Michele Bachmann's Teleprompter Hypocrisy

I had yet to watch tea party darling Michele Bachmann's tea party response to the presidents State of the Union address, but I had read it, which is why I may not have noticed the controversy behind Bachmann's broadcast, where individuals had pointed out that in one of the videos, Bachmann does not appear to be looking into the camera, instead looking off to the side.  It was not until a couple days ago that TeaPartyHD, the television and internet network behind the video, has come out with an explanation for why Bachmann was not looking into the camera to speak to her minions.

The Star Tribune reported as to why she was looking off camera:

The reason, it appears, is that Bachmann delivered her speech to TeaPartyHD’s camera, which had the teleprompter she used. But most of the world – well, nation – saw the footage shot by network cameras that were allowed to video the speech.

This is peculiar because Bachmann has criticized the president's usage of a teleprompter in the past.  In 2009, referring to the president's stimulus and budget, Bachmann made the following joke:

"We have seen an orgy of spending [break in the tape]. ... The government spent its wad. ... Notice there's no TelePrompter here."

It also did not take long for the right-wing to quickly come to the defense of Bachmann.  Dana Loesch on Big Journalism insisted that reading from a teleprompter is not a "defining qualification for presidential consideration" and urges people to "move on now."  Media Matters had on hand plenty of instances where Andrew Breitbart's websites published anti-Obama teleprompter headlines, including the Loesch story.

It also did not take long for Andrew Breitbart to imply there is some sort of liberal media conspiracy out there trying to "sabotage" Bachmann's response.

Fox News reported:

Our sources tell us that CNN had originally agreed to use the live feed set up by Tea Party Express, which had a teleprompter running on the lens in which Rep. Bachmann was delivering her speech. But, when Rep. Bachmann left the camera set-up and sat in the House chamber to hear Pres. Obama's speech, CNN set up a camera of their own, just off to the side of the main, tele-prompter/camera. Thus, when CNN provided their network feed it ended up skewed and off-kilter.

I'm really not going to go into detail about Bachmann's presentation, because it is one giant propaganda piece, butI just wanted to mention that in the beginning of the video, Bachmann points to a bar graph indicating national unemployment.  Bachmann differentiated between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, but she failed to indicate just exactly why unemployment was so high shortly after the president was elected.  She seemed to imply Democratic policies and ineffectiveness were the cause for the spike - Bachmann failed to mention anything that may have indicated otherwise, such as the the collapse of the housing market, the bankruptcy of the American automotive industry, or the Wall Street credit crunch, to name a few.

Basically, Bachmann's tea party video was nothing but pure right-wing propaganda.