Targeting the Tea Parties, from Hot Air:

The Tea Party movement has grown with astonishing speed. Swaddled in discussion-board posts and nursed with e-mail over the past year, the movement is now a month away from speaking with a unified voice for the first time, at its first national convention in Nashville. The transition from demonstrations to conventions marks an evolution from expressing need to taking action… from describing what is wrong to declaring what would be right.

A concerted attempt to discredit and marginalize the Tea Party movement has developed with equally amazing speed. The dimmer bulbs in this pinball machine of contempt, such as Chris Matthews, have worked hard to make the derogatory, sexually tainted slang term “teabaggers” popular. The term spread to supposedly mainstream, “impartial” journalists with viral efficiency. It’s hard to imagine a comparable grassroots movement, with a racial or collectivist agenda more agreeable to the Left, suffering this kind of crude insult. Mocking nicknames would never be slapped on a group of illegal aliens agitating for greater welfare benefits. That level of elite contempt is reserved for middle-class folks who object to paying for those benefits. The media covers Tea Parties with the same condescension they show to any unseemly spectacle of tax serfs refusing to “pay their fair share.” To those who believe all virtue resides in the compassionate power of the State, resistance always equals greed.

Read the whole thing. Via Instapundit.