Teabagging & Fake Grassroots: Fury Over Conservative Con-Job Allegations

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2009, Printed on April 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/137255/

Last Wednesday, angry conservatives took to the streets to protest taxes by draping themselves in tea bags and wielding a variety of terrifying (some borderline racist) signs.

The so-called tea parties were packaged as an outpouring of populist rage. But, as many liberal writers delighted in pointing out (almost as much as they enjoyed making teabagging jokes), the ostensibly grassroots, spontanous demonstrations were in fact launched by the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, nurtured by Republican operatives, then blasted out through the Fox News propaganda machine.