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I'm Philip Martin sitting in for Kelly Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show in the last year the Tea Party movement has gained momentum as a political force serving as a backlash to President Obama's agenda. It turns out Tea Partiers are also unhappy with mainstream Republican leaders as a social movement is credited with taking Ted Kennedy's Senate seat away from the Democrats. But who and what are they exactly as a party that is hard to get a grip on taking on liberals and Republican operatives. Well take a forensic look at the Tea Party pathology and fast forward to how it could influence upcoming elections. Here at home we top off the hour tuning in to an alternative musical system that moves beyond the basic building blocks of western music. Up next on the Kelly Crossley Show dissonance in Massachusetts music and political movements. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Craig Wyndham. It's crunch time for health care overhaul

legislation in Congress says Democratic leaders scramble to round up enough votes to pass the measure while Republicans in a number of interest groups try to derail the bill. William Galston is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution journalists and scholars are busy calling up congressional offices trying to get a bead on who's committed who is uncommitted and it's it's the Wild West you know down on Capitol Hill. Right now President Obama is set to speak at this hour on the health care bill in Strongsville Ohio. That's the hometown of a cancer patient who wrote to the president saying she had to give up her health insurance because she can no longer afford it. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan says the changes the president is proposing to make in the No Child Left Behind law are in Duncan's words pretty dramatic. The goal he says is to broaden the focus of the law beyond math and reading. Not only are we focusing just on school but we're focusing on school districts and we're focusing on. State and so there's much more shared responsibility and frankly shared accountability than anything that existed prior.

But the American Federation of Teachers says the proposal puts too much responsibility on teachers for school and student success. Thailand's prime minister says he will not give in to the demands of as many as 100000 anti-government demonstrators gathered in the capital. NPR's Michael Sullivan reports the protestors want the prime minister to resign and order new elections. The demonstrators had given prime minister are besieged until noon to dissolve parliament. It didn't happen. In a nationally televised address the seat rejected their demand but said he was willing to listen to their ideas. He didn't elaborate. Earlier in the day tens of thousands of red shirted protesters converged on a military base on the outskirts of the capital where the prime minister and senior members of the military were said to be gathered. Thai security forces made no effort to stop the procession nor did the demonstrators try to force their way inside. The protesters are now returning to their staging area near the center of the city. Their next move unclear. Michael Sullivan NPR News Bangkok. The Federal Reserve says industrial production has edged up gaining a tenth of a percent in

February. Daniel Carson reports that maintains a streak of eight straight months of growth. Economists say the index is consistent again suggests the economy is picking up steam. Still the tenth of a percent increase was modest compared to January's nearly one percent gain manufacturing the biggest slice of industrial production took a hit following two tenths of a percent. Michael Furley is chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan. The storms probably did depress activity generally and manufacturing in particular not surprisingly utilities shot up 2 percent electric and gas companies cranked out extra power because of the increased demand for heat. For NPR News I'm Daniel Carson. The industrial production numbers not enough to trigger any sort of rally on Wall Street the Dow is down 22 points. This is NPR News. Police in Pakistan say they have uncovered a supply of bomb making gear and more than 3000 pounds of explosives in an empty shop in the city of Lahore. They raided the shop after a tip from the owner who told authorities he had become suspicious because his new

tenants had never opened for business. Last week suicide bombers killed more than 50 people in Lahore in coordinated attacks that also left more than 100 people wounded. Soccer superstar David Beckham is believed to have torn his Achilles tendon. Larry Miller reports from London that at the very least Bakken will miss soccer's top tournament the World Cup which begins in June in South Africa in the closing minutes of last night's game with his team AC Milan David Beckham felt his Achilles tendon tear and he knew he was in trouble. Hopping off. Hold on one leg he shouted to the bench it's broken it's broken before being carried off on a stretcher. He was in tears grimacing in pain with his head and his hands back in his going to Finland for surgery and his doctor there says if the injury is as suspected recovery time will be between four and six months. That means back home will not realize his goal of becoming the first thing then player to kick a ball in four consecutive Soccer World Cups beckon is on loan to AC Milan from the U.S. team L.A.

Galaxy had nearly 35. There are questions about whether he'll be able to return to form even after the injury is healed. For NPR News I'm Larry Miller in London. A prison in Iraq that's holding some 20 900 inmates is now in the control of Iraqi authorities. An American commander says the handover today by the U.S. military will leave the United States in control of only one prison in Iraq. I'm Craig Windham NPR News in Washington. Support for NPR comes from MetLife Foundation proudly supporting NPR's coverage of aging on the web at MetLife dot org. Good afternoon I'm Philip Martin sitting in for Kelly and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. Today we ask what exactly is the Tea Party movement and who is represented in this open tent of conservative discontents. Now the New York Times described one

of its founders a young woman from Seattle. As someone with a pierced nose who performs improv on weekends she and others are seen as part of a mainstream grassroots uprising. But some also fear that the Tea Party is attracting extremists to its ranks. One person identified with the movement showed up at a health care rally in New Hampshire hosted by President Obama with a gun strapped to his thought. I however it is perceived the Tea Party movement is a force to be reckoned with as all our guests today seem to agree. Now we're joined by David week. He's a senior reporter for The Washington Independent. In the studio with me right now we have Chip Berlet a senior analyst with Political Research Associates in Somerville Massachusetts. And from Montgomery Alabama Mark Potok director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center which has just come out with a special issue on this very I should say special issue of their magazine on this very issue.

The Tea Party movement and the right wing in the United States. Now what do you think about the Tea Party. Are you a member. Will you sign up. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0. That's 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0. Now turning to our guests. Gentleman all of you've done research on the Tea Party movement. Let's delve into it. Let's begin with David wego who has written several articles on the movement for the Washington Independent including one David where you profiled a man named Dale Robertson of Houston. This guy held up a sign that one rally that is now popularly associated with the Tea Party. Briefly tell us about it and what it says in your view about the citizens backlash to the Obama administration. Well Bill Robertson sign which I think is easy enough to find if you Google the Borg I compared the status of taxpayers under Barack Obama to the status of people of people given the N-word insult and he was

frog marched out of his local Tea Parties. He's basically persona non grata within the people who appear on television and speak for the movement. But he's still organizing these events and that's the thing it's so so in Kuwait and so randomize that anyone who says there are Tea Party activists now can start a rally get credibility. And that includes people who are I think like like the one you're talking about Seattle pretty pretty normal people who are fairly extreme and then the having the biggest number of people who are just basically Republican activists who decided this is a better way to sell their ideas than with the elephant logo. OK David first of all let me correct your name I should have said why go correct. Yes that's a well let's let's let's put that on the record. Turning now to Mark Poe talk in Montgomery. The Southern Poverty Law Center has just published a special issue of its intelligence report called Rage on the right. You're known for investigating Klansmen Nazis organizations of that sort. What's the connection here and how does that reflect on what

you just heard from David. Well what we what we do is at the end of every year we publish essentially a look back at say a lot. On with counts that we do of various kinds. The main cow we've done for years are of quote unquote hate groups that as especially race based type groups and neo-Nazi groups claim groups and so on here though we had noticed earlier in the year a really remarkable resurgence of the so-called patriot groups which included militias that were so active back in the 1990s. In addition we saw a very large growth in the number of what we term internally anyway nativist extremist groups hardline anti-immigration groups like the Minutemen citizens border patrol groups and so on. So you know what we found overall was there was an astounding growth in the number of these groups over the last 12 maybe 18 months particularly in the world of militias and patriot groups but also in the nativist groups and the hate groups are very

high as well. So you know how all that relates to this conversation is that you know we said in the essay that look you give as David I think really suggested in his remarks just now you can't describe the Tea Party as uniformly I think it's extremist groups or is radical right wing groups. But I do think that it's fair to say they're fairly shot through with many of the ideas you see elsewhere. You know that's not always racism. Often times it's ideas like come the conspiracy theories essentially that come right out of places like the patriot movement. So you know the idea the theme of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for instance is secretly running or building the array of concentration camps into which there plan to throw good patriotic Americans who resist the so-called New World Order. That idea is now very much present among many of the people in the Tea Party world. So essentially what I'm describing is a situation where these groups generally on the right are growing very rapidly there's a real chip is where the real populist rebellion

going on now. And we're seeing great deal of cross pollination of the ideas of the various sectors of the radical right. In other words a very complex movement. And as I mentioned it's an open tent but it's also a very large tent. Yeah I think it's worth saying that when you look at the tea parties you know there are what could be identified as some left wing populist streaks you know a particularly rage. Just the rage it seems to me directed up at the bankers who get you know multimillion dollar bonuses while the rest of us people who are really struggling get nothing. One of the things I noticed over the weekend was a article in The New York Times on Sunday which talked about efforts to separate the Tea Party's principal complaint about bankers and about the economy and about fiscal responsibility try to separate that from social themes that have largely been prevalent on the Republican Party's agenda over the years particularly religious

organizations not chip. You have written several articles about the Tea Party including its connections to religious movements. Can you elaborate and how does that again how does what's the connection there. Well comes from several dimensions of because what we're seeing is a populist movement which historically has moved either left or right and that there's a current contention for these varied forces to try and make it coherent. And you're seeing that both from the right wing of the Republican Party are seeing that from organized white supremacist groups. They're pulling out either side of the movement. But within the movement there are different groups of people with religious views about poverty about race about gay rights and there's a battle going on within that that reflects the larger battle within Protestantism and evangelicalism between people who look at poverty and see you know the need to for the government to step in and fix you know some of these problems and the people who see the government stepping in as undermining God and country.

What it seems to suggest suggest I'm a gentleman is that you have a mass of tension that's going on here and part of that tension is what comes with the redefinition of what is mainstream. I think when you're hearing from individuals like Glenn Beck for example on Fox News who is exhorting his followers to if you will rebel against the Obama administration's policies I guess that rebellion manifest in various ways between what man might call French and then what one might call mainstream. David Weigel Can you talk about that a bit. Obviously there is there are there are some tensions going on here and how are they resolving it within the Tea Party movement. Well I think Mark and Chip are right that things that used to be more. On the fringe if we want to use that word just things that didn't used to rise the top Republican politics are being transmitted in the tea parties. The tension I think is a bit overrated I mean everyone who is who has more been working in the conservative movement writ large has basically jumped on this bandwagon and seen there's a pool

of conservatively hundreds of thousands of people who are activists who might not have been activists a year ago and they can they can they can use that. I think some social conservative groups have lost a little bit a bit of face but by and large I read a lot of the direct mail they send out a lot of the e-mail appeals appeals they send out. And people like Gary Bauer Tony Perkins the Family Research Council they've totally embraced the idea that the of the Tea Party movement they just want to emphasize abortion as a reason to vote against health care instead of the creeping socialism socialism. That's a bit separate just from the very strange ideas about the way America works or the way the world economy works that have become more and more popular more ingrained because this movement this movement's been growing I mean almost guys like Tony Perkins are trying to drag it to politics that we recognize where is the Tea Party itself been driving further to the right. Let me also mention at this point that we we had someone from the Tea Party who was going to join us today unfortunately unfortunately she's not able to do that. But I

want to to folks out there to know that we have invited and had invited the a member of the Tea Party to join us. The latest issue of The Economist has an article called Angry White Men and which they cite racism as being a large part of the movement but not the only part. They said racism does not explain for example how Barack Obama's administration lost about 20 to 30 percent of its support among among white voters. What rate what role does race play in this conversation about the Tea Party movement. Mark Potok. Well I felt that perhaps in the minority on this one but I felt that when Jimmy Carter said behind all of what we're seeing stands race there was a lot of truth. I mean I think you know you can't say that it was definitively behind everything stance race but I think the background of all of

this quite apart from you know real things that the Obama administration has done or not. Is the fact that this country is changing and changing fairly dramatically in demographic terms as well as in economic terms in terms of globalizing and so on the idea as predicted by the Census Bureau that whites will lose their majority in 2050. Certainly among the people I normally cover the real radical right you know that that fact is imprinted on each of their frontal lobes you know very deeply. They worry and fret and you know so I see behind this as well as behind the real backlash we saw in the year or so after Obama was elected and some portions of the white population. You know a real rage and frustration about the way the country is changing I mean look down here in Alabama. There are whole cities that have changed quite dramatically cities that are used to essentially being made up of black and white people I mean that's race in the south there was until recently and now some of

those places are 40 percent Hispanic. So I'm just suggesting there are real changes out there and for some people I think a great many people there's this kind of underlying feeling of you know not only has the economy gone to hell you know not only has this or that happened but the country I grew up in the country my Christian white forefathers created as they have it in their minds has somehow been stolen. So I think that is pressing. Well let's talk about the the political implications of when we're back on Phillip Martin sitting in for Kelly Crossley and we're taking a close look at the Tea Party movement. What's your view of this fledgling organization. Give us a call. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0 8 7 7 3 1 8 9 7 0. We'll be back after this break. Stay with us. With the. With. With. With. With.

With. With. With the. With. With. With the. Support for WGBH comes from you and from celebrity series of Boston presenting vocal savant Bobby McFerrin. Sunday March 21st 3pm at Symphony Hall. For tickets and information you can visit Celebrity Series dot org. That's celebrity series dot org. And from Newberry court overlooking the submarine river in Concord Mass. A full service residential community for persons over the age of 62. You can learn more at Newbury CT dot org. A deaconess abundant life community and from Trader Joe's a neighborhood grocery store where you'll find a variety of dinner options including marinated meats heat and eat sides and stir fries all with flavors inspired from around the globe locations at Trader Joe's dot com. On Monday March 22nd watch the academic team from. Let's go

on the new High School quiz show. What is the capital of Brazil. Yes they have a molecule that carries genetic information an all. Time dialect. Tune in starting Monday March 22nd at 7:30 for a high school quiz show. Right now an eighty nine point seven we're not interrupting any of your favorite programs whether in five 10 20 instead of all this. From NPR News this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Thanks to sustain our listeners to make ongoing contributions of eight or nine dollars a month you can spend less time fundraising and more time. Eighty nine point seven reduced pledge by becoming a sustainer right now securely online at WGBH dot org. I'm Philip Martin and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in we're talking about the Tea

Party movement with Chip Berlet a senior analyst with Political Research Associates in Somerville Massachusetts. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center and David Weigel senior reporter for The Washington Independent. How do you view the Tea Party movement. Can it change the face of politics in Massachusetts and elsewhere. We're at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0. Speaking of Massachusetts now our newest senator as everyone knows by now is Republican Scott Brown. David Weigel how much credit should be given to the Tea Party movement for Brown's upset victory over Attorney General Martha Coakley. Well a little bit less than I think is usually given Tea Party groups had two roles in this one was that local conservative activists got involved early on and gave him the ballast to do more campaigning than Republican candidates can usually do in Massachusetts. But once it was new the real gasoline in the tank came from Mitt Romney's

donors and a lot of a lot of financial people who decided this this was worth at least investing in as a speculation made Casey do something amazing. Only when he really surge in the polls did the more tea the Tea Party groups that are more aligned with the Republican Party get involved in this like the Tea Party Express it's a group run by Republican consultants. So they eventually took credit for it. But it was really the the small scale conservative activists who started off and that's the tension I always say there's there are people who are real angry Americans and then there are more people who are Republican activists in different clothing. Well they might not have they might not be given as much credit for Scott Brown's victory but they tend to think they can be given. They tend to think they can turn elections around in a number of other states for example Arizona where John McCain apparently is in the fight for his life. How does that look. Well the first polls in the race that encourage J.D. Hayworth who's a former congressman

served from the 94 election to the 2006 election got into it. They showed the Hayworth doing tied with McCain. He's been slipping since then and McCain has endeavored pretty hard to win over these Republican groups that are credible with Tea Partiers but are not themselves Tea Party groups and he's built something of a lead. He's doing so though this is something that's been happening all year. It's not so much the Tea Party's exist it's that they're convincing members of Congress that to survive they should move to the right and they're doing that with Democrats with Republicans. McCain who has a record more than most people in the Senate right now of crossing the aisle has been extremely partisan Republican under Barack Obama. And having a primary challenger who's too far to the right is going to make him even more so. And that's that's the effect of what happens the election we're going to have a year and a half of a Democratic Congress being pushed further and further away from what it wants to do by this by this movement. No chipper way. The Tea Party movement is also hoping to score

big not just again their result. And as David mentioned it. Based on any number of issues but there seems to be again a I think there is a tension by the way David I think there is a tension between those who are talking about or heavily emphasizing deficit reduction for example and those who are still wedded to cultural issues around abortion and gay rights immigration and so on and so forth. Chip how is that playing in New England for example where you don't have the same emphasis on immigration and you don't have the same emphasis on abortion. Well we had a similar set of movements in the mid 1990s the patriot movement and the armed wing the armed militias and they were very different geographically and so you're right that the geographic location really sets the story line for the various populous movements that grow. We're looking at a relatively conservative set of populist movements so not only are we looking at deficit reduction or social issues like

abortion and gay marriage but we're also looking at immigration as a very major issue for some people in the southwest and in the Pacific Northwest as well as well as parts of the South. We're looking at issues involving federal government regulation and policy. So you have all these different forces in the mix and they're going to take on a particularity based on the state in which these tea parties are now organizing on the precinct and county level now. Outside of politics I think again just returning to this whole grassroots movement. Mark Potok looking at the again the special issue of the intelligence report. This is just out by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the spring 2010 issue I mentioned to David early on this this fellow named Dale Robertson of Houston one of the things that struck me about Dale Robertson of Houston a member of the Tea Party is in addition to what you mentioned David is that he's a member of an organization called We the people

you profile we the people as part of the intelligence report rage on the right. What is its connection to to the Tea Party movement and to what chip just mentioned in the context of militias. Well the Tea Party connection is much dimmer let me say I mean this. I think a fascinating story we ran on but now it's I think the most of the world certainly to us at the time. There was last what last May of mine a very important meeting held on Jekyll Island Georgia that's a little key off of South Georgia very beautiful place. It has a very fancy club on it. It was convened by the leader of We the People a guy named Bob Shultz who is a well-known now over the course of 20 some years radical tax protester a guy who thinks that taxes are not legal and has run full page ads in major newspapers to that effect among other things. He brought together I mean talk about big tent show it's brought together everyone from you know raging

anti-Semites in one case to old militia leaders to some of the kind of iconic figures of the militia movement back in the 90s. People from his own world tax protesters and so on. This is what they the way they started this was in the Jekyll Island is where the Fed was conceived where the Federal Reserve was planned out in early last century. They would started their whole meeting by holding a kind of ceremony to Queen to cleanse this location of the evil thing that the Fed is in their minds a part of such a Lee conspiracy theory. In any event this spawn out into another so-called Continental Congress which was held last November in St. Charles Illinois also hosted by We The People. Much larger. And we the people has grown astronomically since then. They've got they've got something like twelve hundred delegates to the Continental Congress listed although all of them didn't attend. Beyond that you know. They have been essentially

reaching out through some of their members to the Tea Party world. You know a character who is very prominent and we the people as well as a number of other organizations as Richard Mack and a number of other patriot organizations Richard Mack was an Arizona sheriff who filed a very important partly successful challenge to the Clinton administration's gun control law the Brady Bill and became a hero as a result. He is a member of a number of patriot organizations right now but has been making a series of speeches to Tea Party gatherings. So you know that's one of the kinds of avenues that we see this sort of cross-pollination happening. And you know I've talked a little bit earlier about the you know some of these conspiracies the theories that are making their way into the Patriot world as a result. I think what's fascinating about this discussion is trying to understand what all these threads how do you tie in all these threads there's so many. And one of the things that seems clear in terms of electoral politics is that what

might have been friends in the 1990s the militia movement for example. What you're describing in articles in the in the New York Times in the Washington Independent Washington Post others. There seems to be almost a pride with these confluence of organizations coming together no one seems to be embarrassed by the role of the John Birch Society for example or the role of the patriot movement in this. This backlash against the against the against the government against the federal government and now all of them are asking that their members go out and vote. I'm wondering what this might turn into in terms of the type of candidates we'll see in in in 2010 and 2012. Well if if democracy is based on informed consent the 2010 and 2012 elections will not be around democracy they'll be about who can construct the most

elaborate and compelling conspiracy theory. And in periods like that it doesn't bode well for the society. This came to a head in the Clinton era when the entire Clinton administration was immobilized by lurid stories about conspiracies he was alleged to have been involved in that turned out. For the most part to be completely fictitious and the Republican Party got on board behind that and now they're jumping back in because I think they've learned that this works. And in the short run lurid demagogic conspiracy theories can in fact mobilize large groups of people to do things that are very damaging to society. But David Weigel this can't be advantageous to the Republican Party. The notion of runaway conspiracy theories. Well we haven't seen a blowback for it yet. There might be one. There might. They might go overboard and there we might see Republican candidates have a good chance of winning getting subsumed by conspiracy theory certainly Democratic strategists have passed out memos in DC saying that if you want to get an advantage of your opponent nail him on one of these obsessions of the Tea Party movement nail him

on whether he thinks Barack Obama was born America or whether he thinks the 10th amendment would nullify anything that any health care reform that passes things like that. But they they haven't really the only time I've seen the minute be hurt by this is in the special election New York 23 a third party candidate knocked out the Republican and lost the seat in part because he was seen as too extreme and that may Republicans are doing fine by. Basically indulging this movement because everything is passed off to the press pretty successfully as just understandable anger at how Barack Obama is failing America understandable anger at health care. I think there's been a good job by the press done in taking this to account. I've heard it. I've heard members of Congress make the argument we can nullify legislation or refuse to pay taxes or refuse to participate in a census to a stunningly high degree. And this is being treated as just weird political talk instead of you know the really really sort of dangerous and offensive stuff that it is.

And that again brings up the question for you Mark Potok what does this say about the climate in the country right now. Well you can talk about secession for example in Texas and the re-elected governor. And you can you can leave a memo around a Republican committee meeting in Florida that's found by a reporter and then we find in that in that memo that it talks about ways in which you can demonize the president. President Barack Obama and ways that many would allude would see as racialists. I mean to me what it says is that the ranks of politicians and political commentators are rife with Craven opportunity. I mean you know these are people who are willing to say almost anything presumably to appeal to either their rating space if they're Glenn Beck or their electoral best if they're someone like Michele Bachmann. I mean the stuff that's being said is quite astounding. And there has been almost no effort until very

recently to call these people out certainly not by the kind of responsible so-called of the Republican Party I mean so Michele Bachmann can go out there and say that Brock Obama is building political re-education camps you know presumably to turn our children into little marxist robots or Spencer Baucus the congressman from my state Alabama says you know there are 17 secret socialists in the Congress. He knows who they are but he's not telling. You know the FIM a conspiracy theory being flogged by Glenn Beck who you know finally on his fourth show decides it's not true after all. And on and on and on I mean I think that it seems to me the one thing where not only people like us but people who are normal everyday Americans doing other work can have an effect. I mean I think that. These people have to be called out they have to be called up by their constituents I mean it's one thing for David and I chip to say these things but you know we can't affect Michele Bachmann. It's only her constituents who can.

But David why do you want to. But David why go if you. I mean isn't that what some members of the Tea Party are doing right now. I mean with all recent efforts at least to remove what are ostensibly And what are clearly both a sensibly and clearly racist signs from marches and demonstrations they've asked for these signs to be removed. They've asked for separation from some of the more land issue cultural issues that have come to the fore in terms of outward propagation of propaganda rather. Is there an effort to tone this tone things down or two. Or is there substantive half or substantive effort to remove some of these people who are extremists from the ranks. There is but it's been pretty cosmetic and it is I think focused on things that are not that important. But the party movement is I don't think changing American politics so that we have open discussions of Barack Obama's citizenship. It is changing American politics in that it's it's now up for discussion whether or not the speaker of the

house bribes people or whether President Obama offered a judgeship to a politician's brother when in fact you know this I'm going to the case of Scott Matheson who's nominated for a post in Utah. His brother is a congressman from Utah. The Judicial on he was vetted months ago but this has become a new conspiracy theory. I'm going to a couple of these things that just become sort of anti-government talking points and theories that really hurt the credibility relation Americans have with government that are becoming more and more mainstream and there is no effort in the Tea Party to crack down on that they're really this is dragging down the discussion we have of the way government works and it's introducing. Kind of unrealistic and not factual theories of what you know how government is to radical and I think that's the damage I will call some into account when they do something obviously crazy and so will the Tea Party people. But they might take

somebody with a Hitler sign out and then later in the rally accuse Obama of being a tyrant the Hitler sign gets notice that the fact they used to be a tyrant is now becoming main is becoming accepted and that's happening so slowly that people aren't aren't I think. Call it a calling to account. OK in a word or two. Maybe if you have 20 seconds. Since we're wrapping up the future of the Tea Party movement. Well history is bad news. We've had these movements blame Freemasons and Catholics and Italian and Russian immigrants in the Palmer raids and the McCarthy period we've had them blamed Jewish civil rights organizers are stirring up otherwise happy blacks in the South during the civil rights movement. The history of these movements is that they rode into scapegoating and conspiracy theories. Mark I want to tell you I think very much the same thing I mean I point out just to underline how bad the atmosphere is getting. When the Oklahoma City bomb went off in 1995 a few days later a poll was run asking Americans if they view the

government as so large and powerful that it posed an immediate threats to the rights and freedoms of citizens. Thirty nine percent said yes. I thought that was a step. Founding couple of Sundays ago CNN ran exactly the same poll and that number had reached 56 percent of Americans. I just think that that bodes very badly for democracy. OK well we're going to leave it at that. David apologies. That's all the time we have in the segment we've been discussing the Tea Party movement with David Weigel senior reporter for The Washington Independent. Chip Berlet a senior analyst with Political Research Associates in Somerville Massachusetts. And Mark Potok director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Gentleman thank you. When we come back local made good today a different kind of musical experience. The thing.

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I'm Philip Martin and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. It's time for our regular Monday feature local made good where we celebrate people whose creativity and individuality bring honor to New England. And today's example we are joined by two people who have us listening in a new way. In the background you're hearing a solemn song for evening adagio by composer Richard Bloom and a professor at the Berklee College of Music. We're joined now by composer York hide. He's a visiting professor at Northeastern University and psyche Louie. She's an instructor in neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and they're here to day and they're here today to discuss the Boleyn pure skill. It's a musical scale that offers an alternative to

the octave repeating skills typical in Western music. Here's another example very quick example. This is called BP pisky em fragments by composer Adam Schechter who's a student at Berklee College of Music. And perhaps you can talk about the music is playing in the background. If you will. What are we listening to and what's the significance. Well this is really an entirely different scale different from most scales that we have encountered in music history as it avoids the octave. It is based on a different principle but it has to show some interesting analogies to the scales we're not used to. Well you know every week we're discovering something new about it about the brain something new about how we respond the various types of stimuli musical stimuli has always been important.

Can you talk about this particular octave repeating scales so musical systems around the world are usually based around the octave which has a frequency ratio of two to one and all music around the world is composed of a dozen different cultures divide up the octave into different numbers of steps. Some cultures use five steps some cultures seven steps we tend to use 12 steps. When you say way your western western music. Yeah including classical music and pop music from Beethoven to Britney Spears from. Boxer is for. But this new scale that will appear scale is really a new musical world in the sense that it does not use the octave as Garrick mentioned it uses a three to one frequency ratio or attractive. Try to IF and within that we divide the truth if into 13 equal tempered steps. No I'm sorry. So the advantage of using this 13 tone division of the 3 to 1 ratio is that you get new chords that are

based on 3 to 5 to 7 ratios and you get other chords too. But this 3 to 5 to 7 ratio sounds relatively constant and since Korean times it's been proposed that these low integer ratios when you play them together they sound relatively smooth to the ear and then you could use that as sort of the center of compositions. And so what I was interested in was how the brain could learn these new musical systems and what's the advantage of that I mean the brain you're talking about add up to 50. Right and so are you talking about how fast one learns or how Utah is that part of what what the what the discussion here is. Yeah. Add up to 50 flexibility plasticity. Different people have different words for it. But I was going to look at how quickly the brain can learn. First of all how to recognize new music written in this scale. And then second of all how to generalize so how people can can extract the underlying structure that generated the music that they just heard which is very important for not only for music. You know

so we tend to expect certain core progressions you know and when something is wrong even a non-musician will say Well that sounds wrong and we have some intuitive understanding of how that how music theory works even without explicit instruction. But yeah but with this new ball in pure scale because we have very little exposure to it well most of the world has has very little exposure to it. You can really ask the question of how quickly these kinds of knowledge come about. Well you know it's funny though because some would argue though that with a lot of this the commonality seems to be there's a there's an electronic background and and of course we've had electronic music for a long time beginning for example not beginning but certainly highlighted by a group like it with trans Europe Express and Europe in the 19th and then in the early 1980s. Right. And it was that became a different way of listening as well. And I'm wondering what is different now and perhaps we could discuss this in the context of your composition which is

cold. This is beyond the horizon. Can you talk about this as we're listening to this in the background. Yeah absolutely. And what I was interested here is actually not only creating these sounds electronically we have had electronic sound since the nineteen seventies so when Bolen the inventor of the scale built his first electronic organ but realizing that to create a certain mass appeal you also have to create acoustic instruments that have the same properties of vibrating bodies we don't necessarily like to listen to a lot speak to music coming out loud speakers all the time particularly when we go to concerts. We actually do prefer sometimes acoustic instruments instigated the creation of clarinet so I'm using two clarinets in this piece plus and they're trying to instrument which has particular properties.

Me talk about this a little later. So the idea again is that it's a different way of learning it's a different way of listening but how possible is this given you know like are we are so tuned to Western way of producing music and we're tuned to a western way of listening which a lot of that is bass inspired. Am I correct. Both harmony bass melody it's all there and here the difference is principly is it would harmony be the principle. It's the same connective. We build new melodies new harmonies. And if you want we can also build new rhythms and analog ideas. So the idea is to create some sort of a parallel world. That's why I called my piece beyond the horizon. You create a parallel world that functions similar to what we're used to and that also gives us an anchor in a way are our minds that makes it easy to learn the new rules.

One of the most interesting things is the collaboration between music and neurology. The collaboration represented in this studio right now between the two of you this is phenomenal I mean now again. What do we do now if someone who's listening out there wondering you know what does this have to do with me. What does this have to do with me for example in the way we in the way we we inculcate information. Can you talk about that. Yes certainly so. I think one of the themes that has come out of this research and this exploration of new sounds is that the brain really is very rapidly adapting to sound streams and the environment right every day we're walking around and we're listening to sounds and we know to form expectations for sounds right. I mean if you hear a car coming even if you don't see the car you know to get out of the way. So we form these immediate expectations of what's about to happen. And you know there's lots of evidence showing that this is what infants use for instance to learn language. And so that's obviously very important to all of us. But what this research is showing is

that within let's say the space of 20 to 30 minutes your brain really does rapidly adapt and that is very useful for how we learn language. So it would be interesting to see for instance if you had a brain lesion let's say if you had a stroke and you have certain parts of your brain missing whether you would still be able to learn this new musical scale just like normal undergrads would. Please just to confirm what psyche Lou is talking about I want to quote a statement from a student who recently did a review of one of the concerts he wrote as the theory behind the bill NPR school is so different from what from that of even tempered tunings. It is able to convey these found familiar notions. This could be a significant benefit to the contemporary community. Maybe BP and peers can be a gateway to other successes. Maybe it could

provide the boost that this music needs to gain more widespread notoriety and the musical landscape. And that's a person that comes from a person had no exposure to this previous exposure to his music at all. So basically he really understood the principle behind it and he was able to see the benefits of you know of you know working with such a scale. Well you know for years neurologists have tried to figure out ways to address the basically to address some of the more impenetrable aspects of this field including how to stimulate it. Patients for example who are suffering massive depression and so on and so forth and during illness for example and for example they turn to comedy. As has as one way of doing that they've turned to music as another way of doing that. Obviously this is a different type of music the Boleyn peer scale. How what's what are the practice practice what's the practical impact for example on

patients any idea who might be suffering or neurological problems. Well we haven't done any full in peer scale studies on phase IX yet but it would be interesting to speculate so we have some people with aphasia in our lab who if you'd sing to them and you see if you sing with them. It turns out that after a number of sessions and an intensive singing melodic intonation therapy they regained some of these language functions. Yeah. So it could be conceivable that you were going to be here in the studio right. Yes. There's that tension right out of the deputation Exactly. Well here let's I'm going to play something here but this is by Anthony derivates professor and chair of the music department at Northeastern University one of your colleagues. This is this is largely You hear the clarinet in the background and I would like to you to both of you to comment on this

particular piece. But this is a. Performance by Amy advocate who couldn't be here today. She told me to read a pre recorded the samples and then assembled these clarinet sounds at home using a sequence of programs. And I'm trying to understand and you have to forgive me for on this particular piece I'm trying to figure out how this is different from other skills that we've heard again in the electronica in the area electronic music. Well anything is possible in this tragic music and he will have experimented with all sorts of skills are born pure skill. The first electronic instrument was built in 1972 by Hines Baldwin and he you know started composing his first pieces.

What's been different about this is that we're actually having a number of acoustic instruments now. So Amy advocate the Boston based This is an amazing clarinet is too took an immediate interest in this and actually bought one of the six available clarinets that were built for the scale. And so she was. She provided an enormous resource for the Boston based composers who wrote pieces specifically for the symposium. And Anthony DRI is among them. And I would say that one of the advantages of having acoustic instruments I guess for for the brain in real time is we're listening to music is that there's a lack of time delay and you can really develop a causal model. You can really see during a live performance that OK when somebody you know blows into the clarinet it's making sounds in real life in real time. And that's not something you could easily boast of in electronic music. People have gotten very very good at

doing real time electronic sound manipulation. But but it's still not the same kind of temporal precision and accuracy and just sort of philosophically relating to the instrument that you would get from let's say a clarinet Of course there are a lot of real time jazz and classical musicians who would agree with you. Yeah. Yes without question what how large of a movement is this I mean how many people I should say how many musicians composers others are turning to the scale as a viable alternative form of music both musically and I should say in terms of research. I mean after the symposium I was I went online I just wanted to see what repercussions that the symposium have and in a way I was I was amazed to see that there is Twitter and Facebook. People are starting to discuss the scale of people I've never heard of that didn't attend the symposium that have have

heard about it somehow through their friends and listen to examples and and suddenly are discussing the validity of the scale and I can see it's overwhelmingly positive. It is it is a particular skill and we have to talk a little bit about system theory maybe. So he can also say a bit about that. There are scales that are easily that can be easily internalized. So in other words we can learn the skills easily and the music that you are being composed in the scale just makes sense and that's what we're conjuring and that's what people are also appreciating. And that also opens up new fields of possibilities. And is it fair to say that a good deal of the originates here in New England. Again the idea of local made good. I mean we're celebrating the fact that this is this particular scale if not did it originate here in New England.

Well not exactly but we have one of the proponents live in New England. Richard Blandy has been working with the scales since the 1970s. So he is one of the key figures the scale originated in Hamburg Germany and then was rediscovered in California about you know Boston is halfway in between. Yeah and given the end given the role that northeastern and Beth Israel and Berkeley and I's and other institutions have played in this I guess it's credit that so well deserved that's well-deserved. We have just a few minutes so I guess the what what would be the lessons here for people who are just used to listening to music in a certain type of way. If they are just listening used to listening to if you were Britney Spears or or Jay-Z or to or to even John Coltrane you know what might be the lesson. Listen here. Now I think we're really looking at a new Martian world if you will. Well but

then if you really think about it there's nothing that's scary or weird about the Martian world there in fact it's it can be very beautiful. Curt Rhodes who is one of the speakers and a composer the first day and symposium said that the first time he heard Owen Pierce chords they sounded sweet and more sweet and more sour at the same time. So I think the world would be a wonderful place if we listened to more of these novel musical systems. OK we're going to have a few seconds so there were go how do what do you think I can quote John Cage by saying Happy New Years. That's very good. So in the background you're hearing BP pisky in fragments that's by composer Adam Schechter. My guest for the segment been composer Georg high do a visiting professor at Northeastern University and psyche Louis instructor in neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Thank you both. Thank you. I'm Philip Martin sitting in for Kelly. You can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show by visiting our

website WGBH dot o r j slash Kelly Crossley. This is the Kelly Crossley Show. Today's program was engineered by Alan meadows and produced by Chelsea Mertz. Our production assistant this and I white knuckled we are production of WGBH radio Boston's NPR station for news and culture.