Surprise! Christopher Hitchens is annoyed by something. In the January issue of Vanity Fair, Hitchens penned a caustic essay titled “Tea’d Off,” in which he offers some of his many thoughts on Ross Douthat, the Tea Party, and Glenn Beck. It’s Beck, he says, who deserves the blame for “canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material” in America.

All things popular must eventually make their way to Hollywood. Sort of. Just in time for Thanksgiving — when everyone will have some extra turkey recovery time on their hands — some enterprising filmmakers (and some well-known conservatives) have apparently whipped together Tea Party: The Documentary Film.

Call it Bachmann Tea-Party Overdrive: Last night Jon Stewart and the Daily Show staff revealed something remarkable: That in his coverage of Michele Bachmann‘s so-called “Superbowl of Freedom” last weekend in D.C., Sean Hannity used footage of Glenn Beck‘s 9/12 event to make the Bachmann rally look bigger. By a factor of thousands.

The last time we saw Dick Armey he was giving the cold shoulder to Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press, but he has returned in all his glory as a feature subject in this week’s Times Magazine.

Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity really want Doug Hoffman to win that special congressional election in Upstate New York’s 23rd district. It’s not just because he’s a 3rd party “Conservative” candidate in a race that saw the shunned, moderate Republican candidate drop out. It’s because this race is a referendum on town halls, on tea partying, on the 9/12 Project.

Last night on The Daily Show Jon Stewart noted the different manner in which Fox News opted to cover the 9/12 tea bagger marches in September versus the similarly attended (numbers-wise) Gay Rights march this past Sunday. Short version: they didn’t.

Ironically, right as the march began, a very real and very vivid rainbow appeared in the sky. This was clearly a sign of support from God.

Video shot at last weekend’s 9/12 Project protests has surfaced showing Heidi Noonan, an associate producer for Fox News, encouraging the crowd to hoot and holler behind Griff Jenkins while he talks live from the scene with Glenn Beck in the studio. Fox is calling this a rookie mistake by an inexperienced producer. But is it also an ethics violation?

Fox News host Glenn Beck has a unique interpretation of American populism and the Founding Fathers. But he also has his own ideological forefather who has gone largely unnoticed by a large portion of the media watchdogs who have tracked Beck’s meteoric rise. That is, until the incisive Salon exposé of W. Cleon Skousen, which ran yesterday online. Inside, we run down some of the article’s most revealing, juicy bits.

In the passion of yesterday’s 9/12 protests against, um, something, Jay Rosen noticed that Michelle Malkin was crowing about attendance of 2 million at the protest in D.C. Also known as one out of every 130 people in America. A little high? You might say that.

“I launched a project back in March and it comes together Saturday, 9/12,” says Glenn Beck in a Foxnews.com promo video. “Thousands of people are going to gather in Washington, D.C., and around the nation, to stand up for the principles and values that have made America great.”

Where was Beck today? In his New York City Studio – but he wasn’t happy about it.

Today I watched one of the most bizarro TV shows that I have ever seen: Glenn Beck‘s 9/12 special on Fox News. Even now, I am not sure what it had to do with 9/11 — other than completely co-opting it for Tea Partiers, Fox News, dissent and — oh yes — Glenn Beck.

The 9/12 Project is a day for followers of the Tea Party movement and other conservative groups to march on the nation’s capital to protest what they say is out-of-control government spending. It’s a given that the march will receive extensive coverage on Fox News Channel, because it was conceived by host Glenn Beck , but raises questions of how other news outlets should cover this event — as grass-roots movement, publicity stunt or both? So far it looks like CNN is focusing on the news while ignoring its organizer.