Politicians missed point of tea parties

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't get it. Insulting hundreds of thousands of Americans who last week expressed their discontent with irresponsible government, the House speaker said "tea party" protesters were either dupes of the rich or, worse, their willing tools.

"It's not really a grass-roots movement," she told a San Francisco Bay area television station. "It's AstroTurf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich."

That will come as a great surprise to volunteers from all walks of life who invested their time and money to organize more than 800 protests nationwide. Surely if there were a connection between rich conservatives and the tea parties — akin to, say, billionaire George Soros bankrolling MoveOn.org, whose greatest act of protest was to call Gen. David Petraeus a liar — Pelosi could prove it. Of course, she can't.

And the rallies weren't mainly about tax cuts. They were about runaway spending and the mercenary politicians in both parties who have presided over record federal budget deficits. It doesn't matter that 95 percent of Americans will see a tax cut in 2009 and 2010. An endless series of bailouts, stimulus plans and pork-barrel projects are piling up a record debt. Someday, that debt will have to be paid by everyone, not just the rich.

Janeane Garofalo doesn't get it. On an edition of MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann overflowing with vulgar innuendo, the actress and failed liberal radio host referred to tea party protesters as "a bunch of (deleted) rednecks," referring to a sexual act. "This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up."

Got that? If you're opposed to the bipartisan profligacy that has caused the national debt to double since 2000 and which will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cause it to double again over the next decade, you're just a toothless, banjo-strumming bigot.

CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen doesn't get it. Demolishing the distinction between unbiased reporter and partisan advocate, Roesgen clashed with a Chicago tea party protester on air last week, cut him off and then declared: "You get the general tenor of this — anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox."

Ironically, Roesgen's media soul mate — Garofalo — cashes a paycheck from that right-wing network for portraying — hold the laughs — an FBI agent on the thriller "24." But one wonders: Where was Roesgen's media criticism during the years CNN breathlessly covered every breaking development about much smaller anti-Bush protests ginned up by MoveOn.org?