Even More on the Democrats' Fake Hate Crimes

After the Health Care Bill passed, Democrats immediately tried to divert attention to the Tea Party movement. With a lot of help from the Mainstream Media (Iowahawk really scored this time). Mark Steyn and others explained the significance of what happened on March 20 with the "walk" by the Congressional Black Caucus. Why are Democrats so firmly stuck in the past? Also back in March, VDH put the Democrats' "bottled piety" in perspective:

Like it or not, between 2001 and 2008, the “progressive” community redefined what is acceptable and not acceptable in political and public discourse about their elected officials. Slurs like “Nazi” and “fascist” and “I hate” were no longer the old street-theater derangement of the 1960s, but were elevated to high-society novels, films, political journalism, and vein-bulging outbursts of our elites. If one were to take the word "Bush" and replace it with "Obama" in the work of a Nicholson Baker, or director Gabriel Range, or Garrison Keillor or Jonathan Chait, or in the rhetoic of a Gore or Moore, we would be presently in a national crisis, witnessing summits on the epidemic of "hate speech."

So here we are with the age-old problem that once one destroys decorum for the sake of short-term expediency, it is very hard to restore it in any credible fashion on grounds of principle when the proverbial shoe is on the other foot.

Below is an ongoing update on the transparent attempts by Democrats to vilify the Tea Party Movement.

Don't Leave It to Cleaver
Part 2: Starting to back off claims
Part 3: The Breitbart challenge
Part 4: Video debunks claims
Part 5 The Washington Post's contribution to the brouhaha.
Part 6: The AP reports on the controversy, gets facts wrong.
Part 7: A citizen challenges WaPo's ombudsman.

Changes in Media Stereotypes of Tea Party Protesters

Some time around the beginning of April, the descriptions of Tea Party protesters began to change. Maybe the push-back from Breitbart, et. al, had some effect. Maybe the polls had some effect, or the presence of Democrats among the protesters. In any case,

There was a time, oh, a week or two ago, when the mainstream media portrayed the tea-party movement as an assortment of crazed angry extremist redneck racist idiots. What changed?

The headline we've given this column is a phrase coined by the conservative writer Tom Bethell to refer to the media's attitude toward conservatives who veer leftward. What we're about to describe is a bit different: more an epiphany on the media's part than a change in the object of coverage. It seems unlikely that the tea-partiers have suddenly become mainstream.

Yet that's what you'd think from reading some of the recent coverage. The Christian Science Monitor, which a month ago baselessly labeled Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell a "right-wing extremist," begins a Saturday story by rehearsing the stereotypes but then cautions that "political experts say that many such criticisms are near-sighted, if not outright inappropriate--and ultimately may miss the point": . . .

Something different is happening out there.

Update: From Punchline to Powerhouse