EDITORIAL: Let them drink tea

Forget media bias. That’s just slanting the news. The liberal press judges stories before investigating them. That’s prejudice, which sums up how the anti-tax tea parties were covered this week.

Marc Cooper compared tax protesters to glue-sniffing lunatics in the Los Angeles Times. “Whip out your Lipton and don your tinfoil hat and join the protest against … against … against what exactly?”, he ranted. MSNBC talking heads Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews dismissed the protesters as crackpots or stooges doing the bidding of GOP Svengalis.

Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell III said that the media’s dismissive attitude toward the big events surprised him. “There is nothing more American than demonstrating against oppressive government,” Mr. Bozell told us. “But that basic concept, that basic idea was attacked by people who say they are news reporters. That I didn’t expect to see.”

Most of the liberal critics didn’t bother to show up at any of the tea parties to see them for themselves. When we stopped by Wednesday’s protest in Washington’s Lafayette Park, it was crammed with regular hard-working Americans who wanted to voice their outrage against out-of-control government spending. Unlike most labor-union demonstrations, these activists weren’t paid to be there to make the crowd look large. These people care about the future.

One tea-party activist from Silver Spring explained to us that, “We are spending more than we make. We are spending more than we can afford. We are spending money from people who are not even born yet - and that is immoral.” This sentiment doesn’t sound crazy to us. It is good old-fashioned common sense. No wonder Chris Matthews doesn’t understand it.