Apparently the disturbances at Town Halls aren't occurring frequently enough or predictably enough for CNBC. So, rather than cover a bunch and wait for a disturbance, they've apparently decided to set one up - at least according to a report on TPM:
Yesterday, Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin sent an email, obtained by TPMmuckraker, to a Tea Party google group. Martin told the group: "We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC."
She then asked: "So, where are the big events this week and where can TPP best be represented on the news?"
Later that day, a Tea Bagger named Pat Wayman responded with a suggestion, also obtained by TPMmuckraker: "This one should be a riot! literally...." he wrote.
As if it wasn't bad enough that media coverage has been so lopsided and so lazy - they report the noise, then find a noisy person to put on camera, and never question much said noisy person says, no matter how incoherent or demonstrably false.
No, they have to take it a step further: staging a disturbance so they can report on it. And just for shits and giggles, the teabaggers picked their target carefully:
Wayman then posted information for an upcoming "health fair" hosted by Rep. David Scott (D-GA).
As Wayman noted, "[t]his is the Congressman who got a swastika painted on his office sign last night."
It's interesting that, at least in Martin's telling, the pro-business CNBC was specifically looking for an event with "lots of energy and lots of anger." Earlier this year, they just relied on their own correspondents for that.
Update although at least Martin seems to have had a little common sense:
Martin tells TPMmuckraker that she did not forward the Scott event -- or, in fact, any event -- on to CNBC as a candidate for coverage. She stressed that her group "does not endorse anything that incites violence of any kind," adding that the email list is un-moderated. "I can't moderate every single comment," she said.
But then again, she might just have been worried about blowback:
Right now Tea Party Patriots is under a ton of scrutiny and we need to make sure our methods are above reproach.
I'm thoroughly depressed at the depths to which the media have fallen in this country. They don't investigate, they don't question, and now they're inventing the news not just "reporting" it? Wow! That's even worse than CNN decided not to air a fact-based pro-reform ad because it criticized insurance companies, but they're quite happy to air the incendiary lies contained in the deathers' commericals.
[Update] My first appearance on the rec list - thanks Zach Roth & Josh Marshall.