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A growing chorus of "minority" Republicans are finding their voice

 

New Jersey Sistah Grizzly Cubachi (left) takes no prisoners. Watch out, Harry Reid. "Minority" Republicans are mad as hell, and they're not going to take this anymore.

"Harry Reid can't believe I'm a Hispanic Republican" writes our fiery Latina blog/twitterfriend Cubachi in an important post that's part of a growing chorus of "minority" Republicans who are finding their voice. They're pushing back against Michelle Malkin's "ethnic plantation owners," the demagoging Democrats who would project their own racism onto the tea partiers of all races among us who don't toe the politically correct, identity-politics party line. And they're disintermediating the legacy media via the internet. Cubachi's opening salvo is a challenge to the obscenely arrogant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's assertion that he "doesn't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican":

Well Harry, let me introduce myself. I am the daughter of Cuban exiles who have seen first hand the failures of liberal and socialist policies in their native country. My father in fact, was a political prisoner in Cuba for five years because the government deemed his speech against repression and dictatorship “hateful and dangerous.” Sort of like what you democrats say about the tea parties, although you have not thrown their members in jail … yet …

My father looked at the platform of the republican party that endorsed small government, lower taxes, and strong defense, while the democrat party embraced Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, murderers and tyrants, as some sort of folk heroes, and endorsed larger governments taking power away from the people.

Although I wasn’t born in Cuba, I witnessed for myself liberals governing the state of New Jersey. I saw the failed policies of former Governors Jim McGreevy and Jon Corzine. Unions ran the show, uncontrolled and limitless spending, massive corruption, and the highest property taxes in the nation. I, as a thinking, tax-paying citizen, can not fathom why I would support democrats that have ran this state to near bankruptcy. Heck, I see it in a larger scale in Washington, DC. Yes Harry Reid, I do think and watch the news.

As a red stater behind enemy lines here in Deepest Blue Taxachusetts, we feel a profound kinship with fellow Americans like Cubachi and other "minorities," including small-government, free-market women of Northern European descent like ourselves, demonized by our "betters" on the left side of the aisle for embracing the Founding Fathers' vision and rejecting the smothering embrace of identity politics and the nanny state. A sampling from recent archives of that rising chorus of "my people" finding their voices:

Cedra Crenshaw, who's fighting the Chicago machine

Herman Cain, whose words "Stay inspired. The people are still in charge" are an inspiration

Black Republicans National Press Club event

Other signs of unconventional Republicans finding their authentic American voices:

Pajamas Media's weekly The Minority Report

Juliette Akinyi, aka Baldilocks, "The Herding Series"

GOProud Announces Ann Coulter to Headline Homocon 2010 in New York City

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Juliette Akinyi links at KelseyLive.com.

Update III: "SISU has it almost right with the title of her first rate post," writes our friend Da TechGuy:

The truth is they have always had their voices, it is just the MSM has ignored them in the past and continues to do so. The point is they are unable to prevent the general public from finding them due to social media and the internet. The correct title is "A growing chorus of “minority” Republican voices are found by the public."

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

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.

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.

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.

The opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger

A link to "The Schneider Quote" was lying in wait in our Site Meter stats today. Clicking on over to something called "ClimateSight" (above), we were delighted to see that the true denialists who project their own denialism onto us climate skeptics continue to deny at will (see below).

Reading the entrails of the Site Meter stats is the opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger, who can never get enough. Yes, you, Robert Stacy McCain. Mainly you're looking for the instant rush of an Instalanche or at least a Malkin-lanche or precious links from that happy few, that band of sisters and brothers that fought with us upon Saint Fiskin's day. But once in awhile there's an eye-opening outlier that confirms what you've known all along, at least since July of 1990.

Today's find was the deletion of our "[Inflammatory]" comments from a ClimateSite post on "The Schneider Quote," a shameless bit of self-revelatory global-warming — that's what "climate change" was called in those halcyon days of AGW "scientific consensus" — scripture first published in 1988:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Rahm Emanuel would have been proud. We don't remember exactly what we said, but it was probably similar to the comments we left at one of Pharyngula's pro-Darwin, anti-Intelligent-Design posts last year, where the commenters were so unaccustomed to dissent that they mistook this Darwinian Libertarian for a "wingnut and creationist," as we blogged at the time:

"I just looked at Sissy Willis's blog. The person (I am still not clear what sex/gender the person is) does not seem to be sane," writes commenter Matt Penfold at PZ Myers's science blog Pharyngula in response to an admittedly provocative comment we had left there ourselves this afternoon. We are intrigued with Mr. Penfold's scientifically-challenged powers of research and analysis, not to mention his tenuous grasp of the language: "I also doubt they are calling themselves Sissy with any kind of ironic intent. Which also suggests their grasp of English is as bad as their understanding of climate change, or since they seem to consider the current Pope to be some kind of hero, their grasp of morality." They/themselves/their? Didn't you mean she or he, sir? Had Penfold delved a bit further, he might have been puzzled to learn that along with Pope Benedict XVI, Charles Darwin is one of our intellectual heroes. But then for him, the debate is over, the scientific consensus is in, and Sissy Willis is insane. Talk about parallel lives.

Update: "Oh, great! I'm an Insta-Sissy!" twitters crosspostee Dan Riehl. Our post is enjoying an instalanche not here but over at Riehl World View!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Joan of Argghh: "You don't challenge audacity with a platform"

"Sissy Willis. All this 'Mama Grizzly,' "Koala Bear," and "Teddy Bear" talk made me think of this Elvis song," twittered blog/twitterfriend Cubachi this morning. Check out her blogpost "Governor Christie confirms to me that he tweets" for an example of a powerful and effective Republican, NJ Governor Chris Christie, who listens to his constituents. Possibly related, Glenn Reynolds's provocative "The King of Anti-Fascism," wherein the new media's new-media man argues for the "white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel" as a "cultural immune response to totalitarianism."

"Sissy, you are right on, and Brooklyn doesn't get what this entire post is about. I lived through Perot, and I understand the fears out there that we must keep the Good Ol' Boys and status quo in place if we want a chance," writes the saintly Joan of Argghh of  Primordial Slack in a spirited defense of our previous post, where we took presidential wannabe Mitt "RomneyCare" Romney (#fail) to task for "enabling an aide to diss Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin as 'not a serious human being.'" Romney later apologized in a tweet, but our point is that Mitt Romney, a member in good standing of the Good Ol' Boys' Club, isn't listening to us Tea Partiers. Joan explains:

That would be fine if we were talking about politics as usual. We have moved beyond that at light speed. Anyone who thinks that the measured words, sagacious posturing, and back room deals are gonna save us is sadly out of touch with the alternate universe that is slamming into our own: Obama comes from a completely different world beyond the ken of most Americans, but understood keenly by those of his entourage. What part of "audacity" did we not understand? You don't challenge audacity with a platform. You put it down with something equally as audacious. "Grizzly moms" are more serious than anything you've ever encountered.

Our Beltway Insider of choice, Dan Riehl, has been banging away at the topic forever. This morning he goes after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for wimping out on the Tea Party racism question:

Such leadership even while [House Majority Leader] Hoyer plays the race card. They wonder why we don't fight for them, when they are too Oh my goodness goody-two-shoes to fight for us. Washington is a bunch of chickens that line their cages with the Washington Post and New York Times. And all three are full of crap.

"In a recent conversation with a GOP new media type," he reveals, "I learned that new media to the GOP simply means taking the same old top-down messaging and creating it on websites, or for digital distribution":

That doesn't serve them well, as questions from activist bloggers are actually quite different than ones usually coming from the press.

If the Tea Party and blogs continue to become increasingly powerful, this will begin to change. Electing grassroots candidates will certainly help. But it won't be because the GOP establishment wants it to change. Why should they, when their SOP is message control? Unfortunately for them, you cannot control the message in the era of new media.

Activist bloggers, twitterers and other wordwranglers of the new media have had a good long look behind the curtain, and we aren't going to take this from the naked emperor any more. Glenn Reynolds has a nifty list of what to do to thwart the "good intentions" of Angelo Codevilla's "America's ruling class," the "patronage and promises" crowd who think they know better than we what's best for us:

And let’s be honest — the claim that only “professional legislators and staff” are smart enough falls apart once you meet a few of these people.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Memeorandum is on the case.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Cedra Crenshaw vs King Samir Shabazz: The hand that rocks the cradle?

"I am up against the same machine that put Barack Obama in office. The machine came in, they wiped all of his competitors off the ballot, just like they're trying to do to me," grassroots Illinois state senate candidate Cedra Crenshaw told an Independence Day audience Saturday," drawing her secret weapon: "They can't call me a  racist, white, evil man." You can donate to her legal defense fund here.

"You hear so much about conservative women leading this conservative movement in this country, and I really believe that conservative women are the most persecuted figures in politics right now," says Dana Loesch in a refreshingly candid Dana Show radio interview — crossposted at BreitbartTV — with "mama grizzly" Cedra Crenshaw. Does the hand that rocks the cradle still rule the world? More about that in a moment, but first a few excerpts from the interview:

She's a wife, she's a stay-at-home mom, she's an education reformer, she's an accountant, and she was fed up, and so she threw her hat in the ring.

She has enormous support from the grassroots movement, and she has terrified the Chicago Machine, who is trying to move heaven and earth to get her off the ticket.

The Tea Partiers love her. Listen to the Dana Show interview and her Independence Day speech, and you will understand the smart, common-sense appeal of this authentic American voice. Fellow Illinois Republican Adam Andrzejewski at Big Government has more:

Why is the machine afraid? Because a new class of leadership is starting to develop. These new leaders threaten to end the shell game of taxes, politics, and patronage. Cedra Crenshaw is one of those new leaders, and she’s is running for state senate against one of the Chicago Machine’s rubber-stamp apparatchiks.

She’s an accountant who wants to spearhead a forensic audit of Illinois state government. A former auditor at Deloitte and Touche, Cedra supports an audit of the half a trillion dollars of Democrat-controlled state spending during the blow-off historic corruption of Blagojevich/Quinn. The Democrat Machine — contractors, politicians, and patronage army — stand in naked fear of the result that such an audit would bring.

"The mainstream media is completely ignoring you," Loesch notes, "because you defy their narrative of what conservatism is." Crenshaw agrees, but with new-media avenues like the Dana Show itself, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, fire-breathing bloggers and twitterers and Tea Party energizers, she's been able to disintermediate the media powers-that-be to get her narrative across loud and clear:

People in this state, they want jobs. They want economic growth. They're not interested in more handouts and more promises … My opponent, he's got no solutions except more tax increases.

While uniters like Cedra Crenshaw are pursuing the American Dream, dividers like New Black Panther Party Philadelphia chapter leader "King Samir Shabazz" (at 2009 street festival above) pursue the nightmare part of Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare: "I hate white people. All of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate him! You want freedom? You're going to have to kill some crackers! You're going to have to kill some of their babies." Whatever gets you on the evening news. Shabazz was caught on tape intimidating voters at the polls in November of 2008, but in his infinite and inscrutable wisdom, Attorney General Eric Holder is dropping charges.

Contrasting the public faces of Cedra Crenshaw and King Samir Shabazz, the words of William Blake's The Tyger" come to mind: Did he who made the Lamb make thee? We found a timely interpretation of the riddle in Juliette Akinye's provocative and insightful blogpost "Scarred Souls: More About Abortion" (h/t twitter buddy King Shamus of Blog de KingShamus), where the blogger AKA Baldilocks casts the old-fashioned notion of women as civilizers of men in a contemporary light:

There might be a little preaching. That's an essential part of me. He's a part of me…

All women should stop creating the exterior and — more importantly — the interior conditions under which abortion is an option. And by that I mean that all women should stop giving themselves to men who they are not sure will love, cherish and protect them and any prospective offspring they may create by having sex with each other …

You see, there’s this thing about women, a thing that makes us different from men, aside from the physical aspects. When we lie down with a man, we are giving him more than physical pleasure and doing more than gaining physical pleasure for ourselves.

When a woman has sex with a man, she joins her soul with him [For those of a more scientific bent, it's a matter of chemistry — oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone"] …

Think about all the illegitimate black children there are in America and think about the fact that black women have the highest rate of abortion of any women in America. That statistic says that there are very many black women who are giving themselves to men who don’t care about them.

Here's the kicker that illuminates the disjunct between Cedra Crenshaw's and King Samir Shabazz's American dreams:

And, on top of that, we can take these effects and mirror them onto black men, too many of whom are angry at the world, angry at black women, and angry at themselves (black-on-black crime). That anger almost always stems from observing or experiencing the spiritual, moral and worldly failure of their mothers.

It's the nanny state, stupid! The unintended consequences of the debilitating dependency fostered by those handouts Cedra Crenshaw's supporters want no more of.

Update: Related thoughts and video from Ed Morrissey:

“Mama grizzlies” actually fits better in the Tea Party movement, which I’ve argued is driven in the main by activist women. These are women with families who aren’t focused on what government can do for them, but what government should be doing, period. They’re defending their turf rather than looking for handouts, and defending their children from expansionist government and the massive spending that their children’s children will have to repay. It’s a good brand to stake out for Palin, but she’s been doing that all along with the Tea Party movement (as has Michele Bachmann). This just puts a label on it, and one that sounds much more assertive than “soccer moms” did.

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

On not making Matt Lewis's "Top 25 Conservatives on Twitter"

Bloggerissimus Dan Collins of POWIP, who twitters under the name of vermontaigne, somehow got our number and enlisted us in his "Island of Misfit Bloggers." As we twittered at the news, "No one ever called me a misfit blogger before. Shall we just have a cigarette on it?" 

"Ooh, I can't stand it. Ooh, it's my stomach. I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film." You know the feeling. You didn't make the cut even as some of your best buddies are sitting pretty. We don't want to talk about it, but since you asked, here lie four former friends amongst Matt Lewis's "Top 25 Conservatives on Twitter," each well deserved even as we eat our "importance of being noticed" heart out:

@MelissaTweets -- While many conservative writers, politicians and activists have wisely leveraged Twitter to advance their ongoing efforts, the medium seems to have propelled Melissa Clouthier to our attention. To be sure, Clouthier is also a good blogger and podcaster, but this mom (who also runs a part-time chiropractic practice) has Tweeted her way into conservative opinion leader status.

@Cubachi -- We don't know Jennifer's last name, but we do know her Twitter handle, "Cubachi," relates to her Cuban/Chinese heritage. Jennifer exercises an outsized influence on Twitter, due to her ongoing conversations with other prominent conservatives. Jennifer is prolific on Twitter, and this includes her coverage of events like American Idol and the World Cup. Non-conservatives who think conservatives are boring old white men who only talk about policy would find following Cubachi to be an enlightening experience.

@rsmccain -- Robert Stacy McCain has aptly been described as "the conservative Hunter S. Thompson." Now imagine if Hunter Thompson was on Twitter!

@danriehl -- Most notable for his willingness to call-out powerful conservatives, Dan Riehl blogs at Riehl World View. In Riehl's world, no one -- from RedState's Erick Erickson to National Review -- is above questioning.

With apologies to Dylan Thomas:

"Tweet, tweet against the dying of the light."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Beyond Weigel: While the legacy media sleeps, new-media sleuths get the scoop

The fresh face of the new-media sleuths, left to right: Avatars of blogger/twitterers Cubachi, trscoop and Sister Toldjah.

"@sistertoldjah I am already sick of Weigel. We have a big expose on MSM bias, and it gets little attention" twittered rising blog star Cubachi a few minutes ago. We checked out her story and Sister Toldjah's on-the-scent post, and eureka! Those two new-media woman warriors and a handful of nightowls (see below) were witness in the wee hours to a Weigel-like revelation as unidentified "newsmen" covering Sarah Palin's controversial California State University Stanislaus speech felt free to spew the Palin's-a-Pinhead party line into the ether when they didn't realize the microphone was still on. Here's Sister Toldjah:

Just got done watching the speech Sarah Palin gave at California State University, Stanislaus – the one that generated so much controversy from “concerned” students to the point they were digging in trash dumpsters looking for contract info.

Anyway, she gave a great speech as always (commentary/live Tweets are here) but at times the Fox40 live feed was hard to hear – they were having audio issues. But at the end of the speech is where it got interesting. Here’s what some of the audio/camera guys** were saying:

“The dumbness doesn’t just come from soundbites.”

“I can’t believe she quoted Kennedy – twice."

“How am I going to write about this-there’s nothing there-answer well there’s your story”

It's downright Weigelesque. A few excepts from Cubachi's report reveal the dynamics of this new model of getting the scoop while the world sleeps:

I watched the video of supposedly FOX40 crew, techies behind the scenes on hot mike speak ill of Sarah Palin as if she is a buffoon and all sorts of nonsense the left spews out at effective conservatives (i.e. Ronald Reagan). You can check out the video at The Right Scoop.

All of us on twitter, including Tammy Bruce, Melissa Tweets, Sister Toldjah, Rachelle Friberg, TwittoNande, trscoop, and StephenKruiser all heard what these two men were spewing about Sarah Palin. We all tweeted about it, searched for contact numbers, and contacted FOX40 through twitter and other means. Sister Toldjah has a fantastic rundown of what happened last night. I don’t think all of us suddenly were hallucinating the same thing after we heard those insulting terms at Sarah Palin. It was more evidence of the MSM and their liberal bias… Maybe some conservatives will come to their defense. *ahem*

As we twittered this afternoon once we'd picked up the trail:

@Cubachi: Your Palin-bashing story ties in perfectly with the whole @DaveWeigel / Journolist fiasco. Like the Gulf oil spill it is uncontainable!

Twitter update from Sister Toldjah:

Update to "journo-dudes dis Palin" story: @Fox40 has responded at my blog: http://3.ly/BRtB I believe them. Next Q.: Who said remarks?

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Memeorandum has picked up the scent.

Update IV: Dan links with a rousing call to arms.

Update V: Riehl-lanche via Dan's Instalanche:

IS THERE A "NEW MEDIA WAR?"

Update VI: "Amplify'd" by Melissa Clouthier:

Unguarded Moments: When the Press Gets Their Own Medicine

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Dr. Helen: "Some call them odd, I call them comrades"

"Does the news upset you to the point where you feel it's hard to watch or read anymore?" Dr. Helen asked her readers the other day in "How do you keep from cracking?":

… when my anger and frustration get to be too much, this is when I decide to pursue more positive activities for a while until my mental state goes back to neutral and I can think more clearly.

I think feeling that you have some control over your own life despite all that goes on in the world is important. How do you manage to make your own life better, freer or more fun, despite the problems going on in the world?

Do you have hobbies, interests or pursuits that lead you to a more positive place? If so, share them with me (us), and maybe we can learn something.

For us it's cooking, cat therapy, capturing beauty in unexpected places on "film," Friday WSJ crossword-puzzle dates and the elusive meeting of minds we seek through blogging and twittering. As we wrote in Dr. Helen's comments:

Mainly I blog, which requires keeping up with "the news." Making sense of it all by shaping one's thoughts into a coherent essay and sending the thing out into cyberspace with a click of the "publish" button can produce a certain catharsis and sense of control.

We were touched by reader Topher's true confession:

What you can do — post it on the blog, with commentary or without, and come back later and count the comments. Lots of men don't have an in-person place to talk about it (lest we be "not real men"), so just the fact you give us a place to discuss this stuff without harsh judgment should give you a good feeling you are doing something.

Interesting that so many of us — both women and men — keep coming back to Dr. Helen for psychological refreshment. Is it because we are introverts like the good doctor herself? This from her latest post "What are the best places for the avoidant?":

At this point, if you are an introvert like I am, you totally get what I just said. If you tend more towards extroversion, you will write me off as a kook. Fair enough. I have talked to numerous introverts that go to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night, grocery shop at odd hours and basically avoid people like the plague. Some call them odd, I call them comrades. There are other experts who say that being an introvert is a positive thing. I agree.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.