I’m by no means a fan of the Tea Party, but Austn Vaughin’s letter to the editor contribution published last Wednesday horribly misrepresents the Tea Party. While trying to make the Tea Party out to be a bunch of extremists, he manages to paint himself as an extremist.
Vaughn straight up defines the Tea Party as “a racist group that will stop at nothing to get rid of our current president.” Now, to blindly call a whole group racist on the basis of the actions of a minority of its members — which all groups have an extreme minority — is just plain ignorant.
Next he makes the claim that “everything the Tea Party says and does is nothing but lies and a cover up for racist Republicans.” How in the world can someone claim that EVERYTHING that the Tea Party says and does is a lie? The claim is so outrageous it’s amazing The Daily Cougar printed the article.
Instead of painting yourself as an extremist by broadly misrepresenting an active political movement, actually talk about the policies that are currently being debated and discussed amongst these political movements.
For instance, instead of painting Tea Party members as racists that reject Obama because he’s half black, you could talk about something truthful like how they reject his usage of Keynesian economics. Much like economics, though, politics can be hard to understand. Unfortunately extremist and false articles are printed in the media.
Ryan Vollert is an economics and political science senior.
