A recent New York Times editorial went to great pains to associate the IRS plane bomber with the Tea Party Movement, even though the evidence offered by the editorial actually contradicts that very point. The Times deftly dodges bald-faced lies by replacing facts with fantastic conjecture and peppering the entire diatribe with caveats – “. . . it would be inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a Tea Party Terrorist. But . . . “. This style of writing shall henceforth be deemed ‘Hiding in Plain Sight”, as in the lies are printed right there in black & white, yet the writer pretends to have credibility by hiding behind all sorts of equivocations, rationalizations and amateurishly crafted inferences.
The main claim is that the attacker’s manifesto contains “some” of the same ideals expressed by the Tea Party Movement. That’s a baseless claim, as the Tea Party is a loosely organized group with untold numbers, not all of whom share the same values, ideals or goals; In contrast, this is the rage of a solitary person who has just one set of beliefs. No intelligent mind would equate a national movement to lower taxes with a single deranged individual who flies a plane into an IRS building, killing an innocent man in the process. For instance, the Democratic Party has strong ties to unions. Should the very foundation of the Democratic Party be associated with any American who commits murder if that person belongs to a union? Should any American involved in a bitter divorce be grouped together with people who so loathe their spouses as to murder them? Just because both groups might have vitriol in their hearts toward their mate doesn’t make them of similar ideologies, as they made vastly different choices to resolve their problems.
Obviously such associations are far-fetched and lack any basis in reality, yet this faulty logic is frequently utilized and emphatically endorsed by the Times. According to this piece, anyone who dislikes paying taxes or believes taxes should be lower is “unhinged” and reminiscent of the Oklahoma City terrorists. Indeed, the Times published a laughable charade of investigative journalism purported to be a “chilling” account of the unhinged Tea Partiers, replete with racist militias. Sadly, not a single intellect there in the Times offices made the simple connection that if one goes to a small town in a state known for rednecks and militias to ask folks how they feel about the government, they will get a lot of regurgitated ignorance from said uneducated rednecks. The Times must just hope each day that the readers are as dumb as the writers, thus aren't expected to have the elementary critical thinking skills needed to completely discredit many Times articles.
Here’s an organization that has raged against the previous administration for years, decrying every aspect of the Patriot Act and the excessive power it grants to the government. However, the same paper sees fit to quote a Tea Party member who criticizes the governments’ ability to tap phones and examine financial records. These are the unhinged conspiracy theorists of the Tea Party Movement and they agree wholeheartedly with the Times’ near-constant criticism of the Patriot Act.
Perhaps most transparent of all is the unabashed hypocrisy in the overall reporting at the Times. To wit, a very lengthy editorial in late October 2009 lamented the over-reaching power of the Patriot Act; Yet a few days ago, they reported that Obama had signed an extension of “the nation’s main counterterrorism law.” Some of the provisions of the act most frequently criticized by the Times would have expired without the President’s signature, yet the concise article offered scant facts and no opining. Oddly missing was strongly-worded criticism of Obama for single-handedly extending these items, despite the fact that such censure has accompanied just about every other report on this, as well any mention of anyone who supported the items.
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