Today, the Department of Homeland Security released a report on the growing influence of radical right-wing extremists. On Fox News this afternoon, guest host David Asman willingly tied the Fox-promoted, lobbyist-funded, “grassroots” tea party movement to such right-wing radicals, and suggested that the Obama administration might send “spies” to the tea parties to track extremists:
I’m looking at the report and it says, among other things, that the federal government is going to begin gathering information on right-wing extremist activity in the United States. Does that mean they’re going to be sending spies to these tea parties?
Asman continued to group conservatives with radical extremists later in the segment, asking whether the DHS report was just “an effort to shut up their critics.” Watch it:
Similarly, Michelle Malkin today referred to the report as the “Obama DHS hit job on conservatives.” TNR’s Jonathan Chait wondered why conservatives seem so happy to lump themselves with the “murderous lunatics” the report targets. “I kind of figured conservatives would try to define potential domestic terrorists as the fringe right,” Chait writes. “But there’s Michelle Malkin calling potential terrorists ‘conservatives.’”
Update Noting the constant use of the word "revolution" in the tea party promotions, the Washington Independent's David Weigel writes that "if they want to use this rhetoric, they can[base ']Äôt really be too angry when the government frets about a rising tide of violent government overthrow rhetoric."
Yesterday on his Fox News show, Glenn Beck hosted supply-side Reagan economist Arthur Laffer to discuss government spending. As he loves to do, Beck brought up the tea party events tomorrow, which oddly prompted Laffer to congratulate him:
BECK: When these people are going to the tax tea parties, and I’ve said –
LAFFER: Congratulations, by the way.
BECK: Well, um, I’m just attending.
Why would Laffer offer his congratulations to Beck for the tea parties if Beck supposedly has no role in promoting them? Watch it:
Fox News has been attempting to assert that it is not promoting the tea parties, but simply reporting on them. Last week, Beck backed out as a keynote speaker at the San Antonio tea party event, thereby removing himself from an overt advocacy role. He will be broadcasting from the event for Fox News. But, while there, he is also attending a fundraising lunch for the tea party activists.
After CNBC’s Jim Cramer sat down for a brutal confrontation with The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart in March, he originally replied to criticism by saying that he was glad his head “was still attached” after the interview and that he was “thrilled to have been in the tourney.” But Cramer soon took a more aggressive tone towards Stewart, calling his criticism “naive and misleading.” Apparently, Cramer hasn’t let go of his frustration over the interview. In an interview Ohio State’s The Lantern last week, Cramer said that Stewart “came on strictly to try to humiliate me“:
“It was a complete and utter ambush,” Cramer said in an interview with The Lantern. “He told my staff that it was going to be fun, convivial, no clips, but [it] doesn’t matter, he’s a comedian, he can do whatever he wants.” […]
“Was it a fair fight? No, it wasn’t even a fight. I came on with the idea of taking a high road approach and discussing the issues, obviously [Stewart] came on strictly to try to humiliate me,” Cramer said. “It was brutal. Was he stand-up? Absolutely not. Did he comport himself as a gentleman? Hardly. It was a deposition; he wants to be a prosecutor.”
In the interview with The Lantern, Cramer also claimed that he believed Stewart’s goal was to get him fired: “His goal was just to humiliate and destroy me and probably get me fired, and last I looked, I still have a show.” (HT: Howard Kurtz)
After CNBC’s Jim Cramer sat down for 