"The mainstream media have been complicit in legitimizing" Tea Baggers

By GottaLaff

Via an L.A. Times letter to the editor:

People of color who've observed the ascent of the so-called tea party movement didn't need a poll to tell them that this spasm is merely a racist backlash to the election of the nation's first African American president.

By failing to critique the tea party's Obama-as-socialist/illegal alien/terrorist rhetoric, the mainstream media have been complicit in legitimizing these canards.
The "anti-government" propaganda that the tea party spews about the healthcare overhaul was never in evidence during George W. Bush's massive expansion of government spending. And the privileged all-white tea party mobs who storm the Capitol in "outrage" over the Wall Street bailout have never felt motivated to challenge the GOP's welfare-for-corporate-America, free-enterprise-for-the-poor platform.

That just about covers it.