NYT's Frank Rich Links Texas Pilot to Tea Parties

There are few columnists more arrogant and dismissive of average Americans than the New York Times' Frank Rich. Most recently, he has come out with a tortured treatise on the connection between Joe Stack (the Austin suicide pilot) and the Tea Party protesters. To Rich, the most important thing to remember is that Stack was a tax-protester.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28rich.html

"What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it."

Like who? Give me a name of a politician on the right or a Republican who condoned this, and I will condemn it. Not only did Stack take his own life, he killed an innocent IRS employee. I have not lost sight of that fact. The clumsy comments of some unknown Republican congressman from Iowa (Steve King) should not have included criticism of the IRS when asked about the incident.

"But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner."

See the connection Rich makes? See how tortured it is? Yet, if you don't read it critically, you might not realize that the connection is so flimsy.

Then Rich makes the "connection" between the Tea Partiers and Tim McVeigh:


"Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history. The Patriot movement. “The New World Order,” with its shadowy conspiracies hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Sandpoint, Idaho. White supremacists. Militias.

Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc."

This is outrageous. Ask those people who attended tea parties their opinion of Tim McVeigh, and they would have uniformly told you he was a domestic terorist who committed a horrible act and deserved to be put to death. Shadowy conspiracies and white supremists in Idaho. Rich's column rewads like the ramblings of a madman. Norman Finklestein and Alim Musa come to mind.

Then Rich tries to tie conservatives like Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman and all the other top Republicans to a philosophy of violence. With Rich's pieces of evidence, you couldn't put a dog in the pound.

The fact is that Rich is a liberal ideologue whose writings qualify him more for a spot on the staff of the Daily Kos than a respected mainstream newspaper like the New....

What am I saying???!!!

Seriously, what this arrogant man does is slander a large segment of the American public who are speaking out against public corruption and increasing government intrusion into our lives. The tea parties and the town events have resulted in no violence. The only incidents of violence that occurred during the town hall meetings were instigated by the goons of the SEIU and other supporters of the Democrats and government-run health care. For Rich to associate tea-partiers with violence, the Austin incident or Oklahoma City is a calumny.