Tea-Bagging Obama

On April 15, 2009, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in over 500 cities to let their voices ring. Why exactly were they gathering to protest?

Well, that's debatable. Some people were there to protest big government spending, while others were there to protest taxes. CNN, however, took on a completely different spin and even went as far to say that the tea parties were not only anti-Obama, but "anti-CNN" as well.

The mass media - from television to the newspapers and even bloggers as well - used the tea parties to exploit their gross stereotypes of Republicans as rednecks and uneducated people.

What the media failed to explain accurately was the purpose of the tea parties, which is to protest the fact that the government is stealing our money and that we have no say in how they spend it. And in most cases they spend it recklessly and uselessly (9,000 earmarks in the last stimulus package alone).

Various media outlets tried to paint the tea parties as a conservative movement aimed against Democrats, primarily Obama. But people are mad at the Bush administration as well for this enormous spending. It should not be a partisan issue, but it is now a partisan because Republicans are being unfairly attacked for what should be seen as a national issue.

Many cable news networks, except for FOX News, failed to give the tea parties substantial coverage. And any coverage that the tea parties did receive from these stations was outrageously biased.

The most notorious moment was when a CNN reporter began debating tea party participants at a Chicago event on air instead of reporting objectively about the story. She began to insult the movement while she was live on television and she even took a swipe at FOX News.

Why is this dangerous?

Because even after all of the bias and lack of real journalism within the past few years, Republicans still fail to realize that the mass media is waging a propaganda war against them. The GOP image has not been damaged because of any one politician, but because of the death of a truly fair media.

Republicans, it's time to wake up and fight back.

The tea party was a good first step at fighting back, but now we have to stick to our convictions no matter how strongly our views are attacked. If we can't stand strong, then we won't be good for anything other than tea-bagging Obama.