The Virginian: How the Media Created the Tea Party

Here's a link to as good an explaination for the creation of the Tea Party Movement as I've heard.  The Virginian: How the Media Created the Tea Party. 

Where a void exists, something will come in to fill it. The news media is supposed to act as the intermediary between the people and the government; to question, to bring facts and issues to the fore. When it failed so publicly and so spectacularly during the last election, it created a void which was filled by others. Those “others” included talk radio, a single media outlet – Fox News - bloggers and the internet where Glenn Reynolds’ “Army of Davids” toiled. And this combination of voices, acting as an alternative media, created the Tea Party.


Why is Fox News a big and growing hit on TV while other broadcast news services are losing viewers? They provide a voice to people on the middle and right side of the political spectrum while all of the others do a fine job of articulating the left. They fill a void that was created by the failure of NBC, CBS & ABC to provide a venue for anyone right of center. In fact, much of the media – and that includes organs like the NY Times and MSNBC – has made a conscious decision to appeal to their skewed demographic (minority, urban liberal, faculty lounge) leaving the vast middle and conservative part of the population up for anyone who wants to pay attention to their issues and concerns. Newsweek, which openly announced this shift several years ago, just sold for one dollar ($1).

The Tea Party is really a phenomenon of this decision on the part of the liberal media and its political allies in both parties. Don’t get me wrong, the media has always been liberal, but their liberalism had been tempered. But they simply could not resist the temptation to become the cheerleaders for the first affirmative action president. To paraphrase Christine O’Donnell: “he was them!”

 Read the rest at the link

Via the Instapundit.com.