Eric Boehlert of Media Matters nails it – using this past weekend’s tea party festivities as a example – in his essay on the “media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats.”

And Karl Frisch, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters and Liberadio(!) media correspondent, said on our show on Monday that the responsibility for correcting this, er, “overcorrection,” rests solely in our hands:

Download audio file (frisch-challenge-media20100208.mp3)

“For 40 years, the right has been pushing the idea of liberal media bias, and since Palin is one of the most popular people on the right, the press – because of the pressure they get from every level of the conservative movement from the lowliest volunteer to the presidential candidate – they get immense pressure to bend-over backwards and be “fair.” And by “fair” I mean not correct the public record. The left has only come into its own in terms of coming after the media to get things correct for about 5 or 6 years now in any kind of organized fashion. And even then it’s still not from the lowliest of campaign activists to the tip-tops of the presidential candidates.

It was surely something when the White House started becoming critical of Fox News because we had not seen that before from the left. But this is something that has to be ingrained in the psyche of the progressive movement that you must challenge the media when they get something wrong. Because then, at least, we can bring the press back to a natural center where they’re bending over backwards perhaps for both sides but in the end we’re getting a better news product.

As it stand right now, everybody on the Right complains about the media. Every day. On every issue. That doesn’t happen on the left. And that’s why Joe Biden ends up being charicatured in the way that he’s charicatured but since the campaign nobody has said – I hesitate to say nobody – but, by and large, for all the gaffes Sarah Palin has had, since exiting the campaign trail, she’s certainly not held to the standard that other politicians would be if they were quite as dumb as Palin on the stump.”

Some people have been saying that we live in one. As somebody that spent many years of his life scared to death of living under one, I figure I’ll share some of my memories.

So what does it mean to live in a totalitarian country?

It is to be very afraid of the police, because we have seen them arresting and beating up people randomly, for no other reason than they can.

It is to see the military treating you like the enemy all the time; i.e. by wantonly pointing their guns at you for no reason.

It is because you know that every paper, radio station or TV station is now controlled by the regime and only prints propaganda.

It is to be afraid of the teachers in your school because they carry guns and work for the regime, and because the principal was replaced by a regime guy who is not interested in education.

Go read the rest, including BeninTN’s insightful commentary:

It’s not “Marxist” to recognize that monied special interests and corporate lobbyists are influencing too much of our policy-making and undermining progress in America. It’s not Marxist to recognize the simple fact that America spends 16% of its GDP on healthcare, while the next highest percentage for any industrialized nation is just over 11%. It’s not Marxist to recognize that this status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable. And one thing has become clear in this process – the supporters of the status quo stand to profit handsomely from the failure of comprehensive healthcare reform. With $2.4 trillion spent annually in healthcare in the U.S., and roughly a third of that being spent wastefully (assuming we could cut from 16% to around 10% of GDP and match the other industrialized nations in terms of GDP percentages), that means that we’ve got about $800 billion of excess spending. Someone is profiting from that $800 billion, and they don’t want to let it go.

Go vote for Tennessee’s Most Valuable Birther. You have 5 state reps, 1 Congressman, and a Lt. Governor to choose from.

The Tea Partiers seem to have a more, shall we say, collectivist approach when it comes to organizing their events:

Fifty people in a small tea party group for example each investing $10-20 dollars would take care of most of the costs to a delegate. This is not a huge investment money but information wise it will yield huge returns.

Very nice. But don’t worry, it’s for the common good:

We want local tea party groups to select their best to meet with their peers from across the nation. The local tea party’s themselves know who will best represent them, bring the best ideas, and have the most desire to move this process of organizing to the next level.

So just how cost prohibitive is attending the National Tea Party Convention for the rant, er, I mean rank and file (who, we are assured, are more than welcome to attend)? Well, in this economy do you have $1000.00 bucks to blow on a ticket to the convention and three nights at the Opryland Hotel?

No? No worries. Just send someone who’s better than you. Movement of “the people,” my patootie. This has been a corporate-fueled manufactured mob from the very beginning.

In the House, 14 GOP incumbents have decided not to seek re-election, while 10 Democratic incumbents have made the same announcement. It seems that the truth is that it’s the Republicans and not the Democrats who are “dropping like flies.”

In the Senate, six Republican incumbents have decided not to seek re-election, while two Democratic incumbents have made the same announcement.

But that’s not all. More Republican than Democratic Governors who could seek re-election aren’t:

Among governors, several incumbents in both parties are term-limited and prevented from running again, but only three Democrats who can seek re-election — Parkinson in Kansas, Doyle in Wisconsin, and Ritter in Colorado — have chosen not to. For Republicans, the number is four — Douglas in Vermont, Rell in Connecticut, Crist in Florida, and Pawlenty in Minnesota. (Update: the GOP number is five if we include Palin in Alaska.)

ABC/The Note should be embarrassed for being so easily led around by Republican spinmeisters.

So what’s the real story? Rational Conservatives are being forced out of their party by the extremists who, by the way, take their orders from the talk-radio wing of the party. Most recently it was the Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer who was chased out of his party by the crazy, intolerant tea-partiers:

“As you know, there is a great debate in our party on the direction, moderates vs. conservatives, whether we should have a big tent or a small tent…And while I have made it my utmost concern to try and keep those arguments and discontents out of the Republican Party of Florida, over the last six months there has been a very vocal group within our party that has become very active in seeking an effort to oust me as chairman….They have, as they say, thrown everything up against the wall as they possibly can, to either embarrass me or embarrass the Republican Party of Florida…They simply have two goals in mind, and if the first one fails, fall back to the second one…And the first one is remove me as chairman, and if that doesn’t work, burn the house down and destroy the Republican Party of Florida

Republican GOP Chairman Michael Steele has called the schism “overrated,” which is surely an admission that it’s not. And if I didn’t already know that the radical conservative tea-partiers are her people (see her many appearances on Fox News but esp. this one), I could almost believe that in this political climate Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn has been given an ultimatum – either participate in the craziness in Nashville in February or get out of the way.

By the way, did you know that Congresswoman Blackburn has a challenger?