I was browsing Fox News' website to look for their take on the Joe Miller thugs who "arrested" the reporter (found here if you want to see the awful spin of words) when I came across an article titled "New Study Debunks Myth about Racist Tea Partiers." I clicked the link and was expecting a chuckle at some polling firm to have called people and asked the self-identified Tea Party R's if they were racist or not. Then when most of them said, "no", they would have their obvious and undeniable proof! The reality was even less scientifically rigorous than that...
Halfway through the first sentence, I thought the study had some seriousness to it.
The Tea Party movement, and those within it, has been accused of being racist and inciting prejudice pretty much since its inception, but a new study conducted by UCLA
Ahh, UCLA is a big university and they conducted a study. This could be interesting, I thought. Then I finished the sentence.
The Tea Party movement, and those within it, has been accused of being racist and inciting prejudice pretty much since its inception, but a new study conducted by UCLA graduate student Emily Ekins is showing just the opposite. (Emphasis mine.)
Really? I don't study studies, but I don't recall seeing many that get press that are conducted by one random grad student.
I shouldn't judge, maybe she's got a spot on methodology.
Ekins set out to photograph every single poster and sign at the 9/12 Taypayer March on Washington in September...
After tediously combing through the crowd and over 250 photographs later, Ekins discovered, based on the signs, that the claims of rampant racism simply weren't true.
If we're to believe the wonderful people at FreedomWorks, there were between 100,000 and 1.5 million people at that rally. And Ms. Ekins' goal was to get pictures of all of the signs and posters. And she took 250 pictures. Maybe the memory card in her camera was full. If her proof of the non-racist Tea Party was to capture pictures of non-whites, she may have ended up with 250 pictures, and that might have been believable.
She concluded that the Tea Party is not racist because only 6% of the posters were controversial, and only one of them racist.
When asked, Ekins said she could only remember one specific sign that could be considered racist, but it wasn't targeted towards President Obama. "I'm not trying to incite any anger here, but I do remember one that said ‘I'm a Smart*ss Cracker and I Vote.'
I don't believe it. The only racist sign invoked a racial slur against whites. Not only is the Tea Party not racist, but they have a firm grasp of self deprecating humor to lighten the mood about race relations in this country. Kudos!
And finally, not only did the studier provide us with the complete set of raw data for us to draw our own conclusions, she drew the final conclusions for us.
Instead of focusing on just one or two outlandish signs, she took a more systematic approach which led to the overall message. A message, she said, that is pretty simple: "The overwhelming message is about limited government."
Thanks new scientifically sound Fox News study for showing us your fair and balanced data and proving once and for all that the Tea Party is not racist!