You may remember Susan Roesgen as the woman who rather notoriously played the role of Obama stimulus apologist while carrying a CNN microphone at the April 15th Chicago Tea Party (she was also the subject of some now-vanished Jon Stewart scorn over her coverage of a Fargo flood, but that’s a different story).  Well, it seems that she’s become an unemployment statistic:

Breaking: TVNewser has learned CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen’s contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving the network.

[snip]

When TVNewser asked whether Roesgen’s comments at the Chicago tea party rally had anything to do with her not being renewed, a CNN spokesperson said, “I can’t comment on personnel matters.”

In other words, Roesgen’s comments at the Chicago Tea Party had something to do with her not being renewed. See also Ed Driscoll, who revisited Ms. Roesgen’s adventures in advocacy in his report on the July Tea Parties; Founding Bloggers, who had the video that CNN rather badly wanted to go away; and Hot Air, which is openly wondering when MSNBC will offer her a job. Given the way that the two networks are hacking each other into bloody gobbets to claim the #2 spot in cable news, they may have already.

I don’t know who gets to keep this (metaphorical) scalp; but I think that the Tea Party movement can certainly claim it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Promoted by Erick

Those old enough to remember the days when the grip the major networks had on news dissemination was firm and confident also remember the rise of upstart CNN. Ted Turner dared to challenge the network Powers-That-Be for market share and influence and won.

I remember being starved for information during the 1st Gulf War. I didn’t have cable TV and satellite TV was still in the SciFi stage. CNN did have some presence on the radio here and there but not in Nashville and satellite radio was further into SciFi than it’s video cousin. But I vividly remember some of the video shots that came out of Baghdad. CNN’s Bernard Goldberg Shaw from a blacked out, downtown hotel room broadcasting to the world as American war-planes bombed the city. Night-vision pictures of anti-aircraft fire directed at those same aircraft from the tops of Baghdad’s buildings. It was, perhaps, the pinnacle of CNN’s journalism.

Once established as a force in the field of journalism, it’s hard to get dislodged. But CNN has proven it is possible. Over the next 20 years, chinks and cracks in their persona allowed the world to look in and see what CNN felt it had to do to keep its place. Stories began to surface of questionable deals made with dictators and despots to keep CNN “reporting” when other news agencies were banned. CNN coverage of the 2nd Gulf War was so slanted it was common to hear those who had access to both CNN and the fledgling FOX News say, “If you watch both channels, it’s like they’re reporting on 2 different wars!” So much so CNN picked up its own insulting version of what CNN stood for. It became for many, the “Commie News Network”.

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You probably remember Susan Roesgen from yesterday: she was the one who got so peeved when the person that she interviewed turned out to be not on-script. Voluntary propagandists often aren’t, when dealing with messy reality.

Anyway, she’ll probably be lionized by CNN for her “bravery” to standing up to people yelling back at somebody with a video crew trying to browbeat them, so watch this clip while you still can:

See also AoSHQ and The Other McCain.

…because I bet you that Jon Stewart isn’t going to think that this example of hysterical “reporting” is going to be nearly as funny as her reporting of the Fargo flood was. Or overwrought. Or even as silly journalism, although that depends largely on whether he forgot to take the clown nose off. After all, floods are one thing, but at the end of the day voluntary propagandists have only got each other to cling to.

Possibly even ‘bitterly.’

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

From the department of pathetic ignorance or willfully not getting it (not sure which to file this one in yet) comes this clip of a CNN reporter shouting down a Chicago Tea Party attendee for not displaying the appropriate appreciation and gratitude to President Obama for his gift to the state of Illinois of billions in borrowed money and trillions in new debt.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.