Sean Hannity and Brent Bozell of the right-wing Media Research Center decided to attack Chris Matthews and Jimmy Carter for truthfully pointing out, on Hardball this past Monday, the fact that these Tea Partiers have been co-opted by Big Money interests, and the dupes out there protesting on their behalf don't have a clue as to who is funding this astroturf "movement".

Here's the transcript from Hardball that they went after them for.

MATTHEWS: Well, what you think of these Tea Party people? Mr. President, I look at a lot of them as, they‘re not all crazies. They‘re regular people, a lot of middle-middle-class people and they‘re very religious. They‘re churchgoing people, like yourself. And I wonder, do they know that they‘re being backed by big corporations and all this conservative money at the top?

CARTER: The ones that know it deny it. And, obviously, the Tea Party movement has been completely financed—almost completely financed by hard-right oligarchs who want to prevent the oil companies and major corporations from having to pay their share of taxes or to comply with environmental laws.

MATTHEWS: Right.

CARTER: And so the Tea Party movement has been suborned by these very right-wing people who don‘t give a darn about low-class working people, but just want to feather their own nests.

MATTHEWS: I wish they knew that.

Their response... to laugh it off since Hannity obviously don't want his viewers to know that Fox is just as big of a player in this as groups like Dick Armey's are, and then Bozell makes a personal attack on former president Jimmy Carter.

BOZELL: You know, first comment on President Carter. Doesn't he sound like that proverbial college freshman who spouts neo-Marxist pablum after one too many hits on the bong? I mean he... Mr. President, it's time, you know it's time to put up shutters in your houses and really shut up now because you are making a fool of yourself.

Sorry Brent, but the only "fools" are the ones who watch Hannity's show or read your site and believe that anything you say is credible. You're both the same sort of tools that Carter called out on Hardball spouting the corporate line as long as it lines both of your pockets. If anyone's had too many "hits on the bong" it's anyone who takes either of you seriously.

h/t to Media Matters for the catch and whose title I borrowed since I could not have written a better one myself. I can only watch so much of Sean Hannity's show without starting to feel like Jon Stewart and his staffer did after Hannity's lame "apology" to Stewart and too much of Fox "News" in general. They're better taken in small doses to keep the television set intact.