Tea Party Reporting: Intimidated Progressives Observing “Incognito”

by T.L. James | 8:33 pm, April 12, 2009 | Comments Off

Self-described Progressive blogger ”CVille Dem” over at TPM is planning to go to her local Tea Party rally this week.  And not just go, but go to the Tea Party INCOGNITO (yes, all caps).  Apparently what spawned this cautious bit of spycraft was seeing that ridiculous ‘burn the books’ clip that’s been making the rounds.

I find this pretty amusing, given that when PPC started last August, we had the same sort of concerns about covering the DNC protests.  With all the coverage of Spagz and his pals wanting to “recreate ’68″ — and the violence and property damage that implied in the post-Seattle WTO context — it was only natural to expect some sort of rioting was going to happen. And considering the unalloyed personal hatred that the left had been spewing, with increasing volume and venom, towards anyone much to the political right of Paul Wellstone for the preceding seven years, it was only natural to expect trouble if we were to be “outed” by someone in the crowd.

In short, we initially planned to go INCOGNITO because we had legitimate reason to expect a violence-charged environment, and that if we were discovered, that some of that violence might manifest itself in attacks on our persons.

As it turns out, no serious disturbances happened at the DNC, and other than a couple of our citizen journalists getting taunted by Glenn Spagnuolo and his goons as plainclothes police during one of the marches, none of us were ever in real danger.  Indeed, the only time I saw anyone else come close to getting trouble from an enraged mob was when a video crew from the local Fox affiliate showed up at the Capitol building to cover the war rally, were greeted with chants of “F*** Fox News”,  and had to be escorted to safety by the police. [UPDATE: how could I forget Alex Jones' bullying of Michelle Malkin at the Mint Levitation?]

So…

“CVille Dem” sees a video clip of an open-to-the-public Tea Party planning meeting on Huffington Post of some Bircher kooks sounding off and a woman yelling out something about burning books, and now she thinks she’s putting herself in danger somehow by attending a Tea Party “in the clear”? 

I guess we have different standards of what constitutes putting ourselves in danger at opposition rallies.  These things just aren’t that dangerous — even less so when you’re surrounded by people whose anger and frustration is aimed at the dangerous policies and irresponsible, corrupt actions of the government, rather than at the person of those who dare to hold different political ideas.

Note to folks on the left planning to “infiltrate” these rallies “inc–”, er, “INCOGNITO”: unless you’re somehow an apotheotic incarnation of a bailout/pork/stimulus bill or one of the Obama administration’s statist policies,  you really have no reason to fear for your safety in attending a Tea Party rally.  Even if your face is plastered all over the left blogosphere, and people at one of these rallies recognize you as one of the glimmering sparkles in the Progressive commentary firmament…they won’t care.  The worst they’re likely to do is try to argue with you and persuade you to come over to their side, which admittedly could be annoying to someone not used to having his or her received wisdom questioned or being asked to defend through reason their emotion-based beliefs.

As for “CVille Dem” and her fellow travelers showing up and documenting what happens, I see nothing wrong with it.  Transparency and accountability are good for both sides of the spectrum, and we here at PPC are already doing our part to expose what ”Progressives” are saying and doing at their events.  What I do have a problem with is the thought that some individuals from her side won’t be there to simply document what goes on, but to stir up controversy with which to tar the entire Tea Party movement as a bunch of kooks, crazies, racists, etc. 

I know that the Denver Tea Party organizers [FB] have done their best to dissuade the right-hand fringe from making a scene and to keep the event on-topic (reining-in government spending, restoring fiscal responsibility, ending bailouts and massive deficits, rolling back the disastrous federal meddling in the economy), but there will inevitably be people in attendance who can’t help themselves.  Just as the INCOGNITO Progressives will be there, cameras and voice recorders in hand, to document these crazies at the exclusion of everything else, PPC (among others) will be there to document the context in which these crazies are discovered and other participants taking the crazies to task for their inappropriate messages.

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