PrintAugust 14, 2009
Town Hall Outrage? Media cooperated in disruptions at GOP events
A special spot in hell is reserved for the media whose shameless hypocrisy has sunk to new lows with their feigned indignation over health care town hall protests. Even as they currently bluster about 'astroturf' and shout down guests about shouting people down, these same Obama sycophants refused to condemn orchestrated disruptions aimed at the Bush administration, and, in some cases, may actually have conspired to execute them.
According to Dante, the eighth circle of hell holds those who have committed conscious fraud or treachery -- such as the Media wing of the Democratic Party has been perpetrating. Perhaps most egregious among them have been the Obama sycophants at MSNBC.
'The Place for Propaganda' has been plucking individual protesters who went to health care town halls and confronting them on-air with irrelevant questions, or intentional misquotes, in order to rattle them and make them appear to be loons.
Case in point: Chris "I felt this thrill going up my leg" Matthews accusing protester William Kostric of "carrying a God damned gun" at Obama's New Hampshire town hall, even though Kostric was outside, not inside the event, and was carrying his handgun legally, holstered safely on his leg. Ironically, one of the points Kostric was trying to make, and that Matthews refused to hear, was about the erosion of individuals' rights. The Second Amendment apparently doesn't count for much at MSNBC.
The media has all but ignored that the current shouting-down speakers at health care meetings started with leftist activists in May. "(A)ctivists disrupted a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, standing up one after the other as Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) tried to restore order," according to Politico, noting that the protest was organized by three groups, "all of whom support a single-payer, government-run health care system."
This follows years of kid glove treatment of left-wing disruptions at Republican events.
Of course, comparing the current town hall protests to these previous disruptions of events is somewhat akin to comparing apples and hand grenades.
The current town hall outbursts are coming from tens of thousands of folks at events at which they are supposed to exercise their First Amendment rights and speak out. The manufactured disruptions organized by Code Pink and their radical-left comrades were attempts by a handful of people to interrupt, even stop, lawful gatherings and to deny thousands of other folks those same First Amendment rights.
The leftist disruptions of Republican events back then were often reported -- if given any coverage at all -- with bemused admiration, as in, 'Gee, how did they manage to pull that off?'
Well, the answer is, Left wing protesters often pulled off their stunts with the cooperation -- intentional or not -- of the media.
Many of the highly visible disruptions of events during the Bush administration involved Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, co-founders of anti-war wacko group, Code Pink. Evans was also a top Obama campaign contribution bundler. Benjamin and/or Evans were dragged out after disrupting the 2006 Bush State of the Union message to Congress, numerous congressional hearings, the 2008 Republican Convention, and the 2004 RNC in New York.
How did they get into so many high-security events?
"Several of the incidents, the (convention) official said, involved credentials issued to the broadcast media," according to a New York Times report on how easy it was for protesters to get into the 2004 GOP convention. (Nod, nod. Wink, wink.) Benjamin told the NYT, "I am shocked by how many passes we can get."
A September 4, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article entitled "Pink-slip protester got in on borrowed press pass" blithely reported:
"It was so easy to get into the Republican National Convention that activist Gael Murphy got in two straight nights... The 50-year-old's key to burrowing into her own personal Death Star: a media pass. Obtained from 'a friend of a friend' whose media organization she won't divulge."(M)ore than two dozen hecklers have proven that only a small device was necessary to penetrate the cordon and disrupt the convention: a delegate's spare guest credential or a media pass, which protesters said were surprisingly easy to get."
Activists again used their sympathizers in the media to disrupt the 2008 Republican convention, using press credentials multiple times. At least one witness said MSNBC was specifically identified as the source of the media pass. On another occasion, a newspaper reporter said she was, conveniently, in the bathroom when a protester, using a pass with her name on it, disrupted an RNC session on abortion.
It is, perhaps, possible that the passes were used without the reporter's -- or, in the other instance, MSNBC's -- prior knowledge; Code Pink has been accused of forging credentials, even stealing identities.
But Code Pink has specifically admitted to using media credentials from "friends of friends" to disrupt Republican events.
So, where was the media outrage? I have seen, first-hand, the ire directed at a lowly commoner who has inadvertently wandered into the media section; it's not a sight for the squeamish. The Fourth Estate guards its privileges zealously, yet looked the other way when they were being infringed upon by the anti-Bush left.
Even if the media was not actively involved in handing media credentials over to leftist kooks, they were de facto accomplices by not stopping the practice. All it would have taken would have been some negative coverage.
Right.
Oh, in Dante's ninth ring, hell freezes over.
William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author
