Did You Know...

As readers of this blog know, I helped spearhead one of the first Tea Party rallies of 2009 in Denver. Several hundred grass-roots conservative activists gathered on the steps of the state capitol on February 17, 2009 to protest President Obama’s visit to the city for the signing of the federal porkulus bill. I posted numerous photos and videos of the event:

(From my iphone/twitpic)

(Photo via People’s Press Collective)

Readers also know that I was mobbed by many people asking for photographs, including a stranger who later turned out to have been part of an apparent plan to discredit the Tea Party activists. I reported on how the sabotage later mirrored widespread efforts to smear the movement:

I speak from direct experience about the underhandedness of Tea Party smear merchants. On February 17, 2009 at one of the country’s first tax revolt rallies in Denver, a man approached me amid a throng of bona fide anti-stimulus protesters and thrust a camera in my face. I obliged cheerfully, as I usually do after such speaking events. I later learned from the character assassins at Progress Now, the Soros-backed outfit that just happened to be there and just happened to snap a close-up photo of the interaction, which was immediately disseminated to the local press and to the hitmen of Media Matters, that the man pulled out a sign at the last minute (which I didn’t see until later) sporting Obama’s name with a swastika on it. He held the sign away from me, but in direct view of the Progress Now cameraperson who used to work for CNN.

Never mind the Left’s Bush=Nazi hypocrisy and the uncanny, instantaneous manufactured outrage. The narrative was set: A conservative supporter of the nascent Tea Party movement posed for a photo with a man holding up a swastika at a protest against out-of-control spending! Ergo, the stimulus protesters and the entire Tea Party membership are all racist, fascist menaces to society!

Now, we’ve come full circle from a swastika sign “scandal” fomented by Tea Party saboteurs to distract from the core policy message at the Denver anti-stimulus protest last February… to the creepily similar tactics advocated by “Crash the Party” instigator Jason Levin to “act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities…to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them.”

I’ll repeat the advice I gave last April 6, 2009 when I warned, “Get ready for the anti-Tea Party sabotage and smear campaign.” It holds true today:

They have no shame. Be prepared. Confront them with their own rank hypocrisy and unhingedness. Don’t get distracted. And don’t let your local media get away with lazily recycling their smears.

Well, the trashy gossip site MediaTakeOut.com didn’t get the memo. Today, they recycled the photo that Soros-backed Progress Now staged three years ago as “BREAKING NEWS” with the following false information:

April 10, 2012: Well FOX News correspondent Michelle Malkin just got herself in some HOT WATER. She was photo’d at a rally . . . filled with WHITE SUPREMACISTS.

Oh, and she didn’t just ATTEND the rally . . . she took pics with at least ONE Swatsika carrying protester.

FOX news really is SHAMELESS .. .

Yes, they wrote “Swatsika.” Twice.

Screencaps (click for full-size):

Tools.