Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Grinding Away on the Coffee Party”

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March 16, 2010

Grinding Away on the Coffee Party

Hatched by Sachi

I first heard about the infamous Coffee Party, supposedly a liberal alternative to the right leaning Tea Party movement, at Hot Air; I watched a couple of videos trying to understand what was its pont. After suffering through the rambling, pointless video promos produced by the "unwitting" founder of the Coffee Party, Annabel Park, I concluded that she must be some naive and ignorant college girl. (For one point, she doesn't even seem get the historical reference to "Tea Party," as in Boston.)

Park claims the anti-Tea Party "movement" started when she ranted her frustration on her Facebook page about all the attention the Tea Partiers were getting:

[L]et's start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss 'em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion.

Within hours, she received dozens of responses. Within days, the idea attracted hundreds of fans. Soon the movement caught the major media's eye. The Washington Post and the New York Times featured the story (now there's a surprise!)

Overnight, Annabel Park, a 41-year-old "independent filmmaker" became the leader of Coffee Party movement.

Now, after two short months, the mob has gotten so big that they're already holding a nation wide Coffee rally:

Since February, the Coffee Party has gathered some 120,000 fans on Face book. And it’s set to bring its virtual community together in public for the first time this Saturday. The group has close to 350 kickoff parties scheduled around the country, with thousands of supporters expected to attend, according to Chris Rigopulos, a Boston-based organizer for the group.

What an incredible grassroots organization! What a difference to the stumbling, humble origins of the Tea Parties: That movement started with just a handful of people here and there gathering in town hall meetings. No organizing, no sponsors, no mass media attention. It took a whole year for the various Tea Parties to organize and hold a convention. Compared to the amateur Tea Partiers, the Coffee Party is almost... professional!

Park describes the Coffee Party as non-partisan and "100% grassroots." I grew skeptical of that point the more I watched her; despite my first impression of naiveté, careful listening of her speechs and videos suggest she is an experienced -- and trained -- political activist:

"We object to obstructionism and extreme political tactics that are I think fear-based, not reality-based, and in many ways just deliberate misinformation"

"I think that it's human for people to be nervous about changes in the neighborhoods and in demographics of the country."

“If you don’t believe that the government has any role, then yeah, you should join the Tea Party,” “But there are many of us who that believe we have to have the government addressing these things, representing our interests.”

The careful way Park characterizes Tea Partiers as obstructionists, fear mongers, liars, racists, and anarchists, without directly saying so, takes well-developed skill. This is not the speech of a naive college student or simple independent film maker, whatever that means.

Surprise, surprise, it turns out that her role as leader of that leftist political movement called the Coffee Party is no accident, no matter what the elite media tendentiously claim. As Andrew Breitbart of BigJournalism.com notes:

Yet there was nothing accidental about Park’s anti-Tea Party activism; the Coffee Party’s roots are about as grassy as the signature surface of the old Houston Astrodome; and Park’s facade of cooperation is undermined by her “tea bagger” epithets on Twitter.

Meanwhile, her claim that the Coffee Party is “purely grassroots” and “independent of any party” is laughably rebutted by the fact that the registrant for the website was listed as “Real Virginians For Webb, 14461 Sedona Drive, Gainesville, Virginia 20155” until the information suddenly went private behind a proxy. That’s “Webb” as in Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, one of at least two elected Democrats for whom Park has actively campaigned (as evidenced by this campaign video, “Real Virginians for Webb”:

In fact, Park has been an ardent supporter of Barack Obama since forever... so much so that she made her own pro-Obama YouTube promotional videos:

So intense was her support for the would-be president that Park co-directed a video for the YouTube channel, UnitedForObama, in which she encourages her mother to give a pro-Obama testimonial in their native Korean. The slick four-minute production, titled “Annabel’s Mom Takes on Sarah Palin, In Korean!!!,” features jaunty piano music and English translations of her mother’s homage to Obama, including this comment, which has the vague ring of a “Dear Leader” haiku:

I listened to Obama’s speeches/and, though my English isn’t perfect/I started to change my mind about him./I came to understand/what he wanted to accomplish/and what we really need is Obama.

Having now been exposed, Park is hardly apologetic. On the March 4th edition of the Coffee Party USA website, the Party line stated:

Annabel was never paid by the Obama campaign, but she worked very hard as volunteer, as did millions of other Americans. A newspaper inaccurately reported that Annabel held a videographer position. But, if there is anyone who cares about such things, and also cares about getting their facts straight, the truth is very easy to verify.

To date, neither Annabel nor her partner Eric Byler have ever been hired by a political campaign or by a political organization. They are active citizens who, as volunteers have knocked on doors, made phone calls, and made videos:....

They are proud of a record of inventive civic engagement and have nothing to hide. If they didn't want people to see their work, they wouldn't have put it on YouTube!

So Annabel Park is a veteran Democratic media shill, trained and experienced; yet she did all that work for candidate Obama without being paid. Translation: Park is a diehard liberal (and Obamic) partisan. And far from being grassroots, this "movement" is a cynical ploy designed to manipulate inattentive viewers into believing that the left-liberal dogma spewed forth by the Coffee Party on a daily basis accurately represents real America.

Look for the elite media to keep percolating the Coffee Party right up through the November elections. Then abruptly, the fame and adulation will stop, and Annabel Park will be dropped to the floor, like an outgrown and broken toy.

Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, Ms. P; you and your "partner" both.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, March 16, 2010, at the time of 1:11 AM