If You Can’t Beat It, Paint It

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, April 29, 2010

There is an old saying in the military that goes something like: “If it doesn’t move, paint it.” Unfortunately, there is a version of that same philosophy being demonstrated within the liberal portion of the mainstream media and the leadership of the Democratic party. It goes something like this: “If you can’t beat the message, paint the messenger.”

For a good example of this policy, you need look no further than my fellow columnist’s paint job he just applied to the Tea Party movement. It seems ironic to me that the people who, at first, tried to ignore the movement as irrelevant now seem to think this coalition of engaged citizens has some irresistible power over the political machinery of this nation.

In fact, the reaction from the left toward the Tea Partiers has been a classic example of the method used when dealing with any group that disagrees with the liberal agenda. They followed the same process against the Moral Majority in the early 80’s. The first step of the process is to ignore the followers and hope they just go away, if that doesn’t work and they start to grow in numbers the next step is to laugh at them, similar to the way a playground bully will poke fun at anyone who makes her or him feel uncomfortable. If the movement grows past the joke stage, the only thing left to do is to paint it with a broad brush, disregarding the fact that any movement, like any church, civic group, organization and even any family, consists of many individuals with many different motives and passions.

My brother spends many words in his column telling us about a survey done by that beacon of “objective and accurate” journalism, The New York Times. Within the bowels of that survey, he discovered many so-called facts about the respondents. I will say here that I applaud Keith for his disclaimer that he is reluctant to draw stereotypes from a survey, however, I believe he devoted the remainder of his diatribe to doing just that.

I believe that Keith – and the New York Times – would have been better served by logging onto the many websites of the various Tea Party organizations in our state and/or the Tea Party Nation website to get the information about the issues that have driven them to action.

Apparently it is easier to just paint the movement as rich, privileged, uncompassionate, lily-white, anti-government, Obama-birther malcontents rather than give it the due diligence of covering it as an issue. If these NYT “reporters” and Keith had taken the time to investigate the websites or – perish the thought – actually attend a Tea Party meeting, they would have likely discovered the following facts – rather than just delivering a jaundiced “straw man” argument.

First of all, they would have discovered that most of the anger is directed equally among the trio of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and President Obama, which should have put to rest the notion that it is all “race-driven”. Speaking of the race card, now that Keith has subtly played it one paragraph while denying it the next, I will state here that, as far as I am concerned, Obama is bi-racial and his policies are detrimental to Americans of every color and race as he spends us deeper and deeper into a deficit that all American children will have to pay.

They would also have discovered that, while the majority of Tea Party members may have come from the Republican Party member base, it does not follow that they approve of all Republican politicians. In fact, a quick study of most Tea Party sites will show more anger at the RINO’s (Republican-In-Name-Only) that have sat back and done nothing to thwart the liberal agenda of the aforementioned trio, and/or have even added their names to harmful legislation.

In conclusion, let me say here that I do not get too excited by published surveys and polling numbers. I find it to be sloppy journalism and, for the most part, irrelevant to the issue under discussion. Even though it seems that every news hour contains at least one reference to the “latest poll numbers” and daily tracking data, I tend to ignore that part of the report for some of the reasons stated above. In other words, surveys are only as good as the questions they ask and the number of respondents interviewed.

I challenge my fellow columnist and any industrious, objective reporter from the Times (if such a species exists) to do more than just publish survey results. I challenge them to put down the paintbrush, close the joke book, and truly investigate the issues under discussion.