MSNBCUP

I just got pissed off at MSNBC, finally, for the first time.  (I don’t watch Morning Joe, and otherwise I’ve only been mildly bothered.)  But on the Ed Show, which show’s existence I was psyched about, after listening to Ed Schultz on WCPT for several years, there was a phone poll wherein the question and two multiple choice answers—the language—really irked me.  The poll question was something like “Do you think the Tea Party attacks are” and the response choices were A. Patriotic or B. Un-American.

Generally I enjoy MSNBC’s pundits as an antidote to Fox News, not only because they’re more in tune with my politics (and tend to be fact-based and realistic), but also because, unlike in the case of most people on the Right, these people actually criticize members of the party which they lean towards and vote for.  You just don’t get that on Fox News, nor did you hear many of Bush’s long term supporters disagree with anything the Bush Administration said or did (barring the former-Bush-people who either had the conscience or the greed to come out and tell the truth after they’d left or been thrown out of that administration.)

But as much as I fucking deride the Tea Party(s), the language of this poll is terrible.  Not only black and white, it’s in the same disgusting language used by Fox News and co.  Patriotic, or Un-American?  Jesus.  I don’t think that the Tea Party “Attacks” (I’m inclined to refer to the Tea Party movement as a battle in the religious Right wing’s war on democracy and the world) are patriotic in the least.  I believe they’re anti-democratic in the ends they seek and racist and fascistic, but it’s a fallacy to call them “Un-American.”  Since when is any of that un-American?  Assuming American means representative of a significant of a large portion of the U.S. population throughout its social, political and ideological history, un-American, anti-American, these are false descriptions.

The Tea Party “Attacks” represent enough of America to be American.  It’s a goddamn shame that anti-globalization and anti-war protesters don’t get the same media coverage; they’re infinitely more patriotic and representative of American IDEALS.

It’s a shame that corporate media is as fucked, broken and compromised as the government itself.  They spew rhetoric, but when it comes to communication or action, they always rub your nose in the shit.