Having been forced to report on Ron Paul's record breaking donation
drive yesterday, mainstream outlets seized the opportunity to
emphasize the Guy Fawkes gimmick, that was used by grassroots
organizers to draw attention to Paul's campaign, as a way of tacitly
suggesting that the Congressman's message of freedom and limited
government is synonymous with terrorism and anarchy.
A grassroots campaign unaffiliated with the official
Paul campaign was the catalyst for a huge $4.2 million cash infusion
yesterday, putting the campaign well on course to raise $12 million
by the end of the quarter and bringing Paul close to being the
top fundraiser among the Republican candidates.
The Following headlines, however, chose not to lead
with this information and instead to firstly draw attention to
the November 5th theme:
"Historians and British schoolchildren remember
Guy Fawkes as the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on
Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up
the Parliament. Supporters of the Republican primary campaign
of the libertarian Representative Ron Paul may remember Fawkes
as a wildly successful fund-raising gimmick", writes the
NY Times.
(Article continues below)
"On Monday, a group of Paul supporters helped
raised more than $4.07 million in one day — approaching
what the campaign raised in the entire last quarter — through
a Web site called ThisNovember5th.com, a reference to the day
the British commemorate the thwarted bombing." continues
the article in the first two paragraphs.
More of this kind of stuff comes from CNN. In the
following clip from Wolf Blitzer's show, the anchor wastes little
time in tying the Ron Paul fundraising campaign to the gunpowder
plot to "blow up the Houses of Parliament," despite
the fact that the date was patently chosen as a gimmick to make
people remember to donate and has nothing to do with 400-year
old British history:
Rolling
Stone magazine went one better, explicitly linking
the Congressman's cash infusion with terror and anarchy:
"I don’t know what’s more amazing
— the sum total. Or the fact that this Republican fund-raising
surge this is all somehow in honor of terrorist, er, anarchist,
er, V-For-Vendetta antihero Guy Fawkes."
The article has drawn huge swathes of attention
from angry Ron Paul supporters at pains to point out that Ron
Paul's endorsement of a strong free market and limited government
and is the very antithesis of anarchism, it is what is directly
written in the Constitution of the United States, it literally
is law and order.
"We don’t want anarchy, we want The Constitution.
It’s not something new, it is the law of the land. Do you
get your talking points from Bill O’reilly?", writes
one commenter.
The spin used here is astounding, clearly disgruntled
by having to admit Ron Paul now must be considered a top tier
candidate, and terrified of the Congressman's growing success,
the establishment and others cannot merely report the fact that
Ron Paul has raised record breaking millions via somewhere in
the region of 35,000 individual donations.
Instead they spin this incredible display of grassroots
organization knowing that the neocon blogs will run wild with
it, now they can no longer declare Ron Paul's widespread support
to be the work of "spambots".
And as expected the first set of twisted reality
denying neocon goblins to disseminate their poison was once again,
the Michelle Malkin worshipping dirt-sniffers over at Hot
Air (please don't visit their filth den, it only encourages
them), who went with the "could it be any more yellow?"
headline Ron and the Paulbots celebrate a terrorist
by raising $3.5 mil.
We keep returning to this key quote but in this
instance it's meaning is even more relevant:
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule
you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi.
Meanwhile, others, while having to now admit Paul is a top tier
candidate, have attempted to spin the amazing outpouring of support
for Ron Paul as an indication of great "alienation"
in America. The Baltimore
Sun writes:
That so many people have invested so much in someone who stands
such little apparent chance of winning his party’s presidential
nomination, let alone the White House, speaks volumes about
alienation in modern American politics.
It is the same alienation that once handed H. Ross Perot close
to 20 percent of the presidential vote. It is the same alienation
that handed Ralph Nader just enough of the vote to deny Democrat
Al Gore an Electoral College victory to accompany his popular-vote
majority.
Though they still underplay Ron Paul's chances, in many ways
the Sun is correct. What we are seeing is about more than Ron
Paul. We are witnessing an awakening, Ron Paul is just one man,
along with a growing movement of truth seekers, who have been
continually prodding a sleeping giant.
The November 5th infusion shows that the people have power and
the idea we don't is an illusion. The old line establishment media
is in crisis, their popularity is dwindling and they have to act
like movements generated by internet organisation do not equate
to real people. More and more people are realizing that they can
inject themselves into real issues and that there is great hope
as long as there is still a willingness to effect change.
Having been forced to report on Ron Paul's record breaking donation
drive yesterday, mainstream outlets seized the opportunity to
emphasize the Guy Fawkes gimmick, that was used by grassroots
organizers to draw attention to Paul's campaign, as a way of tacitly
suggesting that the Congressman's message of freedom and limited
government is synonymous with terrorism and anarchy.
