AFP State Director on Apologizing to Man with Parkinson's: "It's not Something that I've Considered"

On March 21, 2010, the Health Care Reform legislation was signed into law after a contentious and heated year of debate that gave way to the rise of the Tea Party movement.

As health care reform became the primary target of this movement, we saw Fox News and the Republican Party latch onto this rage and harness it into a well promoted and corporate sponsored Conservative machine. This machine rolled through the country, turning out large crowds who carried signs declaring that we were being taken over by Communists and who showed up to health care town hall meetings to shout down members of Congress who supported any and all versions of proposed health care legislation.

During the past year, this Tea Party movement has continually claimed that they are a grassroots movement of concerned patriots, but as has been highlighted on this blog as well as in other media outlets, Republican backed corporate dollars have played a large role in assuring that the Tea Party momentum continues to build.

This momentum and this outrage that has been primarily directed at the Obama Administration and at progressives in general, has also been adopted by Republican politicians for reasons that are self-explanatory. The result of so many interests trying to work within the same movement has resulted in a brand of schizophrenic conservatism that mixes (what started out as) a primarily Libertarian movement and the politics of traditional Republican Party from the last few decades.

After a year of promotion by a major news channel and lots of Republican money being pumped into this cause, it is clear that those traditional Republican interests appear to be having an impact. Locally, members of the Cincinnati Tea Party have held rallies at which former Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) spoke. Many members of the tea party that I have talked to are advocating voting to put the long-time Republican Party member back into Congress in order to get Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) out. I have also talked with members of the tea party who feel that it is not a viable strategy to back more Libertarian-based third party candidates. Instead, it is clear that getting Democrats out of Congress is the priority, even if it means putting familiar Republican faces back into power.

While the confusion and internal struggles of the Tea Party movement are sometimes disguised, what has been most noticeable over this past year has been the anger and sometimes violent rhetoric. Locally, I documented some of the behavior that was evident at local town hall meetings and nationally we have seen racist, homophobic and violent rhetoric directed at those with who this movement disagrees. This behavior continued right up until (and ever since) the passage of this bill.

The Saturday before the House of Representative passed the legislation, there was a "Hands off my Healthcare" rally in Columbus, Ohio that was organized by Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has been one of the groups that has been instrumental in keeping the tea party momentum rolling by using their corporate funds and expert PR personnel to whip up the anger. Rachel Maddow:

This is what these groups do. They're experts at fake grass roots campaigns that promote corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity is the group that ginned up anti-stimulus rallies earlier this year. They also organized what they called the "Hot Air Tour" to campaign against the whole idea of global warming. They were the ones who sent Joe the Plumber around the country to rail against the Employee Free Choice Act, which is pro-labor legislation.

This oil industry and Republican operative billionaires club is according to the Republican party spokesman today, just average middle class Americans. Just regular American folks sitting around the kitchen table thinking about whether they can get away with saying that the government, continuing its long standing policy of encouraging living wills, is really a secret plot to kill old people.

[...]

These guys are the pros. This is an industry. Americans are showing up at these events to shout down the discussion, to chase their Congressmen, and they are enraged. And they're enraged at least in part because they're being riled up by over the top, fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they're being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well.

At this "Hands off my Health Care" rally in Columbus, an incident transpired that has been widely circulated. Bob Letcher, a 60-year-old man with Parkinson's Disease, was mocked, yelled at and had dollar bills thrown at him by anti-reformers as he sat quietly with his sign advocating his support for health care reform. Video from The Columbus Dispatch captured the scene:



Following this event, the State Director for AFP Rebecca Heimlich, told Talking Points Memo:

"I have seen the video and found the man's behavior completely inappropriate. Americans for Prosperity certainly does not encourage or condone harassing behavior. Our goal is to send a message to Rep. Kilroy that we oppose this health care takeover bill. We always encourage our members to be considerate of others in their demonstrations."

I caught up with Heimlich after a Conservative-sponsored candidates forum the other evening to ask about AFP's future plans, but also to ask whether AFP was going to apologize to Mr. Letcher for the behavior of individuals at an event which they sponsored. The full interview is below and the specific question about Letcher is at about 1:35 into the clip:

(Note: I refer to Bob Letcher as "Bob Letchman" during this interview. That was my spoken mistake. I also mention that Letcher had described the movement as being "cultivatively violent or harsh or something along those lines." Letcher's quote is "cultivatively angry" and can be found here.)



In short, Heimlich did not know if it would "be appropriate" for AFP to issue Letcher an apology because it was not clear that the "man in the white shirt" was a member of her organization. She also stated that she didn't know if it would be AFP's "responsibility" to issue an apology due to this event having many sponsors.

Heimlich also stated that she does not think that this movement is primarily violent or angry and that she has not seen any other inappropriate behavior at her events. She also said that she thinks it is good for people to express their opinions in a respectful way and even went as far as calling a moment where two sides were yelling at each other "substantive debate".

Since my interview with Heimlich, the "man in the white shirt" has been identified as Chris Reichert and interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch. In his interview, he told the paper that he was sorry:

"He's got every right to do what he did and some may say I did too, but what I did was shameful," Reichert said. "I haven't slept since that day."

"I made a donation (to a local Parkinson's disease group) and that starts the healing process."

As Reichert begins his own healing process, groups like AFP continue to forge ahead in attempts to make health care an issue in upcoming elections. The fact still remains however that the Conservative and Tea Party movements are still trying to figure out if they are really Libertarians or Republicans with a new populist message. This disconnect was illustrated at the end of my interview with Heimlich:

CB: Do you think Glenn Beck is a positive voice for your movement?

RH: ...I don't watch that show, so I can't really tell you if I think he is or not because [...] I don't know that much about him...

CB: Is there any differentiation you think between the 9/12 groups and the Tea Party groups or is it pretty much...?

RH: From what I have seen in Ohio, they all work together I mean they are all part of the Ohio Liberty Council, so I have not seen any differentiation.

So the Tea Party movement is no different from the 9/12 movement. Glenn Beck motivates the 9/12 Movement with his show much like AFP motivates Tea Party groups with their rallies, yet Heimlich doesn't know if Beck is a positive voice for her movement? Schizophrenic Conservatism indeed.


This piece is cross posted here.

Glenn Beck Barks Like a Dog On-air...Seriously

Only so much time can pass before Glenn Beck decides to once again jump off the deep end on his Fox television show. This time, he did not break into tears or pour "gasoline" on a staffer, but barked like a wild dog in response to a video by President Obama:



Remember that this is the man who started the "9/12 Project" and who is the hero of many members of the "Tea-Party" movement.

What is continually interesting about Beck isn't just his circus-like antics that make you question his stability, but also how he has fun with facts. Take this recent spat between Beck and Rachel Maddow which Maddow addressed on her MSNBC show the other night:

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I wonder what kind of movement someone like Beck, who plays loose with facts and acts like a madman, would be able to inspire? Oh wait:

Lou Dobbs Continues his Post-CNN Media Tour

Lou Dobbs, freshly departed from his gig at CNN, stopped by The Daily Show last night. Jon Stewart extended the segment into a three-part conversation that is posted at The Daily Show's website and also right here:

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I thought Stewart was pretty good in this conversation, but it wasn't his best. The conversation stayed very down to Earth and Stewart was able to challenge Dobbs on a few key points, but Stewart didn't touch on Dobbs' controversial stance on "illegal" immigration or on his recent birther comments. Stewart also allowed Dobbs to paint President Obama as a "far left" President which, in turn, framed Dobbs as being a centrist. Then again, Stewart is just the host of a satirical comedy show right?

One of the more important points that Stewart did bring up, which I believe is both revealing and central to this conversation, is the past silence of those who are suddenly criticizing the so-called destruction of our freedoms by the government. I have stated this in the past, but it is quite clear that during the last eight years, the tea-partiers and 9/12'ers were totally silent on these issues. It is only now, when there is a black Democratic President in the White House, when there is sudden outrage from the right and being adopted as a viable business strategy by a major "news" corporation.

If you want to take a look at a really interesting interview of Dobbs and a subsequent discussion, I point you to this interview that was conducted by Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez in December of 2007. Dobbs is confronted and forced to try and explain apparent inaccuracies that he stated on his broadcast. I will post some of the transcript below, but I highly recommend you follow that link and watch the entire conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Lou, you said a third of the prison population are illegal aliens.

LOU DOBBS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: The fact is, it’s something like 6% of prisoners in this country are non-citizens, not even illegal, just non-citizens.

LOU DOBBS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And then a percentage of that would not be documented.

LOU DOBBS: Well, it’s actually—I think it’s 26% in federal prison.

AMY GOODMAN: But you said of all prisoners.

LOU DOBBS: I said about—yes, but I—and I misspoke, without question. I was referring to federal prisoners.

AMY GOODMAN: But you didn’t say that, and so it leaves people with the impression—

LOU DOBBS: Well, I didn’t, but then I just explained it to you.

AMY GOODMAN: But you have a very large audience on CNN.

LOU DOBBS: I have a very large audience and a very bright audience.

AMY GOODMAN: And you told them that a third of the population of this country are illegal immigrants. 6% , which is under the population of immigrants—

LOU DOBBS: 6% , right.

AMY GOODMAN: —in this country, of prisoners—

LOU DOBBS: In state prisons.

AMY GOODMAN: —are immigrants.

LOU DOBBS: In state prisons. In state prisons.

AMY GOODMAN: No, 6% overall are immigrants. You said 30% are illegal.

LOU DOBBS: Well, I think we’ve established—we could sit here and say this all day, Amy. The fact is, the number is 26% in federal prisons. That’s what I was referring to. I did not—I misspoke when I said “prisons.” I was referring to the federal prisons, because that’s the federal crime: immigration. And that—

AMY GOODMAN: Have you made a correction on your show to say that 30% of—?

LOU DOBBS: I’m sure we have. We’ve reported—absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: We didn’t see it.

[...]

AMY GOODMAN: Another guest that you’ve had on the show—now, this is a very important point, and this is one that you would agree that you’ve covered, and that is Arizona—this is very important—the Protect Arizona Now referendum. In late 2004, it was revealed that the new head of the national advisory board to Protect Arizona Now, an anti-immigration organization, was a longtime white supremacist who was also an editorial advisor to the racist Council of Conservative Citizens. Although Virginia Abernethy’s controversial selection was reported prominently in virtually every Arizona paper, and despite the fact that Lou Dobbs heavily cover the anti-immigration referendum that Protect Arizona Now was advocating, you never mentioned the affair at all, her controversial selection as head of this group.

LOU DOBBS: And she was featured in how many reports?

AMY GOODMAN: The point is, you covered Protect Arizona Now extensively, and this is certainly significant, when it turns out that the head of the board of Protect Arizona Now is—

LOU DOBBS: And when was the last time she was on the show?

AMY GOODMAN: No, the important point is, you didn’t report the news of this very controversial—

LOU DOBBS: Is it possible—

AMY GOODMAN: —racist woman who headed Protect Arizona Now, which was virtually in every Arizona paper. The question is—

LOU DOBBS: Concurrent with our reporting?

AMY GOODMAN: —what you report and what you don’t.

LOU DOBBS: Concurrent with our reporting?

AMY GOODMAN: Of course. This is in 2004. The point is, what you report, Lou, and what you don’t report.

LOU DOBBS: Well, you know, Amy, I don’t know what to tell you, because, you know, based on your focus here today, you have focused on probably three or four reports, as best I can figure, out of more than five years of reporting on the issue. If that smacks at all to you of reasonable proportionate journalism on your part, I mean, God bless you. If that’s what you believe, God bless you. But I think you’re coming from an ideological position that has just absolutely skewed that perception and that perspective.

Jon Stewart Spoofs Glenn Beck

Jon Stewart does a great job of spoofing Glenn Beck's ridiculous schtick.

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Katie Couric Interviews Glenn Beck

The other day, I posted a preview clip of Katie Couric's upcoming interview with Glenn Beck. Here is the full interview:


Watch CBS Videos Online

The interview is very interesting and some of the highlights include:

- Beck connecting his former alcoholism with believing in "socially liberal" ideas.
- Beck's continued insistence that he was yelling just as loud about President Bush as he is about President Obama.
- Beck stating that he was angry about the passage of the Patriot Act.
- His statement that "If you are not afraid of your government...the government can become a nightmare."
- and his attempts to justify his calling Obama a racist because Obama views the society through the "prism" of a historical pattern of racism.

After watching this interview, it is still puzzling as to what Glenn Beck believes. Frankly, I don't think that he knows what he believes. Many of his answers went off on tangents and he often accused Katie Couric of trying to set him up. Paranoid is a good word to use in describing Beck's demeanor during this interview.

One of the most interesting moments comes at about the 23 minute mark in the interview when Couric relays a question from a Twitter user. The question asks what Beck meant by "White Culture" when he infamously said that President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for White Culture". Beck initially says that he doesn't know and then proceeds to dance around the question. When Couric presses him, he then claims that she is attempting to trap into giving her a "sound byte". He even has a Sarah Palin moment when he claims that Couric is playing a "gotcha" game. Couric asks Beck if he should be able to defend the controversial statements that he makes and Beck continues to stay mum.

This exchange is important because it demonstrates that Beck has no clue what he meant by that statement. This response is a microcosm of Glenn Beck and shows him to be a man that is confused as to what he believes, paranoid, and someone who strings loosley connected questions and statements that only scratch the surface, but are presented as providing answers to deep and complex questions.

Schizophrenic Conservatism

One of the more interesting topics that I find myself coming back to is the continuation of various protest movements that have sprung up around the country in opposition to the Obama Administration. I wrote about the paradox in these protests here, discussed how Glenn Beck's crazy hypocritical antics are fueling them here, and highlighted a video that shows the kaleidoscope of issues that are being protested here. Just when you think that all of this can't get any more confusing, it does.

Glenn Beck is going to be interviewed on CBSNews.com this evening by Katie Couric. A short clip has been released to promote this interview. Watch how Glenn Beck says that he doesn't like John McCain because he is some "progressive like Theodore Roosevelt" and how he thinks that McCain would have been a worse President than Obama or Hillary Clinton:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Astounding coming from the same guy who has devoted his show on Fox News to claiming that Obama is a Marxist and a racist. Couple that with the continued exposure of Beck as an outright hypocrite and you can't help but ask where on Earth he stand politically. For example (h/t dday), here is Beck (back when he was on CNN) talking about how Ron Paul supporters are terrorists:




Also note that in that video clip Beck says (of Ron Paul):

"It's really not the way I would go, tying in my movement with a historical terrorist attack, especially in post-9/11 America."

Beck is the same guy who started the 9/12 Project.

Here is another video (made by a Ron Paul supporter) that contains a video clip of Beck stating that he supports the $700 billion bailout that President Bush proposed as well as Beck's endorsement of the Patriot Act:




and in this clip from the other day, (can you guess what is coming?) Beck states that he was critical of Bush and "hated him" for the bailouts:




This is the guy who has been a driving force behind the tea-party and 9/12 Project protest movements that we have seen explode since President Obama took office back in January. He is a personality that literally cries on-air while delivering passionate speeches about how this country is falling apart, yet it is quite clear that what Glenn Beck believes (at least politically) shifts when he needs to attract ratings.

What Beck is promoting a brand of Schizophrenic Conservatism that has resulted in people showing up at large rallies claiming that they are against everything from health care reform to socialism to spending to illegal immigration to a "Muslim" taking over the country, etc.

Glenn Greewald weighs in on this confusion:

Increasingly, there is great difficulty in understanding not only Beck's political orientation but, even more so, the movement that has sprung up around him. Within that confusion lies several important observations about our political culture, particularly the inability to process anything that does not fall comfortably into the conventional "left-right" dichotomy through which everything is understood.

[...]

Ultimately, Beck himself is just a histrionic intellectual mess: willing to latch onto any hysterical accusations and conspiracy theories that provide some momentary benefit, no matter how contradictory they might be from one moment to the next. His fears, resentments and religious principles seem fixed, but not his political beliefs. Like the establishment leadership of both political parties, he has no core political principles or fixed, identifiable ideology. His description of himself as a "rodeo clown" might be the most perceptive thing he's ever said. Attempts to classify him on the conventional political spectrum are destined to fail, and attempts to demonize him as some sort of standard Republican bogeyman will inevitably be so over-simplified as to be false. Such efforts assume far more coherence than he possesses.

Far more interesting than Beck himself is the increasingly futile effort to classify the protest movement to which he has connected himself. Here, too, confusion reigns. In part, this is due to the fact that these "tea party" and "9/12" protests are composed of factions with wildly divergent views about most everything. From paleoconservatives to Ron-Paul-libertarians to LaRouchians to Confederacy-loving, race-driven Southerners to Christianist social conservatives to single-issue fanatics (abortion, guns, gays) to standard Limbaugh-following, Bush-loving Republicans, these protests are an incoherent mishmash without any cohesive view other than: "Barack Obama is bad." There are unquestionably some highly noxious elements in these groups, but they are far from homogeneous. Many of these people despised the Bush-led GOP and many of them loved it.

Add to all of that the fact that this anti-Obama sentiment is being exploited by run-of-the-mill GOP operatives who have no objective other than to undermine Democrats and return the Republicans to power -- manifestly not the goal of many of the protesters -- and it's impossible to define what this movement is or what is driving it.

This is exactly what we have seen in several of the videos that I have shot outside the health care protests that have taken place over the Summer. My video interview with Jim was a prime example of a protester who made several points that were loosely connected together under the umbrella of "we are being taken over by socialists."

This is not to say that some of the issues that are being voiced by protesters are not genuine. In fact, many of the issues transcend the mentality of left versus right. Many people, myself included, care about Wall Street's influence on the government, care about rampant government spending, and care about the erosion of our civil liberties. Greenwald is right to point out through these protests, the curtain has being pulled back on the countries inability to collectively analyze issues outside of the Beltway's typical "left vs. right" mentality. This mentality has certainly trickled down to the populous and end up making issues even more complicated in the long-run.

This kind of complication manifests itself when you mix legitimate concerns of citizens with interests that work hard to maintain the status quo. These interests include national media figures like Beck, the influence of party interests who are working toward the political goal of defeating Obama, and those who perpetuate so-called "facts" that end up being completely wrong. What results is more than a complete mess. What results is a movement that does not know whether they are coming or going, let alone where they stand.


This piece is crossposted here.

Video of the Tea-Party March on Washington

What exactly is being protested here?

Glenn Beck's Crazy Antics Heat Up Once Again

Fox News host Glenn Beck has been on a roll again as of late. Despite losing 50% of his advertising dollars due to the boycott that has been orchestrated by Color Of Change, Beck's antics continue to raise eyebrows on a daily basis.

In this clip he is upset that he has been compared to Joe McCarthy for his recent efforts to "go after" members of the Obama Administration with who he disagrees:



One of the things that I find most striking about Beck, is his hypocrisy. There are two recent examples of this. The first happened on his show on the anniversary of 9/11. Beck cried (again) because we have not rebuilt a building to replace the World Trade Center since the 2001 attacks. He seems to think that it is government bureaucracy, special interests and political correctness that are getting in the way of building a new structure. In case you are wondering what all that means, I am sorry to tell you that he doesn't go into any detail:



While Beck enjoys getting sentimental on camera about a building and using 9/11 to push his 9/12 Project, one only need remember Beck's comments on his radio show in 2005 in regard to the 9/11 families, in order to fully see the just how much Beck really cares:



And now, yesterday, Glenn Beck is mad about Jimmy Carter stating that racism is a factor in some of the opposition to President Obama. In fact, he likens it to the same kind of "tactic" that the Taliban uses when they strap bombs to children. Think that is crazy? Well, he ups the ante by comparing Jimmy Carter to Osama bin Laden as well:



So Glenn Beck is mad at everyone getting called a racist yet I seem to remember someone calling Obama a racist and stating that Obama had a hatred for white people, only months ago:



The hypocrisy is astounding. It is amazing that anyone takes this man seriously.

Coverage of the National Tea-Party Protest in Washington

Reporter Max Blumenthal was in Washington D.C. this past weekend to check out the National 9/12 Project and Tea-Party movement's march on Washington's National Mall. He ran into some interesting people:



Jon Stewart also commented on this in his return to the Daily Show last night:

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What kind of party would be complete without fun exaggerations about how many people came to your party? Michelle Malkin apparently decided that it would be a good idea to exaggerate the total attendance by 1,930,000 people:

Malkin, citing fictitious press accounts, led the charge to falsely inflate the size of the crowd by 30 times. Malkin and company, desperate to dress up the tea party event as a mass movement, saw a relatively modest crowd of 70,000 GOP protesters and imagined it was 2 million strong. (She's a dreamer, I suppose.)

Worse, Malkin spent most of Saturday in denial, refusing to update her transparently false report, which meant the rest of the right-wing blogosphere also played dumb on a massive scale and kept excitedly repeating the manufactured claim. The scary part is that within the fact-free conservative blogosphere, lots of people still believe the 2 million nonsense, or are at least repeating it. They believe it despite the fact that nobody can point to any evidence to support it.

[...]

The conservative comedy of errors began on Saturday when Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, took to the rally stage and unfurled a massive lie. He told the crowd ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had gathered to protest Obama's policies. (Later, a FreedomWorks flack conceded she had no idea know why Kibbe manufactured the claim about ABC News.)

Immediately, conservative activist Tabitha Hale (aka "pinkelephantpun") tweeted Kibbe's lie but added an additional 500,000 people to the tally: "ABC reporting 2 million people."

Seven minutes later, Malkin re-tweeted Hale's claim. Then, one minute after that, Malkin turned that tweet into part of her ongoing protest coverage. Intrepid "reporter" Malkin took an unsupported tweet and reported it as news.

Note that in her blog post there were no links for Malkin's utterly fantastic claim, no place on the Web where readers could go and confirm that D.C. police had pegged the crowd at 1.2 million or that ABC had made the staggering claim of 2 million. The lack of live links should have been a massive red flag for readers and fellow bloggers, especially when it was associated with such a controversial and news-breaking claim.

What an interesting summer this has been.