Teabaggers Stomp the First Amendment

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist


Teabaggers aren't known for intellectual pursuits, and, in fact, tend to regard literacy as something suspect.   Oh, some do more than clean their guns, guzzle beer, and make misspelled protest signs, and a rare few even read.  They read things like the Bible, well at least the parts they agree with like the Old Testament's one warning about homosexuality, and they read the Constitution - well, probably only the non-socialist stuff like the Second Amendment.   And, a rare few even read books - The Turner Diaries leaps to mind.

But when it comes to news, there is no reading required.  All a concerned teabagger has to do is park his or her flabby butt in front of a television and turn on Fox News, a fair and balanced reporting of what is going on in the world - or not.  If it ain't Fox, it ain't important.

So I guess that is why they get so pissed when others try to cover their events and ask them non-scripted, potentially embarrassing questions.   Sharron Angle, a teabagger and Republican Senate candidate in Nevade, literally ran from reporters trying to ask her non-Fox questions, and recently she employed a decoy to lead reporters out one door while she scurried out another.  Ms. Angle knows her limitations, and she is too intellectually challenged to deal with someone who is not on Rupert Murdoch's payroll.

A few weeks ago Republican (and teabagger) Alaska Senate candidate, Joe Miller, made the real news when some of his paid security staff handcuffed and detained the editor of a local paper who was trying to ask the candidate a question.  When the real cops showed up, the rent-a-cops were made to unshackle their catch.

Last night a worker for MoveOn.Org was trying to ask Rand Paul (a Kentucky teabagger/Republican Senate candidate) a question when one of Paul's political operatives pushed her to the pavement and stomped on her head.  The lady is in the hospital with a concussion.

The right-wingnuts are very selective about who they talk to, and they put maximum effort into controlling access to their candidates.  Sarah Palin, herself a Fox employee, speaks only to news organizations like Fox and sarcastically refers to the major news outlets as the Lamestream Media.  Karl Rove kept such tight control over George Bush's appearances that people were required to have tickets before they could even be at any event where Bush might take questions.  Rove, on occasion, planted phony journalists at news conferences to lob softball questions to his boss, a former "C" student and proud of it!

It's a shame that all of these wingers don't take the time and effort to read the rest of the Constitution.  The First Amendment is far more important that their much ballyhooed Second Amendment.  It is the First Amendment that provides for of Freedom of the Press, without which we would soon begin to look and act like so many mindless North Koreans.  When we interfere with a free press - by running from them, shackling them, or trying to smash their skulls - we are limiting our ability to oversee our government.  When we ignore the First Amendment or openly defy it, we do so at our peril.