Right Wing Leveraging The TSA Flap

[GrpCaptMandrake]

Some of you may know, others perhaps not, that for the last six years I've hosted a nightly liberal talk radio show ("Head-On With Bob Kincaid"). As part of that process, I've found myself on a LOT of PR email lists. Suffice to say there are many more PR folks doing wingnut issues than those on our side.

At any rate, I'm bombarded daily with pitches for this, that and the other revolting wingnut talking point, complete with the offer of a "guest" to advance them on my show (Obama a Kenyan FascIslamUnist? There's a guest for that!). I remain on the lists simply because it's interesting and informative to watch the Right Wing Messaging Megaphone at work.

So I start culling through my email this morning and what do I find but the latest pitch for a right-wing guest to push the outrage envelope even further on the TSA kerfuffle. I thought you all might like a peek at the right-wing megaphone in action, from a behind-the-scenes perspective:

Government’s Grope and Grab Has Got To Stop!

Intrusive gropes of traveler’s private parts by TSA’s government employees is just the latest overreach of this administration to “grope and grab” every aspect of our lives.

Here are some examples:
1. Grope our bodies, literally or by x-ray, treating everyone as an equal threat to safety, and grab harmless items.
2. Grope our medical privacy in the electronic records the government wants for every medical visit.
3. Grab our right to choose our medical treatment with our physician, rather than the government panels now being created.
4. Grope our financial records in the new “reform” act.
5. Grab our money for higher health insurance premiums to cover new Obamacare mandates.
6. Grope and grab our paycheck with more reporting and higher taxes.
7. Grab our liberty to choose how we pay for medical care.
8. Grope and grab our food choices with a food bill being rammed through in the lame duck Congress: as with “healthcare reform" it has to be passed into law before we can see what’s in it.
9. Grope and grab our CO2 emissions–from traveling, from heating and cooling our homes, even from eating high-fat foods—in a vast new EPA power grab.
10. Grab our energy sources with drilling bans onshore and offshore.
11. Grope and grab our 401k and IRA plans in a proposed mandate to buy Treasury bills.
12. Grope and grab 30% of all personal and business international wire transfers of money beginning 1-1-2013, buried in the “Jobs” bill.
13. Grab added 3.8% tax on the gain over $250,000 on sale of our homes
14. Grab our kids’ toys, mandating removal from Happy Meals, starting in San Francisco.

I think it is high time we demand that our new Congressional representatives start off the New Year with a bold halt to the federal government “grope and grab.” That’s a New Year’s Resolution for change we can live with.

Issue management like this doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen by accident. These are sophisticated, well-funded, longterm PR efforts. Bear in mind that the email I received this morning probably went out to dozens, if not hundreds of talk radio hosts and producers, many of whom will be more than happy to advance this disgusting trope, since right-wing hatecasting outguns liberal radio by a factor of 1000 hours to 1.

Don't think for an instant that the right-wing, the Baggers, Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers and other assorted sundry BoogerEaters aren't working this issue for all it's worth. The Right is manifestly more adept, and better-funded than ANY PR effort our side has going. With that in mind, do please continue to ask yourself how this "issue" suddenly exploded in the national consciousness. There are NO accidents in right wing PR.

[LisaL]

1. Well if the right is more adept I hope they manage to stop

these procedures. Happy now?

[GrpCaptMandrake]

3. "Happy now"

What do you mean by that?

[Skidmore]

2. Corporate raider mentality backed by big dollars and

corporate PR techniques...when will the left learn. You could see these rolled out and coming down the pike long ago. In the meantime, handwringing and outrage on the left. OMG!

[GrpCaptMandrake]

4. I see it every day

Our side is so far behind the messaging curve we think we're on straight road. It's sad, really.

[Skidmore]

6. Exactly.

I don't know how many times I've posted thread about comments or thing I had seen that were red flags only to have them pooh-poohed as naive or ignored entirely only to watch the cries of anguish rise full volume later after these issues came to the fore. What was lost was response time to organize and communicate. I really have a hard time these days being sympathetic to our side during these times.

[leveymg]

5. 15. Grab Jesus from Christmas and grope Santa Claus before he can get in his sleigh.

. . . Well, they'd add that if they had a sense of humor.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

7. They kinda did

Yesterday, WingnutWorld was all a-titter over a school in Florida that had "banned the Christmas colors of red and green."

"See there, Marvalene?! See how them sick-you-ler hoomanists is tryin' to kill little baby Jesus rat thar in his manager!"

The only problem was, it simply wasn't true. Didn't happen. At all.

Neither honesty nor factual accuracy will EVER be a bar to the right wing in its relentless, avaricious, fetishistic pursuit of power.

On edit: typo

[leveymg]

8. Somehow, the words "kill little baby Jesus rat" leapt right off the screen . . . Google Image it,

An extraordinary assembly of images for that, including this one:

[GrpCaptMandrake]

9. That's just disturbing! n/t