Virginia Tea Party Demands Refund Over 'Occupy' Double Standard

 

By Guy Benson
TownHall.com

Bravo. This move not only seeks to redress an obvious wrong on a micro level; it highlights a pervasive double standard:

A Virginia tea party group is demanding a refund of about $8,000 from the city of Richmond, claiming it was unfairly charged for rallies while Occupy protesters have used the same space for several weeks for free. The political organization is sending the city an invoice for the charges incurred for three rallies held in Kanawha Plaza over the past three years. The Occupy protesters have been camped in the plaza since Oct. 15. Richmond Tea Party spokeswoman Colleen Owens says it's not fair that her group had to pay fees for permits, portable toilets, police and emergency personnel. The group also had to purchase a $1 million insurance policy.

Conservatives played by the rules, had their say, cleaned up after themselves, then went back to work. They actually put themselves at a disadvantage by complying with the law and acting responsibly. I could pen a whole screed about the injustice of it all, but Allahpundit puts it about as perfectly as anyone possibly could:

And so it came to be that the “angry mob” lost eight grand by playing by the rules while America’s Sweethearts get to build their own communes on public land with no interference from the police, even with crime happening right in front of them. Good times. I ask this in all seriousness: Has there been any more egregious double standard towards the right over the last five years than the commentariat’s treatment of OWS versus the tea party? They spent late 2009 and the entirety of 2010 treating conservative protests as a form of domestic terrorism, punctuated by the horrible right-wing attack on Gabby Giffords that wasn’t a right-wing attack at all. And now suddenly their own side is in the streets and behaving vastly worse, yet somehow they’re the last, best hope of the middle class. See Treacher’s post here for just one example of what I mean. Honestly — any worse double standard?

I can't think of one. The media cheerleading of the 'Occupy' protests, juxtaposed with its treatment of the Tea Party rallies, is startling. The mainstream media is systemically corrupt, and incurably biased. Parting thought: The press is currently obsessed with the topic of "police brutality," which coincidentally! happens to be the Occupiers' hot topic. Gee. If a single Tea Party rally had descended into such chaos that the presence of riot police became necessary, do you think the media would be focused on "police brutality" -- or might the story have become "these wingnuts have gotten violent, and Republicans must denounce them immediately because the republic is in peril"? I wonder...