Tea Party Day, Part II

Not much to post today. However, I’ve been working on 3 fairly involved posts to come soon, but they’re just not ready yet. As for now, here’s a little ‘fluff’ piece while I work on them.

Yesterday I mentioned that it was Tea Party day. I encouraged you all to go. Then, I didn’t go. What a jerk, right? Well, it turns out that I had an extremely busy evening and just didn’t have time. After all, it was tax day, and I decided to shop a new product before filing my return. And, as I had a huge amount to pay, I wanted to spend some extra time and not miss any deductions. Also, my wife and I are guest worship leaders this weekend and needed to practice. And, we had an opportunity to get a a kind of pet for which I’ve been searching for a long time, so I had to go and buy supplies.

Having seen the coverage, I’m very impressed with the turnout across the country. Especially considering that many of the rallies were held at noon, on a work day. I’m pretty impressed with how it was essentially a ragtag, grass-roots type of organization, essentially without a central group organizing and backing it (like the Dem or Rep party, moovon, or anything like that).

One party organizer in a major City (I believe Chi-town) was asked by the new head of the RNC to speak. She politely declined, saying it was time for the politicians to hear the people, and not the other way around. I was very impressed by that!

From what I heard and saw, media coverage of the events was shoddy. Perhaps on a local level it was better than what the national outlets tried to give us (It certainly was where I live). I hope so. What we got from the national media were the typical biased reporting we’ve been getting for as long as I can remember. What we got from most of the national media were pre-planned, pre-scripted characterizations of stereotypes people hold about people on the ‘right.’ It was arrogant, prejudicial, presumptive, and judgmental. One reporter went around asking the group why they were racists. Another asked belittling questions, and instead of giving the person a chance to defend them self, began instead mocking other news organizations. While I don’t want to paint all media outlets across the nation with this one brush, as a whole, coverage of this event was very unprofessional. Not that I’m especially disappointed by this; it’s about what I had expected.

It’s nice to see people get together for the common good of the nation. It’s very interesting to see how these events can be organized across the country using the internet as their main organizational tool and sharing only the loosest of connections.

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