our fellow Christie groupie, sistah grizzly Jersey girl Cubachi twittered this afternoon:

Actually, Christie went to tea parties across NJ. Peggy is obsessed with belittling tea parties.

The Tea Party is animated by grand old ideas — check out our posts "Tea Party 2.0: 'Just be willing to work hard, and don't try to claim the credit'" and "Cedra Crenshaw vs. King Samir Shabazz: The hand that rocks the cradle?" for starters, Mr. Harris. Even so, he gets it right in the end:

As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas — we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude — the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: “We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves.”

Update: Almost forgot to mention why it's almost over for the "increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses" of this world:

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Update II: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds. Lots of great stuff in the comments, like this from BlogDog:

Why is it necessary for the Tea Party to be driven by "new ideas" when those who call themselves "progressives" want to "progress" by recycling the failed ideas of 70 years ago?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

TIME magazine ends debate on the war in Afghanistan?

Leaving Afghanistan: "Zohal Sagar lost her father and two brothers in the war. Her mother hopes they can leave Afghanistan and find a new life in Canada," TIME captions this bitterweet image of one of the innocent victims of war. But it gets oh so much worse. Their cover image will haunt you forever unless you're a moral relativist like Editor Peter Stengel, who makes a fine point of assuring us he isn't taking sides (see below).

"We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it," protests TIME Managing Editor Peter Stengel, sending the moral relativist's "secret signal" even as he has decided to go ahead and publish what's got to be the best argument ever — the image itself — for staying the course in Afghanistan:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival.

Asked for comment on the plight of women in Afghanistan — presumably not yet having seen TIME's cover portrait of Aisha — former National Organization for Women President Ellie Smeal had this to say, according to a Washington Times report:

The future of Afghan women "has just dropped out of all public discourse. What happens with females over and over again is we're forgotten."

Caption from our June 2 post "An increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses": "Palin isn't a feminist — not in the slightest," huffs card-carrying postmodern feminist Jessica Valenti of the blog Feministing, stumbling inadvertently onto the truth that will soon send her and her sob sisters tumbling into the dustbin of history: "What she calls 'the emerging conservative feminist identity' isn't a structural analysis of patriarchal norms. It's an empty rallying call to women who are disdainful of or apathetic to women's rights."

Try telling that to Sarah Palin and her Army of Mama Grizzlies, Ms. Smeal. Woman as victim? That's SO yesterday. "She's playing the "woman card," notes Tuck. Yet more proof if needed that postmodern feminists are on the wrong side of history.

Our friend Peter Ingemi of Da Tech Guy's Blog has action steps:

That TIME magazine cover … should be put up every time the debate on the war takes place.

Note. Despite its bad press under the recent ramming down the nation's throat of ObamaCare, the best medicine in the world is still being practiced in the land of the free and the home of the brave, as TIME Managing Editor Stengel acknowledges, in spite of himself:

To learn more about Aisha, and how an NGO is helping her get reconstructive surgery in the United States, go to Women for Afghan Women.

Update: This just in on Twitter as we were about to publish, from twitterfriend Paul Levitt:

A friend spent several months in Afghanistan last year teaching traditional songs to women and kids … Told me of people crying at being able to sing again — the Taliban killed anyone who sang, played music.

It isn't just for the women. It's for our very humanity that we must win the war in Afghanistan.

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update III: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Journolist Lite: How conservatives do it

Peter Ingemi of Da Tech Guy's Blog has fedora, will travel. We stumbled onto the peripatetic grassroots cyberjournalist plying his trade on the lawn of Boston Common last April at the Boston Tea Party with Sarah Palin. Since then we've become friends in an informal exchange of ideas, links and banter on Twitter. And thereby hangs a tale (see below).

"Journolisters were basically all card-carrying left-wingers," wrote Twitterpal King Shamus the other day in a post explaining the difference between closed Cabals of on-message types on the left and loose confederations of small-government types on the right in this wild and wooly business of journalism and citizen journalism:

Lefties tend to like collectives of all sorts of flavors; the Journolist email jobby was just another snuggly groupthink security blanket.  When there was a threat to their political views, they angrily pounced on it.  When there was a way to advance their preferred policy ideas or candidates, they swung into action with extreme vigor.

Conservatives and libertarians, on the other hand, tend to travel light. Like Sarah Palin's and the Tea Partiers' totemic grizzly bear, they "are generally loners, but … are still North America's most social bear. They gather at food sources and often forage in family groups." Collectivism vs. individualism [h/t Angela Lash], as we blogged the other day in "Tea Party grizzlies vs Journolist wolf pack." In this case the "food source" is the online and occasionally offline social networking that allows lively minds to feed upon each others' ideas. Here's how it works for this typical libertarian politico-cultural blogger:

1. After whetting our appetite with some tasty tidbits from a few of our personal favorite blogs (see blogrolls at right) early morning …

2. We headed over to Memeorandum to get a bite of what's getting other bloggers' panties in a twist. This morning the top story was particulalry delicious: In the wake of The Daily Caller's latest Journolist revelations, former Journolista Andrew Sullivan — who's been waging a long, lonely battle at his Atlantic blog, "The Daily Dish," trying to prove against all odds that Sarah Palin's baby boy Trig was actually born of daughter Bristol — realizes he's been thrown under the bus, the object of ridicule by those he took to be his friends. An unanticipated byproduct of his epiphany: He finally gets it:

This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever.

We could have told him that years ago, but he never asked.

3. We twittered about it and continued reading.

4. Twitterbuddy Da Tech Guy (photo above) picks up on one of our tweets, proceeds to churn out a post about it and tweets back:

@SissyWillis Who woulda thought trig trutherism was so powerful that it could hit Andrew Sullivan with a cluebat?

Be sure to read Da Tech Guy's post. It's a treat:

How Ironic is it that Sullivan’s trig trutherism might be the thing that forces the Journolist into the MSM? I know the Lord works in mysterious ways but this takes the cake.

Possibly related: Thomas Sowell's "How Smart Are We?"

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Shirley Sherrod: Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism

"Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, discrimination and the 'legacy of slavery' are complicit in the socioeconomic and moral decay," writes Walter E. Williams, quoting Booker T. Washington's  1901 autobiography Up From Slavery, where the author is describing the motivations and modus operandi of the Jesse Jacksons and Reverend Sharptons of his day:

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Booker T. Washington's homegrown grievance industry turned toxic in the last decades of the 20th century, when multiculturalism arose from the ashes of the New Left, as Linda Kimball explained in her American Thinker essay "Cultural Marxism" a couple of years back:

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups …

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

This unholy alliance of homegrown and imported grievance mongering has come home to roost in the person of Shirley Sherrod. While legacy media and fellow travelers in the blogosphere heard what they wanted to hear on those notorious NAACP videos and fashioned a narrative of Sherrod as earthly saint, our friend Dan Riehl actually sat down and listened to the whole thing. Far from the uniter portrayed by the usual suspects, Sherrod in her own words turns out to be a divider capable of accusing video promulgator Andrew Breitbart of wanting "to get us stuck back in the times of slavery." Then came the equally sainted husband Charles and Dan's latest coup this morning, videos of the former SNCC organizer declaring "We Must Stop The White Man And His Uncle Toms ..." But don't tell "former self-hating white person" Joan Walsh of Slate. She "grew up adoring black people" and let Matt Lewis know in no uncertain terms yesterday that "because Sherrod's father was murdered by a white man, she was entitled to call Fox News and Andrew Breitbart a "racist."

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: The News Junkie at Maggie's Farm links. He's taking the month of August off 'cause he's "sick of having to see all of the outrages du jour."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Governor Christie knows the way to a conservative woman's heart

"Oh my gosh! Our conservative teddy bear Governor Christie read our tweets! :) How awesome is that?!" tweets fellow Sistah Grizzly Cubachi as we share the joy of knowing that we are being heard by someone with the power to do something about it who loves this Shining City Upon a Hill as much as we do. One more tweet from Cubachi because it's just so much fun, and then go listen to New Jersey's "Wrecking Ball's" totally awesome interview with the equally awesome Jake Tapper of ABC, recorded and posted for posterity by our go-to man for such things, The Right Scoop. Here's Cubachi:

Yes, @GovChristie knows the way to a conservative woman's heart :D.

By the way, it wasn't just the video but The Right Scoop's introductory remarks that got the scoop:

Christie does a great job refuting the claims made by democrats when asked about them by Tapper. And he proved a great point in one of his answers – that consensus comes from leadership. Basically, if Obama wanted consensus with Republicans, he could get it.

Update: Cubachi swoons posts:

Hooray for the new media!

Crossposted at Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

Smiles of a summer day

Journolist and the loneliness of the long-distance conservative blogger

Shirley Sherrod was not only an initiator of the Pigford Farms case, she received a chunk of change for her company, New Communities, Inc. To be accurate, she received the largest chunk of change for New Communities — $13 million. New Communities was a bankrupt commune-type land trust held by Sherrod and her husband. She and her husband personally received $150,000 each to compensate them for “pain and suffering.”

"'Throwing up as many shorter posts as we can' has got to be the best double entendre ever was," we just wrote in the comments to Little Miss Attila's take on Journolist and the difference between liberal and conservative bloggers, the wolf pack vs the solitary grizzly of our previous post. Delicious food for thought, and it sticks to the ribs. A few nibbles, and then some thoughts of our own on the loneliness of the long-distance conservative/libertarian blogger. Over to you, Little Miss:

Bloggers do send each other links. We send them one-on-one, and as group emails to our own customized link-pimp mailing lists (almost all of us small-time bloggers act as our own publicists, and send out emails every day, or week, or month — demanding that Glenn Reynolds, Rush Limbaugh and whomever else look at what we’re writing). And Elizabeth Scalia, Jim Hoft, Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit and Ace all get mail from me, to which they occasionally respond when time permits. But these writers are all too big to have to send out “look at me” emails. And although there are sub-groups of Southern Californians, chick-bloggers, warmongers, Jesus freaks, libertarians, and energy bloggers that I consult with and link to from time to time, most of us really are too busy to coordinate actual “media strategies,” because we generally also have day jobs and/or home obligations, along with the writing of at least one essay a day and throwing up as many shorter posts as we can.

Her anecdotal analysis nicely reinforces our own wolf pack vs. grizzly comparison of wordsmiths of the left and right. As we twittered:

Little Miss Attila really should be twittering.

We've known about the loose cabal of like-minded proselytizers of the left who pass for a truth-seeking Fourth Estate for at least 20 years, witness our "Soylent Green revisited."

NEWS FLASH: This just in from our dauntless Faux Journolista of the right Matt Lewis, "Five Minutes With Andrew Breitbart," an absolute must read from start to finish:

Believe it or not, one of my primary motives on this planet is to stop this racism, and to stop the Democratic Party's use of race that divides us intentionally. Google me and Clarence Thomas. I went from left to right because I watched this tactic happen to him and I aligned myself with black conservatives. Free thinkers recognize the Democratic Party will do or say anything to instill fear into black Democratic voters … Shirley Sherrod in that video said those who disagree with Obamacare are coming from a racist point of view. That is a troubling racist sentiment.

Update: MichelleMalkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Tea Party grizzlies vs JournoList wolf pack

Fred Barnes's WSJ op ed today got us to thinking about the difference between liberal and conservative journalists. Twittering about it this afternoon, we came up with the metaphor of wolf pack behavior for the JournoList folks on the left side of the aisle. Working as a team, they select their quarry and close in for the kill in a coordinated attack from all sides. Sarah Palin is calling them "sick puppies." But what animal works best as a metaphor for journos on the Tea Party side of the aisle? See below for some answers.

"My experience with other conservative journalists is that they are loners," writes Fred Barnes in "The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy" in today's WSJ. Getting his readers up to speed on JournoListGate, a vaguely bemused "Freddie the Beadle" reluctantly acknowledges there's something rotten in the state of American journalism:

Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism …

The first call I got after the Daily Caller unearthed the emails involving me was from Karl Rove. He said he wanted to talk to his "fellow racist." We laughed about this. But the whole episode was also sad. I didn't sputter at the thought of being called a racist. But it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.

 

"Grizzlies are generally loners, but they are still North America’s most social bear. They gather at food sources and often forage in family groups," according to the Bronx Zoo website. Sarah Palin's metaphor for common-sense conservative women — "Mama Grizzlies" fiercely defending their young — resonates beyond female political candidates to become a perfect metaphor for everyday fellow Americans and social-networking citizen journalists like the Tea Partiers, both women and men, who are entering the political fray to battle the fear-and-smear machine that would douse the lights of the Shining City Upon a Hill.

Lone grizzly vs. wolf pack. Individualism vs. collectivism. The metaphors fit. On the other hand, a case can be made, as we've done before, for social networkers as flocks of birds wheeliing and swooping in unison. As with Adam Smiths "invisible hand," individual choices add up to something that redounds to the benefit of the larger community:

"Individuals, but moving in a single entity. And the reason for this behavior? Well, thousands of eyes looking for predators on the roost site. Nothing could escape their gaze, no raptor could surprise this soaring mass of bird flesh … The birds are also maneuvering for position, social position."

SAD isn't going to do it, Fred. Think of the Mama Grizzlies and Papa Bears: First you get MAD, and then you strike back. Special Forces Commander Dan Riehl has the goods at Human Events in a take-no-prisoners "Defense of Andrew Breitbart." Read it, Mr. Barnes, and take heart.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: The Anchoress links under "Unrelated Weekend Fare."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

NAACP and the Tea Party: Last throes of the fear-and-smear machine?

Screenshot of a prescient tweet from July 24, 2009. What a year of fear-and-smear it's been, and it all seems to be coming to a head a year later as JournoListas' leaked memos and Andrew Breitbart's video revelations emerge into the disinfectant light of day and the Tea Party strikes back.

"They got into a fight with the tea party, and all of this came out as a result of that,” Shirley Sherrod told CNN last night "in reference to the NAACP’s resolution last week accusing the tea party of having used 'racist' tactics," reports Politico this morning. NAACP "got into" a fight with "the" tea party? Puleeze. They tried to PICK a fight by throwing gratuitous accusations at no one in particular, hoping something would stick. There's no single Tea Party. It's not a monolith like the politically correct, JournoLista talking-points-of-the-day, police-state army of race mongers who would smear us as they unwittingly psychologically project their own modus operandi onto the grassroots Army of Davids that threatens their bitterly clinging grasp on power.

Tammy Bruce condensed the essence of Sherrodgate into one eloquent tweet last night.

If you'd followed and perhaps participated in the sausage-making process on blogs and Twitter last night, you would have seen in tooth and claw the life-and-death struggle between left and right to control the narrative. On the right, members of the Tea Party movement with modern-day muckraker Andrew Breitbart — that signature "take-no-prisoners" gleam in his eye — leading the charge. In the middle, calmer voices like War Correspondent The Anchoress, who argued for a measured approach. On the left, do-as-you're-told foot soldiers of the big-government, nanny-state army, determined to smear us with their racist mantra. Compare Sherrod's word choice — the passive "got into a fight" — with what actually happened. NAACP PICKED a fight, using the occasion of finding itself in the spotlight to hurl the absurd charge of racism at us. From Politico:

NAACP President Ben Jealous declared that the organization had been "snookered" into condemning [Sherrod, whose "abrupt firing" is now being "reconsidered" by her boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack] …

Jealous pointed to the NAACP’s recent conflict with the tea party, but blamed the “lengths to which extremist elements will go to discredit legitimate opposition” …

“Next time we are confronted by a racial controversy broken by Fox News or their allies in the tea party like Mr. Breitbart, we will consider the source and be more deliberate in responding. The tape of Ms. Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP banquet was deliberately edited to create a false impression of racial bias, and to create a controversy where none existed.”

"Twitter is like cable news on meth," Congressional Correspondent for the LA Times James Oliphant twittered around midnight last night. The excitement was visceral as the armies of the night clashed in the seemingly endless hours of tweet-to-tweet combat. When the dust settled next morning, twitterbuddy Jimmie of The Sundries Shack basked in the realization that something consequential had happened. Genie out of the bottle. Can't put it back.

Special Forces Commander Dan Riehl's thoughtful final report, "Breitbart's Landmark Video And A Genuinely Post-Racial America," is worth your time to put it all into perspective:

In both the full video and a 3 minute excerpt I produced, Sherrod labels the entire Republican Party racist, claiming they simply can't stand to see a black man in the White House. She also characterizes totally legitimate political opposition to ObamaCare from average citizens as mean and ultimately racist in the end. Had some previous Bush appointee called the Democrat Party a bunch of race-baiting hucksters, or poverty pimps - putting black citizens in that camp, too - there is no way said official would be able to keep their position. Yet, that is precisely what Sherrod did, only it was Republicans and her political opponents she so openly smeared …

I believe shouting back against the same old racially divisive politics of old is precisely what Andrew Breitbart did in releasing this recent video. And I'm proud to stand solidly by him in the fight. I only wish more good people on the Right had the judgment and vision to understand the larger dynamics and ultimate worthiness of an admittedly very difficult battle. I believe it's a worthwhile fight, one it seems America must have if we are ever to get to the genuinely post-racial future every American should want.

Update: Dana Loesch agrees with us.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Instalanche! How sweet it is.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

How Barack Obama stole the 2008 election

"The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright (above) does not mean that his track record is different," wrote Thomas Sowell in March of 2008, sounding a warning that went unheeded by too many of our fellow Americans, in part because of a coordinated legacy media campaign to keep the story off the front pages (see below): "Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife's statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology."

“I hear you, but I am really tired of defending the indefensible," the Nation's Katha Pollit whined to fellow Journolisters in a rare moment of self-awareness back in April of 2008 as revelations of Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright's racist rantings threatened to derail Barack Obama's "historic" presidential campaign, prompting leg-tingling members of the propaganda community to brandish, "the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama," as Andrew Breitbart crows in triumph this morning. The Daily Caller's Jonathan Strong has the gory details in "Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright," those documents being, of course, leaked emails from Journolist's membership of "several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists":

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists."

"Dressed down, they are nothing but street thugs," Breitbart nailed it. "Voter intimidation by other means,' we twittered. They're cornered now, and they'll put up a fight, but the new media are closing in, disintermediating via the internet. The blogosphere and Twitter are alive with mockery, top tactic in Glenn Reynolds's list of ways to thwart the "good intentions" of "America's Ruling Class." Twitter buddy Pundit Review captures the spirit:

@owiilis is awake! I'm looking forward to the rationalization, dissembling, diversions and excuses for JournoList. Where's the popcorn?

Update: Memeorandum trending.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Early afternoon update III: Now top story on Memeorandum as we predicted early morning.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.