Posted on 10/14/2010 11:18:57 AM PDT by kristinn
A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government's economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.
Emily Ekins, a graduate student at UCLA, conducted the survey at the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington last month by scouring the crowd, row by row and hour by hour, and taking a picture of every sign she passed.
Ekins photographed about 250 signs, and more than half of those she saw reflected a "limited government ethos," she found - touching on such topics as the role of government, liberty, taxes, spending, deficit and concern about socialism.
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But Ekins's analysis showed that only about a quarter of all signs reflected direct anger with Obama. Only 5 percent of the total mentioned the president's race or religion, and slightly more than 1 percent questioned his American citizenship.
Ekins's conclusion is not that the racially charged messages are unimportant but that media coverage of tea party rallies over the past year have focused so heavily on the more controversial signs that it has contributed to the perception that such content dominates the tea party movement more than it actually does.
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Ekins spent the summer researching the tea party movement and also as an intern at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. The survey was for her UCLA graduate studies.
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Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, said his organization did not instruct protesters to limit their messages to fiscal slogans, but he did patrol the crowd and threw out a few protesters carrying signs depicting Obama as Adolf Hitler.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Amy Gardner puts the "anal" in analysis.
By "some" media coverage, she obviously means all media other than Fox News.
And, of course, there's no way to know how many of those signs questioning Ubama's race, religion or citizenship were RAT plants.
Another “Welcome to the Party Pal!” moment.
Dude! I’m at work right now. How do you expect me drink?
That's their thought process in a nutshell; Anti-Obama = Racist.
The WaPo is sure slipping. Finding out that the Republicans are not evil or that they are innocent of anything isn't scheduled until about a week after the election.
Someone at WaPo will be losing their job over this.
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