They state:

WHO WE ARE, Crash The Tea Party style, is a lesson in Marxism 101: “A nationwide network of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who are sick and tired of that loose affiliation of racists, homophobes, and morons; who constitute the fake grass-roots movement which calls itself “The Tea Party.”

Fake grassroots? Racists? A lesson in Marxism 101? It’s elementary enough that I’m further intrigued.

Their Twitter stream is rife with the sharp, lip-smacking sounds of liberal plebeians sucking up to government media elites:

@KeithOlbermann I love your work! Hope you like mine too: www.crashtheteaparty.org
about 8 hours ago via web

@dailykos we’ve thrown the rightwing bloggosphere into a tizzy! Please check out our website: http://crashtheteaparty.org

@maddow if you haven’t already, please check out our website: http://crashtheteaparty.org

The tea party didn’t give a flying at’s rass about paying homage to the media in exchange for coverage; they issued public statements to attract like-minded, frustrated constituents and marched, determined, to rally locations. The bewildered media covered the events initially because a conservative protester was a wonderment not unlike a two-headed calf, or Dr. Johnson’s walking dog. They continue to cover them because what began as a grassroots movement has emerged as a force.

Say the crashers:

HOW WE WILL SUCCEED: By infiltrating the Tea Party itself! In an effort to propagate their pre-existing propensity for paranoia and suspicion…We have already sat quietly in their meetings, and observed their rallies.

What was the point of sitting in the meetings? Just to say that you were there? Had they observed something, I’m sure we would have seen the video footage of it, just like the video footage from John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver — oh, wait…

We will act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.) to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them. We will also use the inside information that we have gained in order to disrupt and derail their plans.

Right, misspelled signs:

This isn’t a movement anymore, this is the general public: more Americans say they identify with the tea party than with Obama. They want to distance mainstream America from itself? I’d advise that they’ve got some bad strategy there, but I’d rather sit back with some popcorn and watch this unfold.

Using the term “infiltrate” is a comedy gold because it presupposes a) that their motives are in any way secretive as the term implies and b) that the tea party is exclusive and resistant enough to warrant secretive (or in this case, non-secretive), inside observance. I’m sure they were let down when they took their handy pocket cams along to catch what I’m sure they thought would be secret revolutionary planning only to see organizing limited to talk about where to get the cheapest poster board for placards. “Office Max or Office Depot? Suzy, have you done a price check?”

GRIPPING.

Freepers have identified one Jason Levin as the individual behind the idea.

We here at Big Journalism have already deduced that the Tea Party Crasher (let’s be fair, it’s founded by one dude) has more in common with the tea partiers than he likes to admit, being that at the bottom of his page he includes donation links (five ways to pay!):

Really, though, what is the purpose of the idea rather than reinforce the narrative that the left is the home of disruption and violence when it concerns political public gatherings, even if you claim to want to do so in a “nonviolent” way? At least the “coffee party” faked a sort-of halfway defined purpose, when Annabel Park wasn’t scrubbing all the “teabagger” Tweets from her Twitter timeline and the connection to United for Obama and the NYT from her Linkedin account.

Really, I find the tea party crashers to be entertaining and benign.

Still, all of that energy just to disrupt the peaceful gathering of regular American folk … I hope socialists aren’t taking cues from Al Qaeda.

Having enjoyed seedling-of-the-month treatment in the MSM greenhouse since late February, Coffee Party USA—the supposedly less strident alternative to the Tea Party—designated Saturday its National Coffee Party Kick-off Day. With gatherings in “more than 350 coffee shops in 44 states,” according to its Web site, the fledgling political organization was hoping to make a statement. Instead, it merely raised questions, exposed truths and, worst of all, inspired ridicule.

So, Coffee Kiddies, you want to be like the big boys and girls in the Tea Party treehouse? Sit down and have a cup of reality. Here are 10 reasons why your Coffee Party Kick-off didn’t amount to a hill of beans:

1. We can count. You like to talk about the number of meetings, number of states and number of Facebook fans (167,000 at last count). Let’s deal with what matters most: actual attendance.

Some of your vaunted coffee shop meetings attracted fewer than 10 people, including a Washington, D.C, extravaganza with five attendees, excluding the reporter. On the high end, several drew 40 to 50 people, and at least one pulled in about 100.

That’s impressive for a book club, but not a political movement, even one that started less than two months ago. Keep in mind that 120 citizens appeared for the Tea Party’s first rally, and less than a month later, a 5,000-strong throng had assembled in downtown Cincinnati, despite a Tea Party blackout by the mainstream media.

For more perspective, consider that 2,300 people protested Obama’s appearance in St. Louis (and ObamaCare), while a standing-room-only crowd of 2,225 packed a “Kill the Bill” rally in a St. Louis suburb. Meanwhile, a Coffee Party gathering in the same week in the same city interested only 40 people.

As sports talk show host Jim Rome likes to say: “Scoreboard.”

2. We watched Star Trek, too.

We saw your post-event declaration that the kick-off was a “huge success.” But we also remember the classic Next Generation scene in which old-school engineer Scotty advises Geordi LaForge that if he wants the captain to consider him a miracle worker, he should always overestimate the amount of time a task will take and finish it considerably sooner.

And the Scotty Strategy of Lowered Expectations has long been evident in Coffee Party dispatches. Fifteen people attend an early gathering in Seattle and it’s called “better than expected.” Forty show up in Dallas on Saturday and the organizer gushes: “I was expecting five to 15 people. This is snowballing.”

Snowballing? It’s barely enough for a Sno-Cone.

3. We can make videos, too.

Your founder, Annabel Park, and her boyfriend, Eric Byler, are filmmakers whose past projects include campaign videos for two Democrats, Barack Obama and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, as well as a documentary supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants. We’ve seen their Coffee Party videos with shiny, happy people holding hands:

But video cameras work in the hands of non-leftists too, and in this film of a Coffee Party meeting (particularly after the 3:00 mark) we see about as much energy as in your average dentist’s office lobby.

4. We know the back-story.

One of your videos brags that in the first week of the Coffee Party Web site, you recorded 173,000 unique visits, 600,000 page views and a “Cost so far: $248.19.”

What you should have added is: “Free nationwide P.R. in the Washington Post, New York Times, and other MSM outlets: Priceless.” Taking credit for the sudden explosion in public attention, given the pro bono media blitz, is like patting yourself on the back for a spike in business after the airing of a free Super Bowl ad.

5. Your 15 minutes of fame are almost up.

It’s never a good sign when even your mainstream media benefactors start doubting their child’s legitimacy. Yet what else are we to make of a CNN report that admits Coffee Party members “lean to the left”; echoes criticism that Park a political operative for Obama; and declares that “the jury is still out as to whether the Coffee Party will truly evolve into a movement like the Tea Party.”

Kate Zernike of the New York Times similarly calls the Coffee Party “a leftish alternative to the Tea Party movement” and, even more heretical, questions the relevance of the liberal group’s slogan. “‘Wake up and stand up’?” she writes. “It’s not bad, but it’s no ‘death panel.’”

Salon.com, hardly a bastion of conservatism, even wonders:

Is the Coffee Party Movement the product of a simple Facebook post …Or, is it a calculated, mid-term election tool to mobilize Independent and disenfranchised Democratic voters to come out against Republicans and “Blue Dogs” in the fall?

6. Movement? What movement?

Let’s go over this again: According to your kick-off video, the object of your Coffee Party meetings was to  break into smaller groups, decide which issue you were most concerned about (real example: “sustainable agriculture”), write it on a sign and hold it up while the entire group poses for a photo.

That’s not a political movement—it’s an assignment for a high school civics class.

7. Civility? What civility?

Coffee Party members are asked to sign a pledge that states in part:

I pledge to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree.

If only the Coffee Party principals practiced what they preach.

Park told the New York Times, “We’re not the opposite of the Tea Party,” but her Twitter Tweets from earlier this year contain more venom than civility, such as:

we need to re-engage the grassroots movement that got obama elected. we need to get busy. cannot give it away to tea baggers.

More forthright feelings about the Tea Party emanate from the Tweets of boyfriend/co-Coffee Partier Byler, including these prickly excerpts:

• “Stop drinking the Koolaid, it’s laced with Tea.” (February 10).
• “Meghan McCain: ‘Young people are turned off by Tea Party racism.’ Old people too …” (February 8).
• “Say NO to Tea—Join the Coffee Party Movement. We are what they are not: diverse, dynamic, informed, inclusive.” (January 26).

8. Diversity? What diversity?

“We really have a collection of people who value diversity (and) are diverse,” founder Park asserts in her “How We Began” video. Expanding on the theme, a February 25 Los Angeles Times opinion piece—written by two Democrat political consultants—derides the Tea Party membership as “more likely to be white and male than the general population,” “skew(ing) toward middle age or older” and “solidly middle-class,” making them “a harbinger of midlife crisis, not political crisis.”

But an AOL news report on four scattered Coffee Party gatherings contains the following observations about attendees:

• Average Age: 48.45.
• Gender and Racial Breakdown: The crowds at the four events our correspondents attended were predominately white and roughly 60 percent male.
• Socio-economic Self-Sample: Middle class to upper middle class.”

9. Cooperation? What cooperation?

“The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government,” says a mission statement. “We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people.”

Well … as long as it’s run by Democrats. During the George Bush presidency, Byler showed considerably less inclination to cooperate with the federal government. As his 2006 post on the Web site of Real Virginians for Webb states:

when bush was reelected 2004, i said to myself, at least the people of this country have another four years to come to their senses. i imagined a series of events that would unmask the bush regime for what it is and has been, and another 4 years of tragic mistakes that would allow these blind idealouges [sic] to earn the legacy they deserve.

10. Independence? What independence?

Your founder keeps saying with a straight face that the Coffee Party is a “purely grassroots movement” that’s independent of political parties. Your Web page insists that “the Coffee Party USA is not liberal, centrist, progressive or conservative.”

Well … besides the fact that the coffeepartyusa Web site is registered to Real Virginians for (Democrat Sen. Jim) Webb, we notice this on your Web site’s donation page:

We have partnered with DemocracyinAction.org to facilitate your online credit card transaction. A charge will appear on your credit card statement as Democracy in Action.

You counter that the Coffee Party is not affiliated with billionaire George Soros—although Democracy in Action has received at least $150,000 in “general support” from a Soros organization, the Open Society Institute—and that Democracy in Action is simply “a vendor that licenses Internet technology for websites.”

But we both know that’s only half the story. Democracy in Action’s own Web site states that “we exist to empower those who share our values of ecological and social justice to advance the progressive agenda.”

Then there’s recent word that the Coffee Party’s Chicago organizer is one Baxter Swilley, whose credits includes stints with Democrats such as John Edwards, Jan Schakowsky and Bobby Rush.

So the question is … could the Coffee Party actually be a nonpartisan organization, even though its partner is a George Soros-supported progressive group and its leaders have a history of promoting Democrat candidates and progressive causes, and have privately declared their disdain for Tea Party members and other conservatives?

Why, of course it could. And a creature that looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck could actually be a new species of wombat.

For more information, check recent copies of The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which portrayed 41-year-old Annabel Park as a concerned citizen from Virginia who became the accidental founder of a new grass-roots liberal political group, Coffee Party USA.

In the articles, Park—who is identified as a “documentary filmmaker”—preaches “respectful and civil engagement,” even with the more successful source of her knockoff inspiration, the populist Tea Party. And in an online chat presented by the Post, she issues the following declaration:

We are purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization.

Yet there was nothing accidental about Park’s anti-Tea Party activism; the Coffee Party’s roots are about as grassy as the signature surface of the old Houston Astrodome; and Park’s facade of cooperation is undermined by her “tea bagger” epithets on Twitter.

Meanwhile, her claim that the Coffee Party is “purely grassroots” and “independent of any party” is laughably rebutted by the fact that the registrant for the website was listed as “Real Virginians For Webb, 14461 Sedona Drive, Gainesville, Virginia 20155” until the information suddenly went private behind a proxy. That’s “Webb” as in Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, one of at least two elected Democrats for whom Park has actively campaigned (as evidenced by this campaign video, “Real Virginians for Webb”:

The other Democrat? Barack Obama. So intense was her support for the would-be president that Park co-directed a video for the YouTube channel, UnitedForObama, in which she encourages her mother to give a pro-Obama testimonial in their native Korean. The slick four-minute production, titled “Annabel’s Mom Takes on Sarah Palin, In Korean!!!,” features jaunty piano music and English translations of her mother’s homage to Obama, including this comment, which has the vague ring of a “Dear Leader” haiku:

I listened to Obama’s speeches/and, though my English isn’t perfect/I started to change my mind about him./I came to understand/what he wanted to accomplish/and what we really need is Obama.

The video also makes good on its title’s promise:

Sarah Palin…/that woman worries me./It’s not just that she’s inexperienced,/and a little fanatical./Thinking of her as VP worries me;/to think of her in charge of the US./This is a time for America to change.

The supposedly nonpartisan Park, whose comments and associations indicate solidarity with progressive dreams such as ObamaCare and immigration reform (amnesty), is still listed on the Internet as an officer of “Virginia Korean Americans for Obama”and as a contact for “Real Virginians for Webb” along with Eric Byler, her co-director on the UnitedForObama video and, according to the Post, her boyfriend.

The March 1 Times story quotes Park thusly:

We’re not the opposite of the Tea Party. We’re a different model of civic participation, but in the end we may want some of the same things.

But a series of Twitter Tweets from earlier this year belies her “Let’s roast S’mores around the campfire” image. A particularly telling January 26 Tweet, written within days of Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, exudes politically charged panic while sounding anything but charitable toward the rival Tea Party:

we need to re-engage the grassroots movement that got obama elected. we need to get busy. cannot give it away to tea baggers.

Then there’s this February 3 Tweet that outlines the Coffee Party’s true objective:

Need to push back ag the tide of tea party in an organized way..tea party, Fox & corp take our gov’t. Seize the moment!

So how did The Washington Post and The New York Times, in preparing separate feature stories about Park, manage to miss her blue-as-the-summer-sky political background? Most, if not all of the aforementioned information could have been uncovered by a series of simple Google searches. Instead, the Post’s February 26 article called her the “de facto coordinator of Coffee Party USA, with goals far loftier than its oopsy-daisy origin.”

The Times piece, written by Kate Zernike (famously called “a despicable human being” by Andrew Breitbart at the CPAC convention), gives Park the sound of a giddy newbie organizer: “I’m in shock, just the level of energy here.” A Coffee Party chapter founder is identified as a former Obama campaign worker, but Park isn’t.

Then again, perhaps the Post and Times made a conscious effort to frame Park as an aw-shucks activist. It’s not as if the newspapers had never met her.

In December 2007, Park’s name appeared in the Post atop an opinion piece titled, “I can relate to America’s identity crisis,”in which she disparages new local legislation designed to curb illegal immigration in Prince William County, Virginia. (The issue served as inspiration for her and Byler’s collaborative documentary “9500 Liberty,” which “reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks,” according to the film’s Web site.)

“I believe the process was not democratic,” she asserts, despite the fact that it resulted from a public vote of county supervisors. “Democratic” is a word Park uses frequently (Examples: Her more recent Post assertions that “A key difference [between the Coffee and Tea parties] is in our emphasis on the democratic process” and that Coffee Party members are “democracy advocates more than anything else.”).

Hopefully Park doesn’t mean it in the same sense as Mark Lloyd—the FCC chief diversity officer appointed by the president she campaigned for—who spoke admiringly of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s “incredible … democratic revolution.”

Whatever the case, the Times had even more reason to know who Park really was. As her now-vanished LinkedIn page (still cached in Yahoo) reveals, Park worked as a Strategy Analyst for The New York Times from April 1999 to September 2000.

Oopsy-daisy!