On this past week’s Dancing With The Stars, funny guy Carson Kressley hit the screen wearing a gorilla mask. Taking it off he snarked, “It still smells like a Tea Party.”
AH, a bit of comeuppance! The Tea Party gets a bit of push back from a humorist with a gorilla mask. Since there has been no reaction from the Tea Party (collectively or individually) it seems the quip rolled-off as was intended: A quip. Between you and me, I will admit to a great deal of glee that Kressley chose to use the mask of a gorilla. I have not seen so much Great Ape mimicry since January 20, 2009. Most of the mimicry was in the opposite direction from the Tea party and directed at the president. So much for Kressley, the mask and comment are not worthy of deep discussion.
The reaction from FoxNation.com (Fox News) is worthy of discussion.
Even Dancing is not safe from left-wing attacks on Tea Partiers, sadly. Last night on the venerable dance show, fashion makeover maven Carson Kressley thought it would be a hoot to make fun of over half the voters in America with an attack on how he thinks Tea Party activists smell.
Well, let’s take a look at data about Tea Party demographics:
Demographics and Politics
Some quick statistics about the Tea Party’s composition:
- 12% of all American voters identify as part of the Tea Party movement.
- 74% of Tea Party supporters identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. 16% identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents.
- 45% of Tea Party supporters are men, and 55% are women; 88% are white; 77% voter for John McCain in 2008 and 15% voted for Barack Obama.
- If a ballot included a Tea Party candidate, 40% of Tea Partiers say they’d choose that candidate. 31% would vote for the Republican and 9% would vote for the Democrat.
- In terms of age, educational background, employment status, and race, Tea Party supporters are generally representative of the public at large. (I take exception to this statement as viewing Tea party rallies, Tea party marches and the Tea party/CNN Debate did not yield what I would consider a truly diverse set of people. The value is in there potential use in prediction, study and for building strategy. Surveys also have value in support of or to refute, a hypothesis. The Gallup survey was conducted among 1023 people in March of 2010. (See Note below: Gallup Survey Method). Any survey that includes 1023 respondents draws major concern from me, when I see comparable data for non-white blacks and Hispanics Tea Party supports and the general adult public. I will leave that point as my opinion and open for interpretation. Rest assured, however, that there is no survey published today that will convince me that acceptance of the Tea Party is even close to evenly distributed among the Black and Hispanic Community).
Note: Gallup’s linked Survey Methods
The Gallup survey, however, makes good and relevant points about the Tea Party and how the movement ideology spans the psyches of potential voters. Fox Nation’s unnamed writer went far beyond.
“..Carson Kressley thought it would be a hoot to make fun of over half the voters in America.” Gallup data: 12% of all American voters identify as part of the Tea Party movement.
Fox News has a history that is well documented when it comes to the ‘creative editing’ of a video. Sean Hannity recently joined the EIB network’s Rush Limbaugh in lying about the unemployment rate when President Obama took office. The figures from Limbaugh and Hannity: 5.5% unemployment and 5.7 % unemployment. The unemployment rate the week of January 20, 2009, was 7.9 per cent. These on air demagogues earn more than 45 million per year between the two. They have staff that earn in the upper levels of income. Those figures (5.5% and 5.7%) were clearly in error.
Rassmussen (hardly a liberal in inclination)
My quest led me to data for Colorado.
A Rasmussen survey released Monday paints a strange picture of Tea Party participation in Colorado. According to the report, 33% of likely Colorado voters identify themselves as participants in the Tea Party movement, compared with 24% nationally. (Highlight added for emphasis)
64% of Republicans identified with the movement, compared with 10% of Democrats.
I assume that Rasmussen surveyed in every state. The link above navigates to a membership solicitation that may have run in Colorado. The data in my opinion may be even more indicative of the fallacies and lies of FOX Nation (Fox News) verbiage related to the scope of Tea party voters. Colorado has been known to swing among Democratic representatives and Republican representatives (with a lean towards the Right)
We now have two Independent sources and survey data that completely refutes the Fox nation comment.
“……..to make fun of over half the voters in America.”
Gallup 12% identify as Tea Party
Rasmussen 24% identify as Tea Party.
If I split the difference between these two sources the data falls someplace in the range of 18% of the population that identify themselves as Tea Party members. My methodology is not even close to scientific but I think it far more accurate than Fox Nation’s “over half U.S. voters” (identify as Tea Party).
What we have here is pure Fox News (Roger Ailes) “yellow journalism’ and Fox News propaganda.
Edited by Wendy Gittleson
