Sunday, September 6, 2009

The New Media Triumphant

For those who remember the heady days of the Clinton scandal, when a single, virtually unknown internet site, www.drudgereport.com, pried open the Lewinsky affair and with it, Clinton's obstruction of justice, a replay has just been put up on the big screen in the endzone.

FOX News, and specifically Glenn Beck, has almost single-handedly exposed "Green jobs czar" Van Jones as the radical communist America-hater he is, and forced his resignation. Even the Huffington-Puffington Post admitted Beck had his "first scalp on the wall." If Drudge was the "300 pound gorilla" in the mid-1990s with his ability to break news no one else could get, Beck has become the exposer-in-chief of the conservative movement in exile.

Two facts are shocking about this Jones debacle:
*Number of words dedicated to Van Jones, last week, according to Byron York of the Washington Examiner (as of 9/5):
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.
*Number of calls for Van Jones to resign by major Republican officials:
John McCain: 0
Mitt Romney: 0
Mike Huckabee: 0 (that I know of---perhaps he said something on his TV show, but I can't find a headline)
John Boehner: 0
Orin Hatch: 0 (but he had time to write a song honoring Ted Kennedy)
Michael Steele: 0
David Brooks: 0

(Perhaps I'm wrong here, also, but I can't find that Sarah Palin issued a statement saying he needed to resign. On facebook, she urged her fans to watch Glenn Beck's show, but made no official comment last week on Jones).

Now, these are stunning numbers. In my recent memory, it's the first time ever that a major official in any administration has been forced to resign from a grass-roots movement, with no coverage or support at all in the national press except FOX; and without the slightest pressure from the so-called opposition party. Rush was away last week, and guest-host Mark Steyn hit this pretty hard, though certainly not like Glenn Beck did. Beck is emerging as public enemy number one for the Left.

What does this mean for the Tea Parties/Townhalls? MUCHO! (Little Spanish lingo there for all you illegal aliens). It means that increasingly, the grass roots is making a Gulf-War-type flanking maneuver around the entrenched obsolete Saddam line of the media and Washington elites. I can't emphasize that enough: no major Republican officials, elected or wanna-be office holders, were out front on this guy. The people, through their media, are increasingly shaping policy.

The upcoming "march on Washington" may, or may not, be a Martin Luther King-type moment, but the reality is that even among activist conservatives, they still have to work and raise families and cannot just hop off to any protest they choose to attend. My guess is that whatever the numbers on September 12, they will wildly understate the real support that is growing out here for change, and not the "hopey" stuff promised by the occupant of the Oval Office. Even John McCain, a little slow on the trigger these days, said there is a "revolution" brewing; yet even McCain continues to ignore its concerns as he announces he wants to revive amnesty.

If I have to guess, as of 9/6/09, whether we get a "health care" bill, my guess is yes. I don't know, yet, if it contains the "public option," but I do know that it will spark an even greater resentment among the tea parties, while eating into more of Obama's support among those who wanted to "just give him a chance." Well, they are seeing what happens when they give him a chance: he appoints America-hating radicals to give away their money!

7 comments:

  1. Ahhh....there's nothing like the smell of revolution in the morning.....

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  2. IIf this isn't one of the best examples of how the Old Media is bought and paid for, then what is?

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  3. Byron York's numbers are skewed, if not grossly inaccurate. It took less than a minute to find "Attack on Obama Riles Beck's Advertisers," a New York Times article dated 24 August 2009 that discusses Glenn Beck, Van Jones and advertisers withdrawing support from Beck's Fox show.

    Yesterday, without once looking at Fox, I was able to spend the better part of an hour reading news stories concerning Beck's attack on Van Jones.

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  4. The mainstream press (see today's AP release) characterizes Van Jones as a "former Civil Rights activist." The spin is that Van Jones was railroaded out of office due to a few ill-chosen remarks by mean-spririted Republicans.

    No mention of his racist beliefs, his America-hating ideology, his endorsement of the notion that George Bush deliberately planned the 9/11/01 attacks, or his Communist affiliations. Van Jones was objectively a nutjob, but you would never glean this from our betters in the media.

    The mainstream press is a piece of work. Easily understood, however, if we understand that it functions as a partisan arm of the Democratic Party.

    Roger JB

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  5. He may be out of sight but he is not gone. He's still a Marxist and still dangerous.

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  6. Van Jones provides the most recent and egregious example of the Democrats vetting process (am I giving too much credit by assuming they have a process?). How many radicals does OBAMA! need to associate with until we can conclude that his ideology is likewise radical.Anyway, 1 down...36 to go.

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  7. I'd say to James Stripes that this makes York's point entirely. This is clearly an article about BECK and BECK'S "attack"---not an article before Beck's "attack" about Van Jones. Thanks, Jim, for making my . . . and York's . . . point.

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