The Glade 4.0

Why is the media coverage of the union protests not taking the whole "look at the rage" angle? Was it purposeful targeting of the Tea Party folks and purposeful non-reporting of the exact thing they were looking for (and not finding) showing up at these protests? After all the talk of "new tone" with the rhetoric after the AZ shooting, where is all the reporting of the "kill Walker", crosshairs, and Hitler (not to mention Hilter heheh) comparisons? I don't have any rational explanation, other than it being deliberately chosen by the media.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

80% of media (reporters, anchors, editors) self identifies as liberal and thus are aligned with unions. They simply don't think there is rage involved here so there is nothing to report, whereas the assume violence is more likely with conservatives and so see and thus report on rage.

They are wholly incapable of preventing their own bias from coloring reporting.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Liberal media bias, probably indisputable.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

I'd certainly like someone from that side to try and explain it to us.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

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I actually saw "Day of Rage" headlined on the Drudgereport linking to this WI story.

And, could a liberal at all explain this to you in any way that would be acceptable? Or, let me ask another way - what kind of explanation would you like to see? A mea culpa that says, "we're guilty"? Defiant resistance that confirms your bias?

I have a long response - an explanation, I guess - to this thread typed up, but I'm letting it ferment before I post it. If I do at all.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Please, do post it Aethien. I'm interested.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

It's the liberal bias in the MSM that the libs say doesn't exist.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

It's sort of like Politifact asserting Scott Walker wants to break the union and remove all collective bargaining rights, when none of those comments were made until Democratic lawmakers started breaking the law, the President of the United States started breaking the law, and the DNC started breaking the law.

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I just want to know why it's the wrong tone when Sara Palin uses crosshairs and okay when the WI teachers or Bush Haters do.

If you're saying both are wrong or both are acceptible then good for you Arathin. I appreciate your consistency.

However the fact remains that media ignored one and bent over backwards to try and link the other to violence.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I've answered all of these questions before, but the Glade seems to refuse to read the answer ... I'll try again.

http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm

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Do you think weakening the union isn't even part of his intent here, Khross?

Weakening and breaking are not synonymous, RangerDave; to suggest so is both disingenuous and fractious.

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Assuming you're right that the media isn't covering the anger/tone issue (I haven't been paying enough attention to know), I'd agree that it's probably driven partly by bias - angry rhetoric seems a lot less irrational and dangerous if you think it's justified. A left-leaning reporter who agrees with the union view but thinks the Tea Party folks had no legitimate grievance is probably going to see the latter in a much darker light than the former. Of course, the reverse holds true for right-leaning reporters, which is why the coverage by Fox News and other conservative outlets has been 180 degrees in the other direction.

I doubt that's the whole explanation though. I imagine novelty is also a factor. Union protesters being thuggish ain't exactly new (doesn't make it right, of course), whereas the Tea Party movement was arguably a new arrival on the political scene, so everyone was in a frenzy to categorize and define it and every little incident that might be "revealing" was breathlessly reported. Honestly, I think that's a huge part of it.

Also, and I know you're going to disagree with this one, I do think the potential for truly serious violence (e.g. murder, bombings, etc. as opposed to protesters committing vandalism) has been much higher on the far right than on the far left in the last 20-30 years. The militia movement, Oklahoma City, various attacks and murders from anti-abortion folks, etc. are all products of the right. What comparable acts of violence and terrorism have come from the left in the last couple decades? Tree-spiking and a handful of SUV dealerships being torched by eco-nuts, I suppose, but that's about it. So nowadays, when you have tens of thousands of people showing up at anti-government rallies and talking about "Second Amendment remedies", it sets off warning bells just like similar lefty rallies did back in the late 60s and early 70s.

No, they're not synonymous, but the difference is one of degree, not kind. The point of the Politifact assertion is that Walker's motives are not entirely, or perhaps even mostly, about cost savings but rather about hamstringing the union's bargaining power and political influence. I'm wondering if you disagree with that point when stated in a less hyperbolic way (i.e. weakening rather than breaking).

Thanks for the insight about the "novelty of the Tea Party", RD. When that is taken into account, I can see more sense in it; when the two points (personal bias and novelty) are working together, the synergy created goes a long way toward explaining the phenomenon, IMHO.



Yeah, I disagree on a lot of levels. The first is characterizing the Tea Party people as being on the same plane as militia members, "far-right".
Second, the violence of the left doesn't get reported (as the discussion here exemplifies). You mention SUV dealerships being burned, how about people's homes, and University and Government buildings as well as other businesses? It's been going on since the 90's but it rarely gets press. Speaking of bombs, how about the non-press on the guys who had manufactured molotov cocktails to throw on police cars at the 2008 RNC. We'd have heard about it, I'm sure, if they hadn't been caught just prior to completion. The folks who were throwing sandbags and cement off overpasses trying to hit delegates cars in St. Paul were performing acts that could well have resulted in death if their aim were better. I'm sensing a theme here...
The man who shot into Eric Cantor's campaign office in VA made multiple campaign contributions to Obama; he left this in his YouTube "manifesto" prior to acting:

Those are just off the top of my head.
Maybe it's just that those on the left are inept?

Characterizing it as "protesters who commit vandalism" seems almost as a means to brush it aside: "Those crazy kids...", but the many millions of dollars spent and lost as well as the many incidents of injury during those acts of "vandalism" are rarely spoken of.

The abortion violence I'll concede, however, I can see a fundamental difference between killing someone who, in your mind, kills babies, and firebombing homes and businesses "for the earth". I guess that's my own bias showing.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Discovery Channel Shooter comes to mind. I'd have to sit down and do more research, but I just got done doing that for class so my brain is kinda fried.

Not to mention certain Presidential Mentors wishing they did more bombing.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Jimmy Hoffa and Union workers murdering and beating scabs rings a bell in that category.

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Props to David Gregory for bringing this up on Meet the Press yesterday.