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Tag: "tea party"

6
By Erich Vieth on September 04th, 2009

How to have a conversation about health care reform

I commend the way that Al Franken engaged with these tea party folks recently:

Watching this video makes me ever more suspicious that the media is driving unnecessary conflict (on health care reform and on everything else) in order to sell ads. It seems much easier to talk when the media isn’t around spewing sound bites and featuring angry extremists, instead of focusing on the many ways we actually agree with those with whom we “disagree.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off of the woman who tried to start the conversation in a contentious way. I kept wondering whether her views on Al Franken were shifting given the impressive way he discussed the issues surrounding health care reform.

Communication • Community • Health • Medicine • Politics
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16
By Mindy Carney on April 16th, 2009

Paranoia as a permanent state of being - -

This post about a panicked cautionary note was sent to me today, obviously well after the tea-party fact, but I thought it was quite amusing. The ultimate effect being, of course, that their efforts at keeping any sort of grassroots movement going was shot squarely in the foot, as they effectively censored themselves out of communicating with each other. Some of the responses to the post are hilarious. Seems of late I’ve been reading too many rightwing kneejerk responses, barely literate and rarely logical, to eloquent liberal articles and posts, and I was beginning to feel an unease that “they” are going to take over again. I was reminded, reading these responses, that the left side of the general public is still out there, making merry and feeling confident. Whew.

Now, is it just me, or does anyone else find that the further to the right one lands on the political spectrum, the less functional one’s sense of humor seems to become? Not only can they not poke fun at themselves, which all of my friends (read: left-leaning people with brains) do pretty well, but they can’t put words together to CREATE humor, either. Just fear, volume and paranoia. And ranting. Lots and lots of ranting.

American Culture • Censorship • Communication • Cultural Evolution • Current Events • Humor • Networking • Politics • hypocrisy • ignorance
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