{"id":453,"date":"2009-04-05T16:35:32","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T20:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/?p=453"},"modified":"2009-04-05T17:03:17","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T21:03:17","slug":"santelli-not-participating-in-tea-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/04\/05\/santelli-not-participating-in-tea-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Santelli Not Participating In Tea Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Santelli, the lively CNBC correspondent whose on-air <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA\">outburst<\/a> went viral on YouTube and in libertarian\/conservative circles, continues to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/tvnewser\/cnbc\/santelli_not_involved_in_any_tax_day_tea_parties_113079.asp\">distance himself<\/a> from the web-organized anti-tax <a href=\"http:\/\/taxdayteaparty.com\/\">tea parties<\/a> which have been spawned in his honor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/i41.tinypic.com\/30sws9f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"554\" height=\"374\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A short-lived Playboy <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/03\/02\/santelli-conspiracy-theory-redux\/\">article<\/a> had accused Santelli of planting his reference to an anti-stimulus Boston tea party protest as part of a massive libertarian astro-turf campaign. Santelli publicly denied the charge, and an army of bloggers left and right picked apart the Playboy piece until it mysteriously disappeared. See more coverage <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/03\/04\/rick-santelli-conspiracy-redux-part-ii\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The humorous and strange take-away from all this is the power &#8220;viral&#8221;-ness has on social movements. If Santelli is correct that his outburst was spontaneous, then he will have become a libertarian hero in spite of himself. Indeed, a revolutionary without a platform save what political organizers, harnessing the web, have made in his YouTube image. Nor is there any need for an elaborate astro-turf theory to explain this. It is simply the stunning power of internet social networks at work. Obama understood it, and now the libertarians running the &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; have figured it out, too.<\/p>\n<p>I have the feeling Santelli is sympathetic to the cause, if bemused to find himself so transmogrified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Santelli, the lively CNBC correspondent whose on-air outburst went viral on YouTube and in libertarian\/conservative circles, continues to distance himself from the web-organized anti-tax tea parties which have been spawned in his honor. A short-lived Playboy article had accused Santelli of planting his reference to an anti-stimulus Boston tea party protest as part of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2097],"tags":[4916,3848,5021,2019,4854,4112,5355,4855,1292],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-states","tag-astro-turf","tag-libertarian","tag-malkin","tag-obama","tag-santelli","tag-stimulus","tag-tax","tag-tea-party","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}