And that's not easy to do. I live in a college town and work with many grad and masters candidates, each of whom is instilled with a liberal ideology, stripped of their ability to critically think (but that's a story for another day). When I heard that Emily Ekins, a grad student at UCLA, took it upon herself to analyze the degree of truth behind a myth perpetuated by the left, that being the racist leanings of
tea party members, I had to know more.
Ms. Ekins conducted her research by attending a tea party rally (the 9/12 march on Washington) and scoured the crowd, taking photographs of every sign of placard she could find, row by row, hour by hour. She later assembled all her photos and broke them down by category, based on the sign's message. Her meticulous work yielded the following results:
1) only one quarter of the signs were directed towards Obama.
2) Only 5% made reference to Obama's race or religion.
3) Just slightly more than 1% mentioned Obama's citizenship.
After examining her data Ekins concluded that while there were a few ugly messages, the media coverage of the tea party over the past 18 months has focused so heavily on the negative and controversial signs that it has created a mistaken perception that these few sensational messages are the rule, when they are in fact the rare exception.
My faith isn't quite renewed yet, but there's hope.
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