Today Robert Gibbs dismissed the sparks at the Specter-Sebelius health care town hall as manufactured outrage, claiming “the Brooks Brothers brigade . . . appears to have rented a similar bus and are appearing at town hall events throughout the country.” While yes, some of those protestors can be accused of being fashion-forward (and others just don’t care), it’s strange that Gibbs would analogize wearing that particular label with being inauthentic. Perhaps he doesn’t recall that Brooks Brothers had a press release earlier this year praising Obama for wearing one of their suits during his own inauguration. (h/t Amanda Carpenter)
“In addition to President Lincoln, Brooks Brothers has an illustrious list of presidential patrons. Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt wore Brooks Brothers when they took their oaths of office, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and William J. Clinton and George W. Bush also wore Brooks Brothers at various public and private occasions throughout their tenures in office. President Barack Obama wore a Brooks Brothers coat along with a cashmere scarf and gloves on the occasion of his inauguration on January 20, 2009.”
Regardless, these questions dogging the Tea Party movement, questioning its authenticity, are hardly new. During the first Washington, D.C. tea party protest (which I helped plan) this debate focused on organizations that provided purely logistical support — conference calls, for instance. On the other hand, these organizations did not bus in protestors, unlike ACORN, which bussed protestors to the private homes of AIG executives to harass their families. Little attention was paid by the mainstream press to the question of who funds these protests.
Anyway, by today’s media standards, an authentic protest is one in which liberals advocate for more government intervention domestically. It isn’t authentic precisely because conservatives don’t protest. Marc Ambinder notes that those who favor Obama’s policies are making a mistake to be so dismissive of the protests on this score. The fact is, the protests are happening, one way or another, and not addressing them could be a grave political error. As for the press, where was this skepticism of protests during anti-war rallies?
