IRA STOLL: The New York Times on the Tea Party Movement. “The whole thing is sad; that the Times seems unable to give a reasonably sympathetic hearing to Americans mad at Wall Street, Washington, Republicans and Democrats but instead travels to Idaho to interview and emphasize what it depicts as a particularly strange group of them.”

It’s as if they made Amy Bishop a representative of Obama supporters. But they’d never do that, because it wouldn’t fit the narrative would be an unfair “smear.”

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Clark writes:

Tea Partiers might rejoice in the hope that this really does reflect the view of the NY Times readership. The Times coverage of this and other political developments has merely kept its readership uninformed and unprepared. Perhaps it’s best to view the Times as providing comfort similar to that provided by the ship’s orchestra for passengers on the sinking Titanic.

But less heroically . . . .