When people say crazy things, how should we react?
I have been contemplating this question quite a bit this year, after Jewish Funds for Justice, where I work, decided to step into the ring with the Tea Party movement. While we understood their anger and fear at the economic catastrophe facing so many Americans, they were pushing the country away from the very solutions we need to get us out of this mess.
As you might imagine, our decision to engage garnered a mixed reaction. Most were grateful that we were willing to defend policies and philosophies near and dear to their hearts. The comments they heard from talk radio hosts and Tea Party activists could not be allowed to stand unchallenged. But some were skeptical. "Tea Party supporters are crazy," they said to me. "Calling them out only gives them and their rants more attention. They thrive on the publicity. Ignore the Tea Partiers and they will fade away."
To ignore or to engage. I'm sure I'm not alone in this dilemma.
The answer is always a judgment call. We thought back in March that the Tea Party movement was strong enough that to ignore it would allow it to metastasize unchecked. Ideas that start on the margins -- like the claim that the proposed health care bill would create death panels -- can become so ingrained in the public imagination that even today more than 40% of the public believes the mythical panels are real.
But it's not just about the setting the record straight. Some ideas coming out of the Tea Party movement are so unpopular that exposing them serves either to discredit the movement in the eyes of moderates or to inspire our usually engaged friends to get off their couches and get into the game.
This is what we had in mind when we launched the microsite HaikUGlennBeck.com in April. The site attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and helped provide broader exposure to Beck's call for people to abandon their church if it preaches social justice. A few thousand even got into the act themselves, writing and tweeting haiku to express their disagreement. In just two weeks, enough were submitted to send one every minute to Mr. Beck for 24 hours, making the first ever "twitterstorm" a success.
This is also what we had in mind when we launched the microsite Scapequote.com this week.
Scapequote.com is similar to NPR's Bluff the Listener game, featured on its popular show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Visitors have to guess the real Tea Party activist quote from among three made-up quotes. The game is meant to be fun and interactive (you can submit your own fake quotes which are ranked based on how many people they fool) but also to serve as a reminder of the kind of rhetoric and ideas behind the Tea Party movement.
It is hard not to laugh at some of the more ridiculous quotes, real and fake. But when we're done chuckling, we need to remember why this matters. Without the Tea Party movement, we would have had a stronger health care bill, a more robust ongoing stimulus to retain and create jobs, maybe even comprehensive immigration reform. We need to expose their ideas to the light of day, and inspire our friends and allies to engage voters.
That's why after you play Scapequote a few times, we'll present you with some ways for you to take action. After all, Election Day is fewer than three months away. Time to get to work!
It is laughable how they try to be looked upon as independents
This has to be the most absurd analysis of the compromises reached during negtiaions in the house and senate for these respective reforms. To blame the TBoogers for the paring down of the legislations is to give them way too much credit, especially since none of them were in any of the committees or votes.
Is Sam Greer providing cover for those elected that did not want these important programs due to their polical posturing? Or is he simply so absent minded that he's forgotten all of the obstructionism that goes on as I write this? It is the obstructionism from the Rethugs and DINOs like Nelson and Baucus that weakened some the proposed legislation.
There is one other component going ignored in this argument, and that is the lack of courage by our legislators to do what's right. Wether it's calling out any politicians for lies and deception, or voting their convictions rather than re-election prospects. Methinks Mr. Greer gives way too much credit to this so called movement. Is this his attempt to paint them in a favorable light ahead of November?
If you want to fight for what's right(correct, not opposite of left) ....focus on Congress and our corrupt political culture. Use your influence on the groups you are close with to identify, lobby and contribute to the people who will face down and clean up this rat's nest.
Making fun of middle class people who staple tea bags to their hats might be fun in a school bully kind of way, but its not going to help anything.
The Obama administration and our corporate backed Congress got the healthcare bill they wanted; a no public option, mandated payments with no cost controls, giveaway to the largest insurance companies. The Tea Parties were a convenient excuse but they didn't change anyone's mind.
I wanted to point out to Mr. Greer that his group and the groups he interacts with have enormous political clout and financial influence. That influence should be used directly on the Obama administration and on Congress to get the kind of healthcare, financial reform and climate change that the country actually needs.
Again, mocking the Tea Party folks provide a certain kind of cheap thrills but its not what we need to be doing. The vote and our voices are one of the few things we have left and we need to use them to get progressives who are committed to us and not to Wall Street.
............SO.WHERE ARE THEY???
George W. Bush. Sorry, you lose! Please don't come back again next week.
The "tea party' is mocked because it deserves to be mocked. Willful ignorance has no place in the social discourse. The 'tea party' will eventually take its rightful place in history alongside the McCarthy-ites, the John Birch Society, the Salem witch trials and the rest.
Many Americans are indeed mad, and the tea partiers are going to be the ones that are surprised come November.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.
John Lennon
You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!
John Lennon -
-All we need is love OLDWAVE, did you think your elders didn't understand you? Did you think your elders weren't listening? Dittos
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I like the idea of deliberating whether we should ignore tea party people, or call them out. People who do not believe the same as you are wrong. This is certain. It's difficult to know which power to give them. Ignore them and let them continue to spread their false ideas without ridicule, or call them out by mocking their ignorance.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
We know what the tea-party is thinking because they are so vocal.
Yes many of us (and I'm not a liberal or progressive) find the tea-party amusingly pathetic with their logic.
But their logic (regardless of how idiotically illogical it is) needs to be heard.
Otherwise you have in essence a "serial killer" on the loose.
You never know when someone is going to endure harm because of a faulty logic.
But the tea-party is not a victim of the curiousity cat.
The wanted the spot-light and they got it.
But everyone who isn't part of their cult knows what their thinking.
It's not a situation in which they have a golden egg that they don't want anyone to know about.
It's more like a situation in which they don't know what they don't know.
Now they're concerned!
Answer me this Einstein. Show where in american history that the progressive concept of spending our way out of a depression/recession has ever worked? Who created The FED and why was it created? A progressive.. Woodrow Wilson... and for the purpose of allowing government to step in and moderate Depressions. Depression and Stock Market Crashes happen on the average of every 10 years... has the FED lived up to this myth? No. Why did the Harding/Coolidge/Mellon model of cut taxes and cut spending work? Why did Reagan repeat to the same effect. While FDR's policies of price control, tariffs, etc .. prolonged his depression... the same with Obama.. SPIN and lie all you want. Unbiased americans can look at history and see who's correct. All I will see now are personal derogatory and misinformation and racist rants in answer.
Yes they can!
Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"
Ummm ... no.
On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938. But that was four years into Roosevelt's term -- four years marked by spectacular economic growth. Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal's spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR "was persuaded to balance the budget" and "cut spending and the economy went back down again."
What about the New Deal's most "massive government intervention" -- its financial regulations? Did they prolong the Great Depression in ways the official data didn't detect?
Nope.
OK -- if the verifiable evidence proves the New Deal did not prolong the Depression, what about historians -- do they "pretty much agree" on the opposite?
Again, no.
But that's the critical point I somehow forgot last week, the truism we must all remember in 2009: As conservatives try to obstruct a new New Deal, they're not making any arguments that are remotely serious.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/01/02/sirota_fdr_depression/
But don't forget the biggest stimulus package was WWII- which most right-wingers claim got us out of the Great Depression.