Tim’s point that the protests are all irrelevant notwithstanding, the Santelli/Koch conspiracy theory seems to be picking up, and at this point, I just don’t think there is really much there to support it. As I noted last night in the comments, sure, it is interesting, but so are all conspiracy theories. The JFK conspiracy theories are so interesting that Hollywood spent a record (at the time) amount of money creating Oliver Stone’s JFK. The conspiracy theories about 9/11 being an inside job are all interesting, but they are nutty as hell.
So far, looking at the report, the evidence appears to be not very compelling. Basically, it is that there is a right-wing structure founded by the Koch foundation willing to fund opposition to Obama’s plan, that some guy registered a domain name in August 2008, that Rick Santelli is up for a new contract this summer, and that many of the tea party web pages look familiar.
To the first point, regarding the Koch family and right-wing structures willing to fight the Obama initiatives, my only response is: “No kidding.” Similar structures, perhaps not as well-funded, exist throughout every sphere of politics.
As to the “coincidence” of some guy registering the domain name chicagoteaparty.com in August of lats year, that too is not very surprising. As I noted last night, it didn’t exactly take Nostradamus to figure out that the tax cuts for the top tier would be allowed to expire, as during the campaign, if I remember correctly, the debate was not whether or not those tax rates would go up, but would they be phased out early or merely allowed to expire? There was no debate about whether any of the Democratic candidates would end the tax cuts or not, it was a matter of when. Folks register domain names all the times in anticipation they will pay off (you can go visit Ronpaul2012.com and you can almost bet that someone has snapped up all sorts of domain names for Hillary). And in case you missed the debate among Democrats over whether to end the Bush tax cuts or just let them out, the McCain campaign was out there every single day telling you they were going to raise your taxes. The entire Joe the Plumber phenomenon was created out of the erroneous notion that Obama was going to raise taxes on Joe.
In regards to Santelli, maybe his rant is surprising to someone who has never been exposed to him before, but as someone who has watched him a good bit, his tea party rant was part of a schtick he has had for a long time. If it feels fake to you, you haven’t watched him before- they all seem fake. I remember watching similar rants from him all through the meltdown last fall- back when the comments section at Calculated Risk were all renaming themselves Comrade, there were daily links in the comments section there to similar rants by Santelli. The idea that this tea party thing was something out of character for Santelli just ignores the fact that he has been doing this for years, and it has always been the same- the same smirk, the same body language, the same rant and the odd quirks of turning away from the camera while it is on him- it is all there. Here is a video of him from September of last year.
As to the rest of it, it just seems like the simplest answer is the easiest. Drudge puts up a siren, the usual suspects react, and it is no surprise that these spread wildly through social networking websites and look similar. THEY ARE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES. This is why political movements have adopted the technology- for this kind of rapid response. All the people in these social networks presumably think alike, or think alike to the degree that they belong. Thus, it makes sense they would all quickly adopt the same meme and spread it, and given the limitations of facebook and what not, it makes sense to me they all adopted similar looks. No one suggests a conspiracy when everyone in the facebook network puts up the same application asking 25 questions about themselves. Ask yourself- how long after Michelle Malkin suggested that Obama was responsible for all the stock market losses since November 4th did it take before you heard the same thing on literally every right-wing website? Was that a conspiracy, too?
Look, it would not surprise me if there is a well-funded organization and network out there waiting to pounce on something. Opportunism is not, in my book, the same as a deep conspiracy to penetrate the ranks of CNBC with a sleeper cell to stage fake rants which can then be used as the basis of a “popular” grass-roots uprising (and they just aren’t that popular). Maybe there is more to it- I have been wrong before, and as we all know, my instincts suck, so by all means, keep looking at it. But right now, it just seems like there are simpler answers for everything out there.
wvng
We’ll see. But we’ve seen this happen too often in the past not to understand that it does, in fact, happen. And to know they are very very good at it. And, from my vantage point, it is only a "conspiracy theory" when you lack substantive evidence of its veracity. Once you have that evidence, what you have is an actual conspiracy.
JL
CNBC has lost it stature as a business channel a long time ago. They are all tools.
John Cole
@JL: You will get no argument from me there. I started watching it during the meltdown because of Calculated Risk and after no time figured out they were all clowns.
opium4themasses
I’m confused. I keep hearing about some conspiracy thing. Then I go read stuff and it’s about these lame tea parties.
What’s the conspiracy here?
Right now, this all seems to be a tempest in a teapot, a teapot I can’t see.
Phoenix Woman
I’m not cueing the scary organ music at the news of possible orchestration here. If anything, it’s time to cue up the Terry Jones naked-organist music here, because it just makes the joke even funnier.
All of the alleged collusion and planning, all of the adolescents carrying "Teabag the Liberals before they teabag you" signs, all of the Santelli rants, resulted in what? Something with less impact than a dry fart.
Meanwhile, an actual grass-roots sincere protest against Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona — a protest with far less media attention paid to it — drew thousands.
Comrade Darkness
As a purely political move, there is utility in creating doubt about the grassrootsiness of the tea party movement. It dovetails well with the growing narrative that red state middle and lower classes have been well and totally pwned by a handful of rich bastards.
And it’s the latest salvo in the war on dangerously idiotic pundits. Also long overdue.
So, yeah, meaningless as to the details, but the bigger picture is interesting.
LR
Well, John, I guess you have never considered that Joe the Plumber was a setup from the start. That the Republican operatives knew Obama was going to be in that neighborhood and sent Sam W. out to get a confrontational interlude with Obama to use in the debate. Can you say weapons of mass destruction? Jessica Lynch? If it weren’t still early I could think of several more. And by the way, I don’t think think Sept. 11th was a Bush conspiracy. Nor do I think Cheney kidnapped the Lindberg baby.
argh
No offense, though this is curt, why would we trust your judgement, Mr. Conservative-reformedinanickoftime blogger?
You voted for Bush TWICE, lobbed fruit at corporate-reform bulldog Spitzer during a staged scandal which cost the nation untold billions a lob. You show Rightwing ads on your blog which is also a Rightwing advocacy tool. You are entertaining in your angst, but hardly a reformed character.
And now, at a time of the week you are usually scratching yourself and posting pet pics, you get up the wind to write an epic screed about how, gee, now that the nation finally has a bead on the fascist media chamber that enables the Cons let’s just fuggetaboudit.
Screw that, and screw your "concern." You have a role Mr. Cole, and that is not backfilling for a destructive ideology that has just been spotlit.
John Cole
@argh: Can you point to anywhere I used the word “concern,” or anywhere I suggested I was concerned or not concerned?
John Cole
@LR: Yes, I considered it and rejected it immediately. So let me guess- they planted JTP in that neighborhood house years in advance just hoping upon hope a Democratic candidate, during an election, would stumble through there?
Have you not figured out that Joe the Plumber was a disaster for McCain and his continued presence is a disaster for the Republicans?
calipygian
That the Koch’s are pissed that Obama is creating socialism in one country (/snark) is utterly unsurprising, and frankly I’d be a little disappointed if the ivory backscratcher set wasn’t pissed.
Remember the Smedley Butler "business plot" against Roosevelt in the 1930s (and yes, two time Medal of Honor winner and retired Marine Corps general and self described "gangster for capitalism" Smedley Butler was the hero in that episode).
Just a side note: is anybody surprised that the Bush’s and the Koch’s are actually kin by marriage?
calipygian
Wow, argh! Tough night drinking last night? Because your hangover grumpiness is pretty awesome!
Karmakin
Well the tea bagging is a disaster as well really.
This whole sordid mess is a disaster for the conservative movement (although they don’t see it that way).
That said, I don’ t see why this is THAT much of a reach. There was probably simply talk of opposing Obama restoring previous tax rates on the rich in terms of the Boston Tea Party. So even outside an active conspiracy, all we’re seeing is an underground meme come to surface. The reason why it’s not that much of a reach is that the difference between an active conspiracy and a surfacing meme, is very very small.
This sort of shit happens all the time if you watch for it. I’ve seen several of these things come up on the left before as well from time to time.
sgwhiteinfla
Even though the effort wasn’t what we would describe as successful in any meaningful sense of the word, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it because in this country sometimes perception becomes reality. And while I am not ready to sign up for a tin foil hat, one thing about the rant always nagged at me and does so even more now that Cole said its par for the course. If this guy Santelli rants like that all of the time, why exactly did THIS time spark all of the news coverage? I mean people were basically made to think it was out of the ordinary and thats why the mainstream media paid attention. But if this guy is like say a Jim Cramer who most people knows rants and raves all of the time why was this particular rant news worthy? Now the reason we should pay attention even if we aren’t freaked out is because, lets face it, there is a signifcant section of this country that is lead by "popular opinion". If they are convinced that "everybody" is against President Obama’s plans then its going to be harder when the real fights come like over universal heathcare. Thats why I think its smart for groups like Americans United for Change to be launching thos preemptive ads against Republicans in Congress. We should continue working to make sure that President Obama keeps the wind at his back and this kind of organized noise machine is not allowed to get any momentum going forward. You already know that they will get coverage from FAUXNOOZ come hell or high water so no matter how sorry this teabag bullshit turned out to be we would be wise not to just totally dismiss them IMHO.
Karmakin
@sgwhiteinfla: Now is the time to be fighting that war IMO. I think it’s actually a lot harder when public opinion is almost equally divided. But right now people think that the Republicans are crazy.
So telling people how, why and how long they’ve been crazy is a really good idea right now.
Rev. Bob
GE has a huge stake in weapons and high interest lending. This could unravel quickly and deeply.
The oligarchs leaving the public face of conservatism to the crazies and working through fronts and lobbyists is certainly in their interest. Assuming that people will act in their own interest is scarcely tinfoil hat stuff.
The drama of this being a vast right wing conspiracy is probably inflated, but the possibility of overlapping interests working together isn’t.
John Cole
@sgwhiteinfla: Look, I’m not ruling anything out. You are talking to the guy who dismissed as nonsense the notion that there was a conspiracy to trump up the WMD in Iraq charges. We all know how that worked out.
All I am saying is that right now, there are simpler explanations for everything, and no smoking gun. Anything could happen.
southpaw
First of all, this is John’s blog, and he ought to say whatever he thinks. There’s really no need to come here just to be an asshole.
I tend to agree with John that the right’s sudden embrace of Santelli is not particularly problematic and probably not conspiratorial. Occam’s razor leads us to the parsimonious explanation that they saw something they liked and ran with it.
In any case, whether or not this was prearranged or spontaneous does not strike me as a particularly meaningful distinction for progressive activists. Let’s assume that some gumshoe is able to demonstrate some sort of wrong conduct touching Santelli and get him fired. What have you won? NBC has a little egg on its face and Santelli is now a martyr for this teensy weensy little tax revolt to revere. Woohoo!
There are very few tea partiers. We’re better off meeting them on the idiotic substance of what they say than trying to portray them as some sort of dastardly plot. These knuckleheads are not revolutionaries, and in the end, we will tea bag them. I know this to be true.
Ned R.
I tend towards Occam’s Razor here [edit — and I said this not knowing that the post right before mine would include that reference too! great minds, etc.], and in that regard pretty much think what John thinks — a combination of ease of technology (hey, *we’re* all here, right?) and predisposition among those who were predisposed to start with. Add in the groupthink conviction of people telling each other that they’re right — as CPAC hilariously demonstrated to us all once again, for instance — and the result is more ridiculous than anything else. If this is a conspiracy, the end result has sucked rocks.
I remember that one overriding thought back on 9/11, the very day itself, was that everyone who would have axes to grind would be regrinding them all the more. This feels like more of that.
Bob In Pacifica
I get tired when people who can normally string thoughts together get all weirded out by imagining that people work together, er, conspire, to do things. And comparing 9/11 (and using Popular Mechanics to "debunk" any theoretical inside job) to this stupid little tea party thing is a little lame.
You have to expect that the out of power Right is going to have collaborative efforts to ridicule and embarrass Obama. Whether or not someone copyrighted the "tea party" name last September only shows that someone was forward-thinking enough to recognize that when you run trillions in debt and the economy is collapsing, a new President and Congress might just think about raising taxes on the people who have been getting tax breaks. Gee, that requires all sorts of conspiratorial thinking.
As for conspiracies with the JFK murder, this will resolve that issue.
LR
John-I respect your observation. My guess is that they looked at the schedule and began to search around for someone who could pop on out. And that he was told what to ask. Why was an unemployed plumber so concerned about his future taxes once he started making $250,000 a year?
I was told by a relative that it came out that Sam W. was a known caller to conservative radio shows. I don’t have verification of this myself, just what someone else told me they heard.
That it didn’t work doesn’t mean it wasn’t done. What about McCain’s campaign did work?
I thought during that debate McCain lit up like a Christmas tree when Obama gave him an opening to bring up Joe.
Also, I don’t think you are a concern troll by any stretch. I love your site, and appreciate what you do for us libs. I especially enjoy liberal sites because along with the info and research comes humor and entertainment. You people are funny!!
Comrade Jake
What irks me about Santelli is that several outlets now interview him to get his opinion on the latest Obama initiative. I really hope that tendency goes away, because the guy’s not that bright, and he’s a dickhead.
Rev. Bob
Maybe John Cole, who’s minimizing this, is really John Coal!
Comrade Stuck
@argh:
My conspiracy theory – Somebody slipped some Tabasco in Argh’s Enfamil.
John Cole
Because he is not very bright, and right-leaning folks have been fed a steady diet for thirty years of talking points about punishing success, and have been voting against their economic interests for years because people inherently dislike the notion that if they manage to work hard, get lucky, and make a lot of money, they will be punished. Look at the framing of the inheritance tax as the “death tax.”
I used to fall for the same nonsense.
bago
I don’t think it’s so much of a conspiracy so much as a people could see this coming from a mile away. But what do I know, my roommate made ten grand by camping on the sexwithfarmanimals.com domain.
AhabTRuler
Back and to the left, back and to the left….
Pudentilla
I think part of the problem is that right wing foundations funding money to "grassroots" organizations who get significant airtime/page space for nonsense from media folks is such a well documented part of the conservative playbook (see, Will, George, WaPo, climate change denial) that it’s hard to do more than yawn.
But then you think, WaPo and the news channels are assumed by most of the citizenry to represent the public’s interest by disinterested reporting of the news. So if CNBC (and WaPo) just got played by Koch (and Exxon)’ disinformation campaign, we have to assume that a social institution of not trivial historical importance is incapable of performing its role in the public sphere (reduced to the role of useful idiot, in fact) and nervously wonder what will replace a free press. Alternatively, we can conclude that CNBC (and WaPo) are in fact willing and knowing participants in the disinformation campaign and nervously wonder who else is in on it.
And you know when you go through the analysis you end up sounding like a shrill conspiracy nut. But in fact, it’s a fairly daunting moment when you recognize that either as a citizen (Federalist Papers vision of citizen self-governance) or a consumer (Bush conservative notion of citizen as shopper) that you have no ability to make the media do it’s job.
Oliver's Neck
Well, the problem with invoking Occam is that (as any good teacher of formal logic will tell you) is that you have to be able to accurately identify what is simple – and that our instincts aren’t particularly good at doing that.
Part of the problem here is the labeling of one premise with the term "conspiracy" – which immediately loads that scenario with a connotation of labyrinthine complexity. Once you’ve described (even in good faith) the notion that Santelli’s rant as "conspiracy", you’ve already polluted the notion of its relative complexity vs. simpleness.
That said, I think the far more disturbing issue is that, planned or not, our national discourse has been so in thrall to the manipulation of the hyper-wealthy minority.
And the heartening thing is that, perhaps, this episode indicates that (finally) that hegemonic control is being broken – or at least made irrelevant.
Comrade Stuck
Speaking of which, just watched Sen. Kyle and Paul Ryan spin a ball of wankery with some big whoppers on FNS. Claiming that Obama’s tax cuts for incomes over 250 large would end up hurting 2/3 of small business, which the last time I checked only about 5 percent of SB’s fall under the 250 G limit. The truth would have credited Obama with giving 95% of SB’s an actual tax cut. Can’t have that meme catch hold on Planet Wingnut, truth or not.
And especially rich was Kyle’s claim that his 100 mil plus earmark in the Budget Bill wasn’t really an earmark, cause, well, shut up, that’s why!!
georgia pig
@sgwhiteinfla:
If you look at the heroes of conservatism, they’re a collection of irrational ranters — Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Santelli, etc. Talk radio and SquawkBox type TV is a perfect medium for ranting. Disjointed, no consistent themes, random associations, crackpot theories, almost Dada. The conspiracy could lie in a strategy of providing a stage for these various ranters, throwing out various memes to see what sticks and can serve as a core for political organization, e.g., "Tea Party", "Joe the Plumber", etc. The actors don’t even have to be aware of their roles and there doesn’t have to be explicit coordination. They simply benefit from a network of funding and organizations that give them an audience (e.g., CPAC, Fox News, CNBC). Their bet is that there is some untapped motherlode of unfocused anger waiting to be unlocked by the right psychic keys. It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to be emotionally appealing.
I’m not sure it will work now precisely because things are becoming so bad. That kind of stuff was successful in the ’90s because Americans were still fairly secure and had only a vague, abstract sense of possible threats to their way of life. Thus, they could be easily lured into obsessing about nonsense. They could buy into Limbaugh rants about Clinton having people murdered because there really was nothing at stake. They could obsess about Muslim terrorists in suburbia because there really was no credible threat. Now, the dangers are more real. The folks in your office or down the street are Santelli’s "losers." Rush is a quivering lunatic who won’t be able to get your job back. There’s nothing like reality to focus the mind.
Tom
The mainstream press is always looking for conflict and always trying to establish a narrative to hang their stories around. The rant by Santelli resonated with them, particularly the TV people, because they are in the same income group as this fool is. So when this rant was picked up by the cable and pushed by the Republicans, the mainstream press, looking for a narrative, ran with this one.
You saw the White House briefing where all the TV reporters were hammering Gibbs over tax reform. Reporters love the "populist" idea and they think of themselves, absurdly, as defenders of the regular joes, when in reality they are self-absorbed, blow-dried pedestrian gits: David Gregory, million-dollar anchor "It’s not just the fat-cats, it’s the rest of us."
So there’s your narrative, pushed by your fat-cat MSM. Inside that narrative, reporters go ahead and run with all the material supplied to them by the GOP — press releases, talking points, videos. Some of it financed by right-wing groups? Sure, why not? They ALL are financed by right-wing groups. There’s nothing new about that. But it fits nicely with a conflict-driven MSM narrative (POPULISM! THE PEOPLE ARE REVOLTING!!!) (insert your Mel Brooks retort here.)
GuyFromOhio
and
It’s not ‘conspiracy,’ it’s ‘how trad media empires operate in modern America.’ Why the shrieking and rending of clothing over the return of the Fairness Doctrine? Same shit, different channel. What’s different now from 1999 is that even Grandma has a Facebook page, and the old ad revenue rules are out – hence the demise of the newspaper industry. This "Twitnet" of empty ideas between bodies like CNBC and the Tea Party hangers-on has a similar deficit of new concepts, and few are buying the crap being recycled, repackaged, resold. (see gp in 31, Tom in 32) We are, after all, in a recession.
As for CNBC? Drudge? GOP? It was a good decade. But now?
Dinosaurs, tar pits.
And that Sheriff in Arizona is a freaking nightmare. I think if the Feds weren’t so busy with the economic funerals, that fascist ratfuck would be in an orange jumpsuit, tout de suite.
GSD
Leave Daddy Warbucks alone!
-GSD
argh
The excuse-making and poo-pooing of this incident is disturbing. It’s like some people haven’t ever heard of the banality of evil. This is exactly the silly nonsense that works to fell nations. It. Just. Did.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Or perhaps there is a reason for averting your eyes…
At this point in the game, one would think that teh Libs would have earned some respect from your barely-saved-and-maybe-not asses. The proper attitude right now for anyone who used to be a virulent Conjob is to sit quietly and nod, showing gratitude for avoiding accountability through humility and not risk bearing further false witness.
Comrade Stuck
Should be about 5 percent of sb’s fall over the 260 g limit. It’s early.
Comrade Stuck
@argh:
WTF are you are blithering about. Jeezus christ, stop your urban bible quotes, it’s making my teeth hurt.
southpaw
Well, the problem with invoking Occam is that (as any good teacher of formal logic will tell you) is that you have to be able to accurately identify what is simple – and that our instincts aren’t particularly good at doing that.
Well here’s how I see it. On the one hand, you have the Koch foundation engaging in an elaborate and controlled process of building a PR campaign (staffing up, creating a schedule of events, making websites and social networking pages to be launched right after Santelli’s song and dance, etc.) prior to Santelli going off on his rant and then executing that campaign afterward. On the other hand, you have Santelli (a known right wing crank) spouting off in a way that spontaneously appeals to other right wing cranks, who then take the ball and run with it. They’re both perfectly plausible scenarios, but I do think the latter one is simpler.
Edited for clarity.
bago
Anyone who has studied internet meme profligiration knows that when you load up on serendipitous behavior providers you will increase the natural rate of serendipity. This mish-mash networking leads to an illusion of a top down plan, but that was in fact, merely the product of a chaotic network discovering the fact that certain nodal pathways were re-enforced by repeated traversals of the object graph and were subsequently deemed much more viable. In other words, the links that worked are the links that people see.
In grander terms, there is evidence of an actor who wishes to divorce their identity from their performance.
I’m so deep I’m almost tautological.
GuyFromOhio
@southpaw:
See also: purple ink-stained fingers, purple heart bandages, tire gauges, vpilf.com .
It’s a supply line for empty crap based on concepts devoid of meaningful content. Somewhere, I hope, someone makes a buck off all this garbage.
Comrade Scrutinizer
John-
How dare you ruin a perfectly good horror story with common sense? To say this Santelli kerfuffle is only opportunism on the part of the media and right-wing assholes is just like saying that the Kennedy assassination wasn’t the result of a conspiracy by the Bush Family/Lyndon Johnson/CIA/Castro government/KGB/Birchers/Mafia to frame that poor dupe Oswald. Back and to the left, John, back and to the left.
Argh-
You need to work on that spoof, friend. Go sutdy Atanarjuat’s comments, then come back and try again.
Comrade Stuck
@bago:
You’ve been reading to much BoB:)
Comrade Scrutinizer
@bago:
IOW, shit happens?
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fxd.
And this at 32:
Sums up the entire situation in one sentence. Who needs a conspiracy when your big name press members are little more than stenographers with a reality show mentality?
Also, what the fuck happened to preview?
Anton Sirius
People who call this a conspiracy wouldn’t recognize a real conspiracy if one bit them in their immanentized eschaton.
Santelli says right out that "they" had been talking about having a tea party in July. The idea managed to find purchase in Malkin and Drudge’s three working brains cells (combined total) and so the schedule got pushed up to try and take advantage, but because nobody outside of the neocon’s shrinking echo chamber gave a shit the execution of the idea was a miserable failure.
A conspiracy would have involved Santelli talking about a "spontaneous" tea party after the fact, not announcing to the world that one was in the works. Holy shnikies, people, get a grip.
Phoenix Woman
Meanwhile, TBogg has more.
Napoleon
In a lot of ways this is a repeat of the debate set off in the 90’s when Hillary made her comment on the vast right wing conspiracy. Sure, technically there may not be a conspiracy in the sense all the usual right wing suspects had a conference call and decided to enlist Santelli to say a certain thing on a certain night, but in a larger sense there is, and that is the entire purpose of the right wing Wurlitzer. There are a known group of people, Koch being one of them, that plans to spend millions of dollars to bring Obama down and destroy the governments ability to govern and solve the current crisis, and if the collateral damage is millions of people loosing their jobs and sinking below the poverty line then so be it. They don’t give a f–k if the collateral damage would be the early deaths of every single person who post on this board. They simply don’t care and they will crush however many people they need to to destroy Obama.
By the way, anyone who thinks Joe the Plumber was a set up seriously needs to get a life. I would go so far as to say that a statistician could show that with as much campaigning that Obama did there was virtually 100% chance that he would have had the type of encounter he had with JTP (wingnut conservative talk show fan).
The Grand Panjandrum
I find the irony quite delicious; the very same people who mocked and vilified the DFH’s protests for years are now employing those same tactics. But, I for one, am glad they choose to exercise their 1st Amendment rights. With all the about the economy we need some comic relief, no.
bago
Comrades: It’s along the lines of "Incentivizing behavior that re-enforces the biases that sustain it" leads to a feedback loop that will appear as a narrative to other people. Also.
b-psycho
If they started this shit in August, then they knew McCain was going to lose. Might as well lay the groundwork for opposition if you realize you’re not going to be in charge ahead of time.
If anything, they’d be stupid NOT to organize a response in advance. This is only such a shock to people because with all that planning it’s still so transparently ridiculous.
GuyFromOhio
@Napoleon:
Secretary Clinton may have caught a glimpse of lemmings loping through the woods, not knowing that a) the ledge was just ahead, and b) it’s apparently innate behavior for Republicans.
See also, Jindal, Palin, Gingrich, Steele.
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Grand Panjandrum: Oy! I edited my post and now it makes almost as much sense as John McCain discussing the economy.
Berto
9/11 Truthers are nuts, but you know who really takes the cake for being nuts? Those who think it’s outrageous to think those in authority would never kill 3000 innocent Americans (or 3,000,000 for that matter) to stay in power.
Now that’s some kooky, naive thinking.
I’m not saying I believe the Truthers, I’m just saying to dismiss it because you don’t think people in authority are that evil is dangerously naive.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Yup. We should be grateful that the one Obama encountered a) is such a wanker and b) the fRighties made him their posterchump.
ZOMG! Maybe OBAMA set the whole thing up! Maybe Joe is the one who destroyed the vault copy of his natural birth certificate. [Adjusts tin foil hat]
jenniebee
Coordination with Santelli, probably not. Echo chambering the phrase "tea party" enough until it finally shows up on TV, possibly.
Complete astroturf in taking the phrase and running with it, oh, most definitely.
Janet Strange
@Karmakin: I find this thread very interesting, mainly because the whole question of how the traditional media shapes the political narrative, and why, and whether people are still buying it is one of my pet obsessions.
I have to go do stuff and I’m lazy, so no link, but I remember reading some time ago that the climate denialist lobbying group or think tank financed by several oil companies actually had a memo explaining their strategy – that they didn’t actually have to prove their case, but that they could learn from the tobacco industry. All they had to do was to "create doubt" (about whether tobacco really caused cancer, or whether global warming was really happening or really caused by humans, etc.).
So we see in the case of climate change that they have been pretty effective at delaying any meaningful addressing of climate issues by "creating doubt," by convincing a substantial number of citizens that scientists don’t agree and all that bullshit. And stopping or at least delaying that meaningful legislation was all they were going for, so as to keep their profits going as long as possible. Since addressing climate change would cost them.
So to me, that kind of "creating doubt" is a Bad Thing. But @Comrade Darkness: suggests that creating doubt could be a Good Thing:
Another narrative. You guys who are still buying what the right wing ranters are going on about – are you sure you’re not being played? Creating doubt in hopes that at least some of those cable news consumers begin to start developing a little healthy skepticism. And as you point out, now is the moment for encouraging that kind of doubt, because the Rush’s, Santelli’s, et al are sounding batshit insane to normal people who get their news from cable TV and who have assumed in the past the the info they got there was for the most part, true.
I guess it comes down to creating doubt to encourage a healthy skepticism based on a willingness to go looking for the actual facts of an issue vs. creating doubt out of distortions or outright falsehoods in order to manipulate people.
Napoleon
What kills me about the theory that JTP was some kind of set up it that if it was true, it would be the only example from the McCain campaign of them being able to plan anything. It was a train wreck from front to back. How would it be the one think they would get "right" (if you think JTP was a plus) was planting someone in some neighborhood to question Obama?
LR
I ran into a couple of acquaintances last week who probably make $20,000 a year on a good year. They were all upset that they were going to be forced to pay for medical care for poor people. (Not that they don’t already). Just saying. There’s a mindset out there that this plays into.
Another reason I think the Santelli thing was staged was because he turned to the traders and said, "Do you want to pay everybody’s mortgage?" and in unison they said, "No!" This was immediately labeled a POPULIST revolt by the media. Huh? A Populist revolt? Traders at the CME?? Aren’t they part of the PROBLEM of the meltdown?? Don’t they SELL derivatives??
rollotomasi
I’m literally fifty-fifty on whether the Santelli thing was planned, but a little primer on the depth and breadth of the right-wing message machine might give a little pause to those who are lumping this in with some of the more half-baked conspiracies. It is a cottage industry dedicated solely to catapulting the propaganda. Santelli’s rant fits perfectly with their mission.
btw, really enjoy your blog.
LR
Napoleon–I thought at the debate, Obama realized he’d been played. He began to get a look on his face like, "Uh, what else got said that day?" He looked like it wasn’t in the practice sessions. This was my immediate gut feeling, while watching the debate that evening.
To sum up, the repubs cannot and will not have a popular Dem president going into the 2010 midterms. It’s no holds barred for them. To me it’s naive to think they are not going to continue their permanent campaign.
If you’re skeptical, read David Brock’s book, The Republican Noise Machine."
It might convince you.
The Moar You Know
TEA BAG THE LIBERALS BEFORE THEY TEA BAG YOU
If this is an example of a successful right-wing conspiracy I would hate to see what failure looks like.
The Moar You Know
@Berto: I doubt anyone dismisses the truthers on that basis; I certainly don’t. I dismiss them for entirely different reasons – a slew of them, actually – but not that one.
j.e.b.
There are two possibilities here:
1. It was faked up/planned in advance…by complete and utter incompetents who couldn’t get more than a few hundred people to show up in Chicago.
2. It wasn’t faked/planned in advance, and the people who tried to run with it are…complete and utter incompetents who couldn’t get more than a few hundred people to show up in Chicago.
Given these two possibilities, I find it rather hard to get worked up about it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Napoleon: I think that’s one reason normally sane people are reaching for a tinfoil chapeau. The GOP, it is well known, can’t tie its collective shoe laces without damage to their fingers. So while in 999 instances we could look at the Plunger Jockey and say no way anyone set that up, when you change it to there’s no way the GOP could have set that up, there’s a moment of uncertainty. Especially when you consider Governor Sparkle Youbetcha Palin was their pick for VP. Also.
However, adopting Joe (and Palin) were the usual flailings we get from the GOP when things get so bad for them even they notice. Look! Something shiny! Must have! I doubt that the average GOPer is capable of long term planning of any sort beyond if they don’t like it, scream socialism.
different church-lady
In other words: correlation is not causation.
In other other words: a pig pile is not the same as a conspiracy.
Bless you John, you’ve maintained your sanity.
maya
No conspiracy? Perhaps. But how do you explain this from Santelli’s rant:
Uh, who’s the "We" he’s referring to and…..
What was Rick doing on the grassy knoll?
Just askin.
gnomedad
@georgia pig:
Excellent point; well put.
@bago:
Um, yeah. I would have said that at a certain point, a confluence of interests becomes indistinguishable from a conspiracy, and there’s not much value in attempting to sort it out.
Jess
@Janet Strange:
Excellent point–I agree entirely.
Jess
Yeah, but like the T-shirt says, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers…
Singularity
If there’s no conspiracy, then whoever owns the domain chicagoteaparty.com is behaving pretty conspiratorially.
When this debate began, the registration date was of the domain was available (August 2008). Now when you look up the domain all of the registration date information has been made private. Why would you hide the most damning information about the website (that it was created months before Santelli’s rant)? And the term "Chicago tea party" is fairly specific. Why Chicago and not Miami, or Dallas, or Atlanta? Chicago was chosen because it is the home of the commodities markets, but why would someone registering a domain name using that specific city even before the election was decided? And if he was just cybersquatting in the hope that it would become viable, why didn’t he register a bunch of other "teaparty.com" domains. A quick check of the whois database shows that a few of those domains are registered, but all at different times and by different people. And Chicago seesms to be the only city registered by this Republican operative.
Maybe it is just a coincidence, and Santelli is being unfairly besmirched. Maybe someone suggested the term Chicago Tea Party to him in conversation and he just appropriated it as his own. But the fact that someone is working hard to hide the fact that the domain was created before it the phrase entered the public lexicon suggests to me that someone expected it to become part of the public lexicon.
kay
Repeal of the estate tax is the best example of how effective these campaigns can be.
Imagine this: a consortium composed of the ten richest families in the US, libertarian groups, Grover Norquist, and 4 GOP House members cook up a plan to launch a sophisticated PR effort to completely misrepresent and rename the estate tax. There are no facts in this PR presentation. Just lie after lie after lie. Easily rebutted lies, too, all it takes is a reading of that section of the tax code to recognize they’re lying.
Yet, it works. Millions of Americans believe that they are not only subject to the estate tax, but that they have PAID this tax.
The media begins calling the estate tax "the death tax". They repeat the flat-out lie that family farmers are getting hammered with it, although no news organization (or CATO) can turn up a single example of that. Not one.
It worked.
Last year, it was (somewhat) widely reported who was behind the repeal of the estate tax and just how orchestrated that effort was. I heard a matter-of-fact recitation of the trajectory of this huge lie on NPR. That hasn’t changed the debate, though. The lie lives on.
"Conspiracy" is to strong a word, and it preemptively discredits the speaker. Why not just call these sort of PR efforts a plan?
southpaw
Rick Santelli framed Roger Rabbit.
PanAmerican
PUMA
Backwards B
Cat Lady
@rollotomasi:
rollotomasi. Great name.
Manic Depression
Barry Ritholtz thinks CNBC and Santelli should at least respond to the allegations. Ritholtz ain’t exactly one of your usual conspiracy theorists.
Kirk Spencer
@Comrade Stuck:
It’s worse, Comrade. The tax isn’t against businesses making over 250g. It’s not even a tax against businesses netting over 250G. It’s against HOUSEHOLDS making over 250G.
A "huge" profit margin (sustained) is 25% – over 10% in most industries is enough to stand out, but we’ll go for huge. Assume your household takes 100% of the profits for income (leaving nothing for expansion), your business needs to gross over a million dollars for your household income to be $250G.
More realistically, again, is that 10% margin and the household only taking half of that – 5% of the gross. Which means…
"Hi. My business does over 5 million dollars a year in sales. Obama wants to raise my taxes. Please stop him."
idiots
Polish the Guillotines
I said it last night and I’ll say it again:
There’s conspiracy and then there’s conspiracy.
No way is this something that rises to the nuttiness level of grassy knolls, Area 51, and deliberate demolition of the WTC. Those are conspiracy theories.
But, lest we all forget, we just came out of eight years of shit like this. And that’s conspiracy we can believe in.
OriGuy
BTW, Santelli will be on The Daily Show Wednesday.
kay
@PanAmerican:
Republicans have managed to convince millions of people who do not make enough money to pay federal income tax that they DO pay federal income tax. Talk to people. They aren’t excited about tax cuts based on some idea that they’re going to get a cut in the future. They think they are paying NOW. They conflate all taxes with federal income taxes. There’s a reason Republicans say "cut taxes" and "raise taxes". There’s a reason they don’t get into details.
When people announce their punishing tax burden to me, half the time they are including property tax, or state or local taxes, or payroll taxes. The US Congress doesn’t cut or raise or state or local taxes. They don’t care. It’s "taxes" and President Bush said he’d cut those.
Ask someone who claims to have paid the federal estate tax what they paid. They paid a state probate tax, or a property transfer tax, levied at the state level. They’ll swear on a bible they paid the "death tax", and they’re pretty damn mad about it. The problem is, it isn’t true.
HRA
"If they started this shit in August, then they knew McCain was going to lose. Might as well lay the groundwork for opposition if you realize you’re not going to be in charge ahead of time."
That’s exactly it. The writing on the wall and other such sayings were the driving force. If I remember correctly, the moderates of the Republican party were coming out against the ticket and making news cycles blare.
As for the idea of conspiracies, I don’t subscribe to them unless someone can give pure and unadulterated evidence as to their being valid.
Seeing the news on Rush, Coulter, Santelli and others who are doing their best to capture the spotlight and soothe the follower’s egos reminds of a relative who loves to make us gasp with his over the top remarks. We have learned to not believe what he loves to bring forth. It’s all theater.
Bob In Pacifica
Tom, liked your post.
Has anyone else here read Christopher Simpson’s "The Science of Coercion"? Or Russ Baker’s "Family of Secrets"? What is conspiracy to some is just networking and business planning to others.
ricky
It is with extreme sadness that I note HOPE has died. I had hoped this sight would eventually lead to ripping back the mask of silence on the JFK assassination that has sucked the breath from true liberal reform since the fall of the Diem regime. Apparently that can no longer be expected. In addition we will continue to receive subliminal messages that somehow fat quarterbacks and cats are acceptable.
At least you don’t censor posters who noted they have friends who may have heard something about Joe the Plumber being a call in visitor to radio talk shows. Lee Harvey Oswald once appeared on such a show. Anyone connecting these dots? Not Cole apparently. Let us hope Santelli does not steal precisous Tunch’s breath away while the feline snores legubriously on some couch at night.
southpaw
The backwards B girl is a perfect example of how this actually works. It’s pretty clear that nobody put that idiot up to it; the scheme could have been far better executed if they had. Far more likely she put the whole thing into motion herself with very little help (see, e.g., the mirror image B, the incoherent and easily falsifiable story); then, once she had, this huge right wing message machine (which had indeed been assembled in advance to amplify useful stories) sprung into action. There was no professional roll out strategy, no conference calls or marketing meetings. They saw something, they found it appealing, and they put their megaphones in its service. That’s the mechanism; it’s not some smoke-filled room brainstorming shit for Rick Santelli to pop off about.
Chuck Butcher
A guy known for rants, ie advertising gimicks, does a rant. As an advertising gimick it certainly worked, lots of attention paid. It isn’t necessary for the corporate media to be involved in a conspiracy, they have two objects always in front of them; noisy conflict and the health of their type of business. The conflict piece gets a boost because there is an innate unfairness in almost all of this mess we’re in and any solutions.
If you’re in your right mind do you find the prospect of bailing out idiots attractive? You may support it as the best of a bunch of bad alternatives, but that is an entirely different thing. John uses this site to swing big bats at stuff the other side considers the good, controversy.
If you want, all political Parties and the ancillary groups are conspiracies. I actively conspired with fellow Democrats to bring about the fall of Republican ideals and their Presidential candidate. I used every bit of media access I could get, some of that was "earned media," some purchased, and some just event worthy. I know which reporters are friendlier and try to stick to them, I play the media as much as I can (my paper is pretty conservative).
If you can get your theme any play at all, you work the snot out of it, you pile as much on top of a single event as it will bear- and some. I watched the guy do his rant and thought, ‘that’ll get you play.’ You can’t let something like his schtick (sp?) lay or it rots, you have to go quickly while it has it still resonates. Now if somebody paid him money to his rant in his role as "reporter" he’s going to have problems. The fact that these are Republican talking points is scarcely a surprise.
It might appeal to our lefty instincts that there is a rich cabal that’s sitting in dark smokey rooms and all, but the fact of it is that they have common interests and common means and no particular need to coordinate, and they have a Party apparatus that agrees.
You just cannot take the messy political left and compare it in your mind to the plutocratic wing of the right, they have a pretty simple and consistent message and nobody has to send out memos directing anything. Ten minutes after that rant I could have gone out among my Republican right friends and heard, "teaparty, yeah, right." Even as they kick the shit out of the Revolution it is their most frequent reference – well, St Ronnie.
Though I have disagreed with him, I have yet to see Cole (in this iteration) be deliberately obtuse or intellectually dishonest. I live in, work in, and play in very red areas and I know what it looks like/sounds like.
jen
Bob in Pacifica #20: Re: Past is prologue again.
Excellent link. Thank you!
lr
Jeez Ricky, I was too lazy to look it up. Thanks John for not censoring me. Ricky, you are strict.
I did do a bit of searching this afternoon and though I didn’t find anything to support my earlier comment, I did run across info about JTP’s connection by marriage to Charles Keating. I had forgotten that. Of course Joe is just a random soul out for a stroll during O’s visit. Of course he was.
Chuck, I looked at your blog and enjoyed your article from Feb. 26th called The Trapped GOP.
Chuck Butcher
Thanks lr
EriktheRed
Wish I could post a pic here directly, but…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v480/ErikdeRed/3195469568_e701231709.jpg
LOL
sus
organizations sponsoring the Washington, DC, Tea Party:
– Americans for Prosperity
– Americans for Tax Reform
– Young Conservatives Coalition
– The Heartland Institute
– National Taxpayers Union
– FreedomWorks
– Institute for Liberty
Sure were able to line up sponsers quick.
itsbenj
I’m sorry, but the logic here in this post is just nonexistent. Of course, this Santelli incident was never described as being a "conspiracy" in the sense that some think 9/11 was a Bush-led conspiracy.
This is more like calling it a "conspiracy" every time people have a meeting or email exchange about a topic during which they agree to take some kind of collective action. That is just plain silly.
Having ACTUALLY read the timeline and ‘evidence’ of all of this, I think its pretty safe to say that the Santelli thing is simply of a piece with usual Republican strategy.
You make the mistake of thinking that since something did not or does not work, politically, that this somehow means it couldn’t possibly be part of a coordinated strategy. Ha! Wrong.
lr
itsbenj–just letting you know I read your comment–it didn’t just fall down the rabbit hole.
priscianus jr
John, You write:
"Ask yourself- how long after Michelle Malkin suggested that Obama was responsible for all the stock market losses since November 4th did it take before you heard the same thing on literally every right-wing website? Was that a conspiracy, too?"
I just read the Ames/Levine piece. (Although it’s been scrubbed, you can find the text on google Groups and a few other places.) Nowhere do they use the word "conspiracy" or any derivative thereof. They just say what they think was behind it, and you can call it what you like but the rationalizations you offer are perfectly compatible with what they say in the article. It would be something like if I said "He shot the guy," and you would say, "No he didn’t, he just happened to have a gun, pointed it at him, and pulled the trigger." That sort of argument. The connections are very interesting and all that’s at issue is the motivation. But you yourself admit the motivation is patently obvious — to use disinformation to foment a grassroots rebellion that serves the interests of corporate America against the Obama administration. If you like that idea, then by all means dismiss the article from your mind.
As far as I know, the reason it was scrubbed is that the authors made an error near the very end of the article where they assume that the website "The Daily Bail" was in cahoots either with Santelli or some other players, just because the siteguy was enthusiastic about the tea party idea. He protested vociferously to the authors and to Playboy. He says he is a non-political trader who supports neither party but in fact voted for Obama and is generally sympathetic to what Ames & Levine are saying, but of course not to what they say about him. In his later comments he ends up admitting, after reading those from many readers, that he was completely naive about the politics of the whole thing.
http://dailybail.com/home/2009/3/1/the-mother-of-all-irony-playboy-magazine-targets-the-daily-b.html
Now, in a piece of ostensibly factual reporting, any factual error is important, if only because it raises questions about the accuracy of the whole piece. However, the error about The Daily Bail has no bearing on the main point; one can understand why the piece was scrubbed without assuming that there was any fault in the overall thesis.
priscianus jr
And of course, itsbenj, I agree with you.