Does Meredith Whitney Read?
I was surprised to see a story at CNBC with the title: “Tea Party Made Up of ‘Freaked Out White Men’: Whitney:”
“Call it Tea Party, whatever you will, the fringe element is I characterize (as) freaked-out white men who are unemployed and have been unemployed for three years and they’re scared to death,” she said. “Three to four million of them are about to roll off unemployment benefits in the next three to four months. This is only going to get worse.”
Democrats looking to hold the White House and regain full control of Congress will need to take note.
“For this reason you have to deal with the structural issues,” Whitney said. “If you are a Machiavellian Democrat you want do deal with this issue and defuse the Tea Party as fast as you possibly can because this poses the biggest threat to their re-election in 2012.”
If Whitney read at all, she would know that not only was the Tea Party started with the help of female bloggers and activists but the face of the Tea Party is female:
Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by Quinnipiac University suggests that women might make up a majority of the movement as well.
I wonder what Whitney’s agenda is for calling the Tea Party a bunch of “freaked out white men?” Even if men are involved, why the hate?
Is she just trying to show what a “trooper” she is because she is tired of being attacked by Democrats and this is her way of sucking up? If so, what a coward.
Even if men are involved, why the hate?
Is that a rhetorical question, Helen?
dr smith— you are a psychologist; perhaps you can delve into the nature of the “liberal” mind and address such phenomena as the left’s battle doctrine/ego shield of “preemptive projection…”
There are an awful lot of people striving mightily right now to mischaracterize the Tea Parties. This is relatively easy to counter online, but I see a persistent river of slander showing up in our regional newspapers (mostly reprinted articles originating from AP, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. The other major source of slander in my acquaintance is NPR.
This must change, because the next election may well turn on the identity of the source of a voters’ news. I suggest that anyone who wants to support the Tea Party objectives can do so by adopting a source of information, such as a local newspaper or radio station, and letting them know when their articles include misinformation.
We can force our news sources to upgrade. We can make them check their facts.
They want to call us terrorists? Let’s call them what they are – economic pedophiles. Their spending is screwing our children’s futures.
Whitney’s rant is simply more mindless, reactionary hate-speech from the Left. Irritating, but typical. Now if she’s concerned about “freaked-out white men” then I would politely direct her attention to MSNBC: Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell…Rachel Maddow…
Not only she doesn’t read, but she had Rick Santelli of “Tea Party” Feb 2009 broadside fame listening in and he had to respond in the next segment. See http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/08/10/rick-santelli-strikes-back-cnbc-guest-calling-tea-partiers-freaked-ou
Great retort. Why is she invited to speak? She predicted massive muni bond defaults on 60 minutes for this calendar year, wrong (so far). She is wrong now.
I watched the clip. If anything, Rick was not brutal enough. Meredith was a simpering fool, with a mindless, fabricated, wholly unsupported speculation. Then when Rick smacks her down, she pouts. She blubbers that she’s empathizing with the putative subjects of her condescending, preposterous “analysis.” She asks why he’s so angry, as if she were talking to her ex-husband. She whines that she did not deserve the rebuke. She’s offended that her “work” might be questioned.
Always impossible to forecast WHEN, but the fact that muni’s will self-destruct in the near future is undeniable.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_muni-bonds.html
And that is being fed, more and more, by this:
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_3_public-workers.html
You are aware that she is considered one of the best on the street and she predicted the collapse of the financial market well in advance of the reality?
Actually, she made a single call right. She’s not widely respected in the industry and bond traders laughed out loud, and were willing to do so on camera, at her ridiculous call on the muni markets. All she managed to do was harm small investors who sold their munis on her advice.
the fringe element is I characterize (as) freaked-out white men who are unemployed and have been unemployed for three years and they’re scared to death,” she said.
***************
bad week to bring up “unemployed, freaked out white men”.
made me instantly summon thoughts of al gore’s rant.
al’s aggitation is completely understandable.
he’s focused on saving the world in a hundred years, but he needs a bunch of money from the govts that are going to be completely insolvent, outside a printing press.
i imagine it has been a rough year for global warming alarmists…
charity must be running dry.
I got the sense that Ms. Whitney had no clue that Rick Santelli is the guy given credit for starting the Tea Party revolt (amongst others) with his on-air rant way back when.
A woman married to a pro-wrestler (look it up) has some nerve calling the Tea Party ‘freaked out white men’.
She is married to a man who goes on WWE tours, for god’s sake.
Her husband gives Nazi salutes as part of his show and defends doing so.
Women who marry bulked-up celebrities should have first research how Arnold turned out. http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/graphics/arnold_then_now.jpg
I don’t mind a pro-wrestler having a villain gimmick – he is, after all, an actor.
But a woman who marries a pro-wrestler is hardly in a position to bash agitated men, white or otherwise. Sort of like a vegan going to work in a butcher shop.
He was an investment banker before going into the entertainment gig.
Shouldn’t “the freaked-out white men who are unemployed and about to roll off unemployment benefits” support Dems’ extension of unemployment benefits paid for by raising taxes on the rich? They must be really freaked-out and imagined themselves the soakable rich.
So… her hypothesis/believe/dream is that the Tea Party is made up of freaked-out white unemployed males? So her reasoned position is that the people that are about to roll off of unemployment are the cause of all the deficit-reducing hubbub? That means that she apparently fears people that are so principled as to advocate AGAINST policies that would benefit them in the short-term. Her statement is either flawed in fact or a ringing endorsement of the Tea Party (not mutually exclusive).
By the way: who is Meredith Whitney?
She is a financial analyst who made a lucky call on bank stocks. She is not a trader who has to succeed every single day or look for another line of work. She’s a talking head.
Actually, her call was about Citigroup, and it was a good call. However, she hasn’t followed up with a similar success, and her wild muni prediction has not come to fruition. She may well be this generation’s Elaine Garzarelli (who won big fame for kinda, sorta predicting the ’87 crash, and hasn’t made a splash since).
I’ll go with MDC. Who is this bimbo on a channel that I never watch? How many Tea Party rallies has she been to or ever seen. There’s a healthy mix of men and women in the Tea Party and the women are the real hawks.
Just because you’re blonde and run an “advisory group”, doesn’t mean you necessarily know diddly squat.
In the early years of the Clinton administration the media was all to willing (and coordinated) to characterize opposition to Clinton’s agenda as emanating from “Angry white men.” Hollywood released a movie (Falling Down) in 1993 starring Michael Douglas as a divorced, unemployed defense worker that was portrayed as almost psychotic in his reactions to his deteriorating conditions. I think Time and Newsweek also had articles about the angry white male. This was leading up to the 94 elections in which the Republicans were highly energized. Recall the “Contract with America?”
Try the same gambit this election cycle.
just… painfully clueless – the new definition of a blond bimbo
I wonder how many customers she’s lost for muni advice going forward…
Could be even one or two be old white men, hmmmm?
Who is Meredith Whitney?
She really is ignorant. TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. The Tea Party was a tax payer revolt not a revolt of the unemployed.
I thought the most interesting part of the exchange was between Rick Santelli and the other older white guy. “I thought you would ask me some questions.”
I felt kind of sorry for the blonde bimbo. She was there to float the “angry white men” meme, she did what she was supposed to do, and then Santelli came back and reminded everyone that she’s just a bimbo who has no credibility to be on the show in the first place. I’m not surprised she felt blind-sided by the network.
But I thought the rest of the exchange was more intriguing, because it was almost as if Santelli’s address to that other generic-nameless-white-male-announcer was to remind him that the show used to be (at least pretended to be) a real news show, with people who actually knew a thing or two about business and the stock market. Most of those people have been moved from the their old slots and replaced with Whitneyesque bimbos, both male and female, who just get out the talking points of the day. By saying, “I thought you’d ask some questions”, it almost seemed to me that Santelli was saying to him, “so this is what you are willing to be reduced to?”
If she could grasp reality by looking at it, instead of filtering it through PC, she wouldn’t be a liberal.
Liberals know what they know because they just “know” it. Conservatives think if they correct the facts liberals will change their mind. Liberals are more like UFO conspiracy kooks. If you debunk 100% of their “facts”, the ones they claim prove there are UFOs, they don’t become less convinced of UFOs, they get new “facts” even if they have to fake the facts. In fact, Willie Meyer (sic ?) and others have been caught faking stories and the UFO kooks refuse to concede all of the UFO reports by that faker are probably fakes. “Sure he faked 99% of those pics, especially the really good ones, but there is that one pic that hasn’t been proven a fake, that’s the proof that convinces me,” until it’s disproved.
She used to be part of the Fox business team. Was on Asman’s show weekends. Never had much to add. Shallow. Probably struggling to stay on the telly for the money (needs it, just had a kid a while back by the wwe guy–does that stand for wee-wee?). Trying to fit in at a more un-classically liberal network. Looks to be a short-timer.
In this society is it PC to attack and disparage white men. We are the bane of society. If it wasn’t for white men, the PU (progressive utopia) would emerge and all would be Unicorns farting Rainbows. Down with White Men!
She’s a “trooper”? In the cavalry or the state police? How about “trouper”. It’s a different word, you know.
I think that’s “trooper” as in “storm”.
I am afraid Meridith Whitney just doesn’t know anyone who supports the principles of the Tea Party (doesn’t she know Santelli?). She also probably doesn’t know anyone who did not vote for Obama. She is so New York.
Her husband is actually shockingly good at picking stocks and made a ton of money from that. He retired from the WWE over 2 yrs ago. And, yes, as a heel, his actions were not over the top.
So maybe he does her Wall Street analyst job too?
Maybe they figure that on Wall Street, a blonde woman will get huge accolades for middling accomplishments that no man would on TV for. So she is the figurehead and the Renaissance Man husband is the brains..
Pro-wrestling? The perfect cover!! Everyone will assume he is stupid and SHE is the smart one.
Thanks Becky, I thought along the same lines and was about to comment about how even Joe Kiernan (sp) has been beaten down into another PMS talking head.
The blank-faced, brain dead bimbo never caught the fact that she’s actually the JOKE that front’s another failed CNBC attempt to demonize citizens and voters!.
She’s a h8r.
Remember, she lives in New York. Wackos live there. If she wants to have a social life she needs to toe the line once in awhile. Reading Peggy Noonan ought to prove that.
I live in Chicago. I rarely get a social call from people I know at my kids school-why? I am a conservative. They still love Obama. Liberals will not party with conservatives. It unnerves them. Conservatives don’t care.
Have you ever read/listened to Diane Swonk of Mesirow? She frequently goes out of her way to make nasty barbs at Tea Partiers.
In her case, it sounds very much like a class issue, down to citing their lack of teeth and poor fashion sense.
I wish these people would make up their minds. Are we Tea Partiers “racists”, “terrorists”, “bitter clingers”, “religious nuts”, or “freaked out white men”? Or is all that supposed to mean the same thing?
Maybe she’s just saying that women and minorities can’t do the required budgetary math to recognize the hole we’ve dug ourselves into? Haha. Look, if you’re not freaked out by our current economic mess, you’re just not paying attention, and as usual gender/ethnicity has nothing to do with it, although liberals would love to pull off that subject change so they don’t have to discuss their lack of plans and responsibility.
This is a very sad story from all aspects. First, Meredith used to work for the same firm I work for. She was a brilliant analyst and anticipated events that no one else on Wall Street even contemplated. She was able to piece together data and make calls that were outstanding.
That being said, when she went out on her own, something happened to her and her delivery. I don’t know What happened, but she was never the same. She caught flack for ridiculous comments about municipal bonds, and now she is surmising about the Tea Party for reasons I can only guess. She must be concerned about those who are buying her research. I can think of no other reason she would be doing something this out of her area. I hate to see her bring this sort of animus on herself, but she is as wrong about the Tea Party as she was right about the banking system. Too bad for all involved.
Whitney worked for Steve Eisman and married JBL. Duh. She’s blonde and has worked that all her life. Of COURSE she hates Joe Average White guy. It is the attitude of most Professional White women. “Angry Black Men” or “Angry Asian Men” or “Angry Latino Men” don’t have the social/cultural connotations of “ugly loserdom” and such, and its all from the Upper Class White female perspective.
Guys find angry White men often amusing ala Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy’s “I’m a man! I’m forty!” outburst at the press going after his 19 yr old QB. Or often justified (see any grizzled old coach reaming his team out for stupid actions). The Incredible Hulk is a really, really Angry White Guy (whose power is based on anger).
It is the sexual politics at play. Whitney does not like the threat the Tea Party poses to her easy Wall Street/Dem living, and hate hate hates the ordinary White guys she has to work with, hence the typical shaming/stigma language. JBL at least made his living the hard way (the WWE regime is very physically brutal) by playing the guy other guys hated. And that seems to be what Whitney preferred in real life (JBL had a bad reputation among other wrestlers backstage and among the women in the WWE, as a bully, a guy who worked “stiff” i.e. did not pull his punches in the ring, and harasser of lesser talent and women).
Really, why are “angry White guys” a bad thing, and those of other colors not? No one would describe an “angry Black man” as a bad thing. It is sexual politics once again at play.
Meredith spends too much time w/ her spreadsheets and rubbing elbows w/ the NYC crowd.
She’s at least right on municipal bonds. Best she stick w/ what she knows.
Leftists can’t conceive of any woman or non-white voting libertarian or conservative on any issue, ant thus will always characterize those movements as being confined to white men, even when it is plain they are not. They also ignore that plenty of non-whites are at Tea Party gatherings as well, and are also very popular speakers there, like Herman Cain or Congressman West.