Bitter cup of Coffee Party: Digging up the AstroTurf on Annabel Park and the Obama Administration

Posted by Conservative Generation for Left Coast Rebel

The NY Times is out today promoting the Coffee Party as a grassroots movement with ideologies similar to the Tea Party, but with a more palatable message. NY Times is so enamored with this group that they offered the Coffee Party free advertising space for their events. However, the media template echoing through the MSMs and portraying Coffee Party leader Annabel Park as an inexperienced and reluctant grassroots organizer is egregiously misleading. In truth, she has a large number of leftist connections and one in particular that leads to the Obama Administration.

NY Times quoted Annabel’s assessment of her role in the Coffee Party movement:

“I’m in shock, just the level of energy here,” said the founder, Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker who lives outside Washington. “In the beginning, I was actively saying, ‘Get in touch with us, start a chapter.’ Now I can’t keep up. We have 300 requests to start a chapter that I have not been able to respond to.”

The Washington Post said the following of Annabel Park:

She's exhausted, overcommitted, passing whole days on Facebook, not collecting a paycheck, hopping between conference calls, sending e-mails at 4 a.m., smoothing out conflicts over strategy. She has been swept up in this project, and so have others.

In truth, Annabel is a longtime political wonk with a large number of leftist political connections.



Jacobson broke Annabel’s association with United for Obama, but there are far more. According to the Washington Post in 2008, she started by campaigning for Democrat Senator James Webb in 2006. Since then, she has been associated with a large number of leftist groups including, Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, Asian Americans for Obama, and she started the 121 Coalition. If you include her friend Eric Byler, co-director with Annabel of “9500 Liberty” a Michael Moore-esk liberal documentary, you can add in APA Five and Asian-Nation.org. Eric Byler also did the filming for the Coffee Party’s homepage video. Both Annabel and Eric recently did a workshop for the APA Five on community activism. Perhaps, there was something already in the works?

As has been pointed out by many today, Annabel also has a large number of MSM contacts. She previously worked as a Strategy Analyst for the NY Times and has been interviewed a number of times prior to the Coffee Party’s break out Washington Post article. Here is Annabel being interviewed in the Washington Post in 2008. Here she is with Anderson Cooper of CNN.

The Washington Post reported that Annabel started the Coffee Party movement with a Facebook post expressing her frustration with the Tea Party Movement. The Washington Post goes on:

Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called "Join the Coffee Party Movement."

The real question Annabel needs to answer is, "exactly who on Facebook answered your post?" Or perhaps, that question is better left to Kalpen Modi (stagename Kal Penn), who is a friend listed on her Facebook page. See screenshot below; click to enlarge





When last we saw Kalpen, he was sailing off into the rising Obama sun and leaving his acting job as Kutner on Fox’s TV show House to take a position in the Obama administration. Kalpen Modi is now the associate director for the Office of Public Engagement. The purpose of Kalpen’s job is to coordinate with organizations associated with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. An itinerary for a conference call sent by Kalpen to Asian Pacific Americans for Progress gives you an idea of how Obama is coordinating with these organizations. Kalpen's job in the Obama administration put him directly in contact with the same groups, organizations, and personal contacts as Annabel.

We broke the story last week that Annabel Park and Eric Byler had interviewed Kal Penn Modi for Obama propaganda during the 2008 campaign. However, Annabel’s friend Eric Byler may have known Kalpen previously (Perhaps while they were both speaking at an APA Five conference together).

This Annabel-Kalpen connection creates a series of conundrums for the salivating MSMs, like the Washington Post and NY Times, who want to spin this AstroTurf group, the Coffee Party, as grassroots. How could the MSMs have known? Annabel said herself that the Coffee Party was grassroots, why do any investigative journalism?

Even without Annabel’s links to the Obama Administration, her associations don’t pass the sniff test. If it smells bitter, tastes bitter (h/t to Jacobson again), it must be Coffee Party.

Via Memeorandum

Other Bloggers on the trail of the Coffee Party

The Other McCain

The Lonely Conservative

Legal Insurrection

Another Black Conservative

American Power

Riehl World View

Update:

Jacobson was called by the writer of the NY Times fluff piece on the Coffee Party, Kate Zernike. When Jacobson asked why the author had not further disclosed Annabel’s ties with the Obama administration, the author replied that she was limited to 700 words.

Kate, just a suggestion. Less publicity (via her article):

The party (coffeepartyusa.org) is planning nationwide coffee houses for March 13, where people can gather to decide which issues they want to take on and even which candidates they want to support.

This summer, Ms. Park said, the party will hold a convention in the Midwest, with a slogan along the lines of “Meet Me in the Middle.”

More journalism.