To:  Ben Adler

From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant

Re:  Your supernaturally stupid Newsweek piece

Mr. Adler,

I’m convinced that your piece, “Why doesn’t the media interrogate Tea Partiers’ Beliefs”, was a “black” parody written by a Tea Partier as a spoof of arrogant, agenda-driven inside-the-beltway dismissal and the media’s own smug self-satisfaction.

You wrote:

The media’s enduring, and understandable, fascination with the Tea Party movement continues unabated, as this weekend’s coverage demonstrates. Unfortunately, what appear to be false notions of objectivity—or perhaps a lack of interest in policy—is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered.

“The Media” started its coverage of the Tea Parties in April of 2009 first by trying to pretend it didn’t exist.  Then it collaborated with the Democrats’ juvenile mockery for most of the spring. Then it dutifully chanted that the Tea Party was a bunch of violent rednecks.   Then it dutifully chanted in turn that it was a bunch of rich bitter white guys.

No, Ben Adler, I’m pretty convinced that it’s you that’s completely ignorant…

…no.  That’s unfair.  Or, rather, too fair.  I’m convinced it’s you that is driven completely by an institutional narrative about all those uppity peasants.

Case in point: the Associated Press just published a 2,300-word stemwinder examining how and why a variety of individuals became involved in the Tea Party movement without once asking what precisely the platform consists of. It tells you the back stories of representative Tea Partiers, dutifully quotes their antipathy toward government, taxes, and deficit spending, and their horror at the accusation that they are motivated by racial animus. But the reporter seems never to have posed any serious questions about what tradeoffs they would make to achieve their stated goals.

Well, that would be a fair criticism, if it weren’t for the fact that you pretty clearly have substituted “parrot the narrative” for “asking serious questions”, yourself.

No, really:

The closer you look, the more the Tea Party just looks like any other right-wing populist movement: it is motivated by fear of immigration, fear of new religious modes of expression, racial resentments, opposition to gay rights, and claims about taxes and spending that often don’t add up under scrutiny. Isn’t it time that we stopped treating the Tea Partiers like a curious sociological phenomenon and starting holding them to the same standards we should hold all mainstream politicians to?

Like the standards Newsweek held Barack Obama to?

Ben Adler:  you are the one that deserves the questions; your piece clearly oozes fear and beliefs that, ahem, could use the scrutiny – beliefs the AP article undercut, which is no doubt why  you are circling the wagons.

So here’s what we can do, Ben:  come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I this weekend.  We can have a dialogue; you can ask us those probing questions about the Tea Parties that you’ve been fantasizing about.  It’ll be a two-way deal, of course; we can get to the bottom of your own ignorance, and maybe even enlighten you a bit.

Or at the very least start holding you to the same standard we should all mainstream media figures.

That is all,

Mitch Berg