TEA PARTY - INCOMPREHENSIBLE?

Every time I read something written by a tea party loyalist or blogger, I'm reminded of a scene in the PRINCESS BRIDE, whereby the character Vizini, played by Wallace Shawn, repeatedly proclaims 'inconceivable' at every odd occurrence that happens.  He does it so often that at one point his employee Inigo says, 'you keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.'

So goes the Tea Party when it come to comprehending news, politics and even issues.  Their simplification of the complicated or their vilification of the innocuous is almost a daily occurrence.  The quote below is the most recent bit of reading incomprehension the Tea Party has applied, this time to one of the most respected journalists in the country:

"Let's remember: there was considerable opposition when Lyndon Johnson went to the Congress and...presented some of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the history of this country. Most people told him he couldn't get it done, but he figured out a way to do it. And that's what Barack Obama is going to have to do...what happened in Newtown was probably the worst day in this country's history since 9/11. We found Osama bin Laden. We tracked him down. We changed the way that we dealt with that problem. Surely, finding Osama bin Laden; surely passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby." - Bob Schieffer

I used to think that Americans looked for solutions; That the deposed party's job was to actually work to solve things because 1) they were voted out of power and thus it was made clear their party's platforms failed to resonate with the voters; and 2) by actually bringing solutions to the table, that party would suddenly have a platform with which to win the next election.

Then the Tea Party was born.  Though their website list nine very general ideas they stand for, how they go about it seems as divergent as Robert Frost's roads in the wood.  Not only has the party put up for election multiple candidates which didn't stand for their own platforms, but simply lacked qualifications for the job.  Their rebuttal for their bad choices?  It's either that they've been misunderstood or the press inherently has a bias against them, an exercise in finger-pointing they've exercised so often they could run a finger-pointing marathon.  Not shocking one of their nine platforms is the idea of civic responsibility, which is readily discarded for blaming at every opportunity they get.

The recent outcry by Tea Partiers has been the Obama Administration's desire to put back in place the same assault weapons ban that was enacted under Ronald Reagan.  They throw their support behind Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA, while chastising such controls as an attack on the Constitution. 

I've had several of their members attempt to educate me on their interpretation of the second amendment, which of course you find nowhere in the actual language.  In fact, it's easy to see why they misread the 2nd Amendment, because they've bought into all the rhetoric the NRA is selling.  They forget that the 2nd Amendment was clarified by several Supreme Court decisions to include home protection only as recent as the late 1980's, that in fact that Amendment dealt with owning arms as a way of keeping a well trained militia.  And if you can't expect them to read the 2nd Amendment in a way that allows for practicality when it comes to arms, you can see why the above quotation from Bob Schieffer, a respected and long-time journalist for CBS News, has become blogosphere fodder for Tea Partiers with reading comprehension difficulties. 

As one can read clearly from the quote, tackling the gun debate is not a daunting task to Schieffer, who points out there have been many other daunting tasks that have faced the United States before: slavery, civil rights, defeating Hitler and the armies of the Third Reich -- all of these were much more daunting tasks that America successfully rose up and defeated.  Yet the headlines from the world of the right wing organizations and tea party are as such:

Bob Schieffer Compares NRA to Nazis, Bin Laden - Fox News

Bob Schieffer Compares Defeating NRA to Defeating Nazis - Breitbart.com

Schieffer Likens Obama Taking On Gun Lobby To "Defeating The Nazis" - Real Clear Politics

Bob Schieffer Likens Obama 'Taking on the Gun Lobby' to Hunt for Bin Laden, 'Defeating the Nazis' - Newsbusters.org

....and so on.

Notice the Headline from Fox News bears little resemblance to the others.  In fact, Fox's headline is so far askew, that it actually says Schieffer compared the NRA to actually being Nazis.  Hey, they may be fair and balanced but that doesn't mean they need to be accurate.

Many blogs even after posting a closer to correct headline chose to add that Schieffer was indeed comparing the NRA to Nazism, while at the same time declaring their case of more liberal media bias.  I give Newsbuster.org and Real Clear Politics credit for at least getting the gist of what Schieffer was saying in their headline.  But I believe they still got it wrong.

Granted, wiser words could have been chosen, for much like the use of the N word in racial discussions, the moment you pull the word 'nazi' from your bag of comparisons, you're moving into dramatic territory.  But to Schieffer's credit, he lived through all these times and reported on many of them.  His words point out that taking on the gun lobby is not nearly as a daunting task as some of the previous ones we have faced.  And thus, he's not comparing the NRA or the Gun Lobby to Nazism per say, but saying that we shouldn't feel daunted about going after violent weapons with so many people freaking out about the issue because people freaked out about many issues in the past.  People are still freaking out about civil rights for gays (side note: the Tea Party is against gay marriage too -- so much for government staying out of your lives) and we're in the 21st Century.

Forget that the moment being discussed here was one where Schieffer was  clearly editorializing, not reporting the news.  His job covering the press conference was to interpret the issue at hand and present what Obama said.  He then gave his own opinion.  That's a heck of a lot difference than claiming it's news.

Let me also point out that editorials have long been a tradition of news writers, broadcasters and station owners.  Op Eds are part of every newspaper and have long been a part of station broadcasts.  Heck, I can remember local stations giving editorials to station news directors weekly when I grew up.  No one felt for a moment that an editorial in any way prevented good journalist from doing their job.  Just like an actor can play someone completely different than themselves, news people, though tending to be of the left ilk simply because the nature of their job demands they be open enough to find both sides of every argument, rarely turned the newscast into an activist declaration for one side or the other.   

However, the Tea Party is up in arms, misrepresenting something again so that they can bash, scare and misinform you.  They have no suggestions of how to deal with the gun issue except that the government should continue to let people get slaughtered because they believe in the Heller Court's opinion of the Second Amendment, which is currently the law of the land.  Never mind that the Heller Court, nor any other court, has ever clearly laid guidelines regarding the protection using arms of the high capacity types used in Aurora or Newtown.

More ironic is that for all of these claims that Schieffer made a horrific comparison the likes of which he should be ashamed, you won't hear the Tea Party mention that Wayne LaPierre himself as recently as the mid 90's wrote a fundraising letter for the NRA whereby he compared federal agents to "jack-booted government thugs" who wear "Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms".  He later apologized, but LaPierre did indeed compare our federal services to Nazi SS. 

No one is alarmed about that.  Or his rhetoric whereby LaPierre accused President Clinton of tolerating more violence in his first term so he could build a case for gun control and win points with the anti-gun advocates.

The Tea Party already has a sordid history of supporting questionable candidates and causes, probably because they're often fuzzy even about what their cause is, which forced Ron Paul in 2010 to attempt to clarify their sometimes distorted and often inconsistent agenda. 

"[W]e cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world ... I see tremendous opportunities for movements like the Tea Party to prosper by capitalizing on the Democrats' broken promises to overturn the George W. Bush administration's civil liberties abuses and end the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A return to the traditional U.S. foreign policy of active private engagement but government noninterventionism is the only alternative that can restore our moral and fiscal health."

Not only does Paul lay out the contradictions within the Tea Party, wherein many have supported nation building overseas while calling for spending cuts, but he actually supports Obama's plan to engage via diplomacy without intervention on a military level.  Yet many Tea Partiers blog almost the exact opposite when it comes to the nations of the Middle East.  While Obama shouldn't have supported the NATO coalition that bombed Libya and tried to force the removal of Qaddaffi, he shirked his duty when it came to supporting our people at the Embassy in Benghazi and should make those that committed the act pay. 

The contradictions are seemingly endless, from their supporters walking around with posters of Obama as Hitler, to perhaps the tipping point during the most recent elections wherein Richard Murdock of Indiana called the children of rape part of God's plan, and Todd Akin coined the term 'legitimate rape' in referring to women having a natural way of preventing pregnancy when such an act occurs. 

Yet if you mention this track record of disjointed candidates and grotesque rhetoric, they fail to understand how any of that should provide further skepticism as to their qualifications in the future.  Whilst providing nothing but noise and bluster at what's wrong with our country, the Tea Party seems to view their out of power duties as being the rancorous bystander rather than leader.  Their strategy failed in the 2012 elections.  Here's to hoping the same occurs in 2014.

And for all their attempts to malign Bob Schieffer as comparing the NRA to the Nazis, the bluster has simply shown how far they will go to simply inveigle the truth to fit their own rhetoric.  Schieffer is not only a journalist of 40-plus years, dare I say he has a lot more insight than these younger aficionados of the blogosphere who skew ideas to make their voice heard and progress a separate agenda.