Career Current Events Tie In

Pretty much everywhere I go these days I am hearing something positive or negative about the tea party. Fox News sings their praises and MSNBC hates their guts. Ironically enough however Fox News did everything in their power to stone wall a certain political candidate in the 2008 election, Ron Paul, whose supporters pretty much formed the tea party after his defeat. MSNBC has been covering the same story on almost every single line up they have of a graphic Sarah Palin used on her website to rally the tea party to "target" certain politicians in the up coming election. While what I linked was not MSNBC, its no surprise that the same story is being run on the Huffington Post as well.

More down to earth criticism of the Tea Party has come from a particular teacher of mine. His criticism was more of a indoctrinating smear campaign that has taken pot shots at them all year long and just recently came to a head when he called them "the crazies" and claimed "they don't have a clue". He made this discovery when he went down to Iowa City to watch the presidents healthcare victory speech and saw several hundred Tea Party protesters.

I mean come on, he is an economics teacher. If anything his comments should be limited to the economic policies that the tea party would implicate if they could and the positives and negatives of such a policy. Instead he reserves at least 10 mins of every class for an open discussion which basically degrades to a 10 minute listen to what the teacher thinks about everything. He claims and I quote, that " I am in the top tier of people who actually understand whats goin on here". He uses that claim, his general knowledge and his position as a "cool" teacher to sway student opinion. No objectivity. None. Never.

As for my personal opinion of the Tea Party, I think that they are a pretty interesting group of people and I have actually attended a national rally of theirs while touring Washington DC during July Forth of 2009. I know from actual experience that most of these Tea Partyers are no different than anyone else. Their success is just having the unfortunate side effect of getting them both biased negative and positive attention from the media outlets. No matter who says what about them, the Tea Party does have influence over the political atmosphere in the United States and has backed and financially supported several candidates who have won elections. Most famously was Scott Brown of Massachusetts who won Ted Kennedy's seat. He was funded in part by the Tea Party.