Excellent Short Essay: Media on Egypt vs. Tea Party

We have this in FoxNews.com and suggest you read it to the end.

Egyptian Protest Is No Tea Party

By Michael Prell
Published February 24, 2011

In February of 2011, thousands of Egyptian protesters used social media to organize rallies to oppose their government.

In February of 2009, thousands of American protesters used social media to organize rallies to oppose their government.

That is where the similarities end.

When Egyptians used social media to connect with each other and organize rallies, they were called “forward-looking,” and “cutting edge.”  They were cast as “the spearhead of a very modern uprising,” “enabled by Facebook and Twitter” as Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times gushed, “to feel the energy and pride of a people taking back the keys to their country and their future.”

When American Tea Partiers used social media two years ago to connect with each other and organize rallies, they were cast as a violent racist mob bent on “march[ing] this nation as far backward as they can get; backward to Jim Crow [and] backward to the bread lines of the 30’s.” Or, they were painted as too stupid to drag their knuckles off the ground long enough to type 140 characters into Twitter.

The New York Times reported that the Egyptian protesters were “completely non-violent,” even though The Times reported — just days earlier — that when “a police officer cursed protesters standing by a local coffee shop, [the protesters] replied by throwing stones at a police vehicle.”  The situation escalated, and the “completely non-violent” Egyptian protesters “replied by throwing Molotov cocktails at the police station [and] protesters set fire to the nearby courthouse, the Traffic Regulation Authority building and the ruling National Democratic Party headquarters.”

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