Remember how MSM minimaliized and IGNORED protesters during the Shrub years?

[earthboundmisfit]

Of course at a B*sh event, the protesters were relegated to "free speech zones" blocks away - which got slim to no media coverage at all -

Now these RW cheeseballs are getting TONS of press and attention. To me it just makes their idiocy more apparent, but I can't help but think of how marginalized protesters were during the previous administration...

[WCGreen]

1. Someone should make a commercial

with the free speech zones and then the open town halls...

Republican idea of free speech

Democrat commitment to free speech

[EarlG]

2. The media has an endless fascination with these people

Remember how during the primaries, and then during the general election, the media insisted day in and day out that Obama could not win without these white, old, working-class voters. ("Real Americans" as Sarah Palin might put it.)

Well it turned out he managed to do just fine. And yet the media is still obsessed about what these white, old, working-class people think. It's like nobody else exists in the entire country.

[yodermon]

4. it was someone else who referred to "hard-working Americans, white Americans"

eh, bygones

[sweetpotato]

15. The old white folks are the only ones watching

Who else watches the msm? They are pandering to their audience is all.

[spanone]

3. ratings, not news fuel the media.

[Marr]

5. Media owners guide coverage as well.

If corporate America wants the protest message to be heard, it will be all over their media outlets. If they do not, it will not.

[earthboundmisfit]

8. The Bingo

You got it right there!

[SoCalDem]

6. And the press always said stuff like "a few dozen people"

and of course every time they showed a pic, it was of some guy with a scraggly beard..carrying some silly-looking puppet.. all to make "real americans" think they were just a bunch of "dirty hippies"..:grr:

[CJCRANE]

7. Other protesters

should piggyback on the teabaggers' events to get more coverage.

For example if 9/11 Truthers turn up they at least know there'll be media coverage because of the turfers/birthers/baggers.

[Mythsaje]

10. Not a bad idea...

Now get back in the box.

;)

[samsingh]

9. i hate this double standard

[dem mba]

13. see my post below (#12)

I don't think it's the media not being fair. It's that Obama and Bush are using VERY different PR strategies.

[Wednesdays]

11. K&R

:kick:

[dem mba]

12. more to do with Bush's and Obama's PR policies

than the MSM's journalistic intentions. I fully believe that if Obama clamped down and all the Dem congresspeople did the whole loyalty oath and prescreening thing, the town hall stories would have never happened in the first place. But the protesters' organizers (Freedomworks, etc) knew they had a forum and they took advantage. I can't blame them really, and would say they have succeeded in their mission thus far. Their mission of course, is to eliminate intelligent discussions about the future of health care. It is to their disadvantage to have us do that.

To be fair, I believe the flip side too - had Bush let all us rowdy liberal moonbats in to true town hall forums, we would have shouted him or other Republicans down and been screaming and confrontational and all that too.

At this point, we'd be better off prescreening questions just to maintain order, although we should never prescreen people unless they are clearly disruptive (or armed).

[samsingh]

14. we wouldn't be issuing veiled and direct threats like the repugs are doing

[dem mba]

16. I really doubt that

I have seen countless signs comparing Bush to Hitler at protests. That's kind of step one before you threaten a target's health.

We have plenty of hate against other Repubs too. I think if you browse some threads from 2003-2006 you could find hundreds of "threats" against the neo-cons. I remember Bill Maher making a statement that x amount of lives could be saved if Dick Cheney were to "go away" or something along those lines because of the Iraq war.