[Towle_]

A short history of the Tea Party:

It was started as a libertarian-minded movement with a Ron Paul flavor to it. Initially, the right- and left-wing mainstream media were unsure of how to cover the Tea Party. Their ideology of libertarianism was foreign to the two-party landscape, and the movement had no visible leader.

Eventually, the Tea Party gained enough momentum that non-libertarian politicians (most notably Sarah Palin) saw it as politically useful and started speaking at rallies. These politicians were not libertarians, however; most were neo-conservatives. They echoed some of the familiar Tea Party rhetoric, only what was politically palatable and made sense to the two-party world. The rest of the libertarian ideology was thrown in the trash.

Because of her familiarity to the public, both sides of the media identified Palin as the de-facto leader of the Tea Party. Her ideology replaced the movement's. The complex story of a decentralized, leaderless, libertarian-inspired grassroots uprising was replaced by the simple story of Palin leading a bunch of people who hate Obama.

Of course, you are what the media says you are. The rallies themselves began to draw more and more Palin crazies, after they were told it was her movement. Those are the people you see on CNN holding up the often-racist, always-illogical signage.

And that's how the Tea Party went from enlightened to bigoted.

[philwelch]

The actual libertarians I know tend to think of the Tea Party as kind of a retarded little brother to the libertarian movement. That's probably not the most tasteful analogy.

[curt]

Any movement is going to have its share of crazies, but as a whole tea party folks are great people. A lot of those "racists" are plants, I've gone to a few events and those people are quickly booed out.

Just go to an event and talk to the people yourself.

[Towle_]

Whether or not they're plants, they are certainly not representative of the movement as a whole, neither its former nor current self. The bigots are the people "we" associate with the Tea Party because CNN focuses on them. And CNN focuses on them because they, like everyone else in the media, are in the business of re-confirming the worldview of their audience.

Who is a loyal CNN viewer? According to CNN, he is educated and informed and secular and (implicitly) liberal. Also according to CNN, Sarah Palin is none of those things. So, it becomes part of the loyal CNN viewer's worldview to dislike her.

How can CNN re-confirm this worldview in their coverage of Tea Party rallies? Easy. Since the loyal CNN viewer knows he is educated and secular (after all, CNN told him so) then he knows he's against racists, who are neither. So CNN turns the Tea Party into a bunch of racists and makes Sarah Palin their leader. Worldview re-confirmed. "See! What did I tell you about that Sarah Palin lady..."

(Note that I am not making any judgments one way or the other about the Tea Partiers or Palin herself. I am just explaining how this works.)