Dave Weigel was the first Journolista to fall in the recent Daily Caller series.
Weigel was fired from his blog at The Washington Post (resignation accepted) after emails in which he bad-mouthed conservatives were revealed. Weigel ended up at Slate.com, owned by WaPo.
Weigel either was a scoundrel or a victim, or bupkis, depending upon your perspective.
Weigel has an op-ed at WaPo which actually is kinda, sorta fair and balanced, Five myths about the ‘tea party’.
I thought Myth 2 was mostly fairly presented (except for the first part of the last sentence):
2. The tea party is racist.
It’s a phenomenon that some activists call “nutpicking” — send a cameraman into a protest and he’ll focus on the craziest sign. Yes, there are racists in the tea party, and they make themselves known. But tea party activists usually root them out. Texas activist Dale Robertson, who held a sign likening taxpayers to a racial epithet at a 2009 rally, was drummed out of that event and pilloried by his peers. Mark Williams, formerly the bomb-throwing spokesman for the Tea Party Express (he once told me he wanted to send the liberal watchdog group Media Matters “a case of champagne” for calling him racist), was booted after penning a parody that had the NAACP pining for slavery.
Liberal critics of the tea party argue that conservative opposition to social spending is often racially motivated. That’s not new, though, and it’s not the basis for the tea party.
I had not heard the term “nutpicking” before. Sounds kinda weird, but does capture the flavor of the methodology by which the Tea Party movement is under attack.
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Comments
the funny thing is when you go nutpicking in the Democratic party you don't have to look in the crowd for the nuts … they are at the podium or in charge …
Ha! Well said, Ghost!
That was actually an almost nice column! I think he was wrong on #5 though.
I agree with you earlyparades. The GOP is hardly an open door for us Tea Partiers and that is why we represent a step in the process of either purging the GOP of its Democratic leadership or redirecting our efforts into forming a new (second) party.
There are more voters who identify as Tea Party than either Dem or Rep and conservatives outnumber liberals two to one. And independent conservatives outnumber Republican conservatives.
The Tea Party may not become the new party but we are clearly demonstrating that there the numbers strongly suggest that a new party is more than viable.
Um, when he said "That's not new", he meant the liberal argument wasn't new, not the conservative viewpoint. I'm not sure if you thought it was the other way, when you said "the first part of the last sentence".
There are no "myths" I can tell about David Weigel but a FACT I can impart is that he is a POSER! He is a disgusting little troll of a man with NO moral base, I am sure his mother is so proud of course he did learn to have NO moral compass from someone!
If I didn't desire so greatly to leave a comment for the pimple faced little twit I certainly would NOT have given him the traffic!
"Nutpicking" is a term from a few years back, when liberals ran rampant leaving the most vile comments about (insert topic here) and Conservative bloggers would highlight those comments. The libs took exception to highlighting those comments, claiming that we were only picking out the few nuts. Even though the majority were leaving disgusting comments, such as at the DU, Kos, and HuffPost.
Professor, what is your take on this piece by Peggy Noonan?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703748904575411713335505250.html
Come on . . . hadn't you heard?
The "Tea Party" and the Democrats have become the . . . new best friends on the block!
David Weigel is just taking up his latest assignment — helping to smooth over the transition from (unsuccessfully) calling them a bunch of racists, to the newest plan — infiltrating their ranks!
as the old idiom goes,
"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"
Or, if you'd prefer a more pointed cartoon version . . .
It should be increasingly obvious to anyone that the Democrats are still desperately flailing about for a message that sticks for the fall races.
"It's all Bush's fault" . . . "the tea-baggers are a bunch of racists!" . . .
Here it is, mid-August, on the cusp of the sturgeon moon (the 24th), and they can hear the footsteps!