Thread: Media Uses Austin IRS Terror Attack to Slam Tea Party Moveme

Media Uses Austin IRS Terror Attack to Slam Tea Party Movement

Thursday, 18 Feb 2010 08:01 PM
By: David A. Patten

Smoke from an inferno touched off by an anti-tax fanatic pilot who flew a single-engine Cherokee aircraft into an Austin, Texas office building containing IRS offices hadn’t even stopped Thursday when mainstream media outlets began suggesting the grassroots-conservative tea party movement was to blame for the incident.

Authorities say an individual believed to be pilot Joseph Andrew Stack III posted a suicide note online, set his house on fire, and then flew his aircraft into a building that housed over 190 Austin-based IRS agents. At least 13 persons were treated for injuries, and two were hospitalized, officials said.

Despite the fact that Stack's suicidal diatribe made no mention of the tea party, the Colorado Independent reported "There will be more attacks.
Stack was not right or left. He may or may not have been a Tea Partier."

BusinessInsider.com ran a headline titled: "The Austin Texas Bombing Is A HUGE Image Blow To The 'Tea Party.' The story reported "we're not saying Stack was a tea partier" and predicted the media would "use this as a chance to smear" tea partier organizations.

A piece posted on Time Magazine's web site, meanwhile, did not contain the words "tea party." Yet it carried a link in crimson letters halfway through its report titled: "See the making of the tea party movement."

The most egregious example may have come from Washington Post editorial board writer Jonathan Capehart, who wrote: "There's no information yet on whether [Stack] was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

Beyond citing apparently deranged passages from Stack's manifesto, Capehart did not provide any rationale for linking the wanton act to the conservative grassroots movement sweeping the nation, which liberal commentators have ridiculed from the outset.

The seemingly irrational suicide note written by Stack, 53, stated in part: “I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.â€

Next the media will link anyone against higher taxes as a right ring extremeist. Anyone with a conflict with the IRS will be added to the terror watch list.
This man had a mental problem and took his anger out on innocent people. This is not what the TEA Party protesters are about.
Our anger is against the guilty government that stood by while the financial crisis was cooking and did everything they could to turn up the heat. American taxpayers got burned !