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Media Hypocrisy On Health Care Protests Is Grotesque
The media’s reaction to the health care protests has been so hypocritical at times, I actually get light headed. The putrid stench of hypocrisy is hanging like a thick cloud over every newsroom in America — with the exception of Fox and a few others.
Besides 9/11, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the Bush years is protests. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing some hippie puke bellowing about the Iraq war or calling Bush a terrorist or war criminal. In fact, I can remember violent, ugly demonstrations that went light years beyond anything we’ve seen thus far over health care.
Bill Sammon has a great piece on FoxNews.com that should help jog the memory about just how scary things actually got during the Bush years — and what the media didn’t say about it:
News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama’s town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric — and even violence — of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002.
When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting "Bush is a terrorist!", the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.
One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.
"BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE," read the placard, which had an X over the word "ALIVE."
Another poster showed Bush’s face with the words: "F— YOU, MOTHERF—ER!"
A third sign urged motorists to "HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH." A fourth declared: "CHRISTIAN FASCISM," with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.
Although reporters from numerous national news organizations were traveling with Bush and witnessed the protest, none reported that protesters were shrieking at Republican donors epithets like "Slut!" "Whore!" and "Fascists!"
Frank Dulcich, president and CEO of Pacific Seafood Group, had a cup of liquid thrown into his face, and then was surrounded by a group of menacing protesters, including several who wore masks. Donald Tykeson, 75, who had multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair, was blocked by a thug who threatened him.
No matter how dangerous or extreme the protests got, the media either didn’t report it or downplayed it. You never read headlines about “Angry Mobs” or “Political Terrorists” or anything even remotely close. The media preferred to call them “Activists.”
We all know the mainstream media is liberal as hell and didn’t report honestly on the Bush protests because they agreed with them. I get that, it’s no surprise.
What really chaps my ass is how the media treats the public like a bunch of brain dead jerks who can’t remember from one year to the next.
It’s just so sickeningly phony for the media to feign shock and horror over a few cranky senior citizens upset over health care, when they sat back and said nothing during eight years of the most extreme protesting since the Vietnam war.
I’m not even asking for the media to change, I’m just asking for an acknowledgement of the hypocrisy.
-Chris Jones
(Image via Rush The Court)
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It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people (honestly where can they go with a pre-condition). And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a “lynch mob” advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types AKA “screamers” are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.