The Tax Day Tea Parties inspired and energized conservatives across the country last week, but the response to the events from the media and Democrat partisans was perhaps the most interesting thing to watch.

When people turned out all over the country in the thousands to attend tea parties, Obama followers, especially those in the media, were shocked and bewildered, and it showed. The obvious explanation -- that many average, everyday Americans were not thrilled with the "change" they were getting from the new administration -- was not something those in the media or Obama supporters were willing to accept.

Instead we heard about how the estimated 500,000 or more people attending the 800 or so tea parties did not attend of their own free will as grass roots activists. One explanation from critics was that the protests were from "fake" grassroots. We were to believe those people didn't take time off from work and show up in the rain on their own. No. Fox News did it all. Fox somehow has enough control over those people to cause them, against their otherwise free will, to go to the trouble to interrupt their normal activities, make signs, pack up the kids and their diaper bags and strollers, travel to their nearest tea party site, find a parking space, walk to the protest area and raise their signs and their voices.

Most reporters evidently had trouble reading the signs being held up at the protests because they told their viewers the focus of the tea parties was on paying taxes. Some of the reporters even went so far as to point out to protesters that they should not be unhappy with their taxes because the new president was giving them tax cuts. If they had read the signs, they would have known that was not the point of the protests.

There were some protesters complaining that Obama nominees had evaded taxes, while average citizens paid theirs, but the focus was not so much on the amount of taxes paid, but rather how they were being spent in a reckless, foolish fashion and at an unprecedented rate, tripling the deficit with thousands of earmarks and tons of pork. Tea party protesters held signs railing against politicians who signed onto a huge spending bill they didn't bother to read and that they rushed to be voted on before anyone else had time to read it either. They also complained that the enormous debt being passed on to their children and grandchildren would result in an oppressive tax burden future generations would be forced to manage.

Tea party protesters also complained about the government taking over private enterprise -- determining the salaries of privately employed individuals, demanding resignations from US executives and even getting into the business of guaranteeing automobile warranties.

All those in the media had to do was read a few of the signs to "get it." The complaints were pretty straight forward: Stop the spending. Get out of our business. Let us keep more of the money we make. Stop the bailouts. For some reason such common sense concerns were beyond the comprehension of most of those reporting on the events.

In addition to reporters of the tea party story claiming the events were not grass roots because they were organized by Fox News, and most of the reporters not correctly reporting the subject of the protests, a few television journalists and pseudo-journalists, felt the need to disparage the protesters with nasty jokes about "teabagging," a reference to a slang term for a particular sex act. Continued...