Richard Belzer on Teabaggers, crappy media

Richard Belzer, Acto/Author, Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-ups, joins Thom Hartmann. Things aren't always how they seem. For example - remember the Tea Party. By the way the media and our politicians treated these droves of teabag-toting, tri-corner hat wearing white Americans - you would think they were a grassroots movement, authentically angry with corruption, debt, and crony capitalism. We know now that they were just economically-disadvantaged Americas, some harboring racist sentiments, that were brainwashed by billionaires and transnational corporations to rally in the streets against their own best interests. That's the real story of the Tea Party - and yet most Americans still don't know it. And since this great Tea Party fiction paid off with oligarchs gaining considerable power in Congress in 2010 - another fiction is in the works. The Koch-funded organization Americans for Prosperity paid for a counter-rally in New York today to push back against the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to Americans for Prosperity's very well paid New Jersey State Director, Steve Lonegan: "The Occupy Wall Street crowd is nothing but a fringe element of malcontents bent on mayhem and destruction...it's time that someone stood up to the Occupy Wall Street mob." Right...it's time someone stand up to a genuine grassroots movements representing the American Middle Class/ After all - who's shining light on all the troubles the billionaire class is facing. Who knows where this latest AstroTurf movement will go - and if it will see as much success as the Tea Party. But the point is - not everything is as it seems in politics these days.