Tea Party Movement Lights Fuse For Right

by David Barstow - February 16th, 2010 - The New York Times

The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general. What’s more, some Tea Party groups are essentially appendages of the local Republican Party.

Awakened by the recession
But most are not. They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars.

In an article ridiculing the TEA Party movement, The New York Times seems to reserve its greatest ridicule for the idea that Glen Beck is an appropriate source for anyone to get their information. Beck is artfully denigrated as just one more kook - advocating going into the woods and stocking up on guns and food to survive the collapse of society.

That Beck mocks the idea these tactics are effective or appropriate seems unworthy of mention by the liberal smear mongers of The New York Times.