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.

Question: How much media coverage can you realistically expect?

A. A big story in your neighborhood shopper.

B. A little story in your metropolitan daily.

C. A 1,700-word feature story, three photos and an online chat session, all courtesy of the Washington Post.

Answer: C, provided you’re a left-leaning organization with a name and an aim that mock one of the mainstream media’s least-loved populist movements, the Tea Party.

How else to explain the news judgment behind the Post’s February 26 article, “Coffee Party activists say their civic brew’s a tastier choice than Tea Party’s,” which gives bottles of free ink to a barely born group known as Coffee Party USA? As Post writer Dan Zak enthuses:

Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party—the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending—Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.

In an apparent swipe at the Tea Party, Zak says the Coffee Party’s goals are to:

promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.

Zak adds that “the Coffee Party is percolating in at least 30 states…Kind of like the Tea Party did this last year, spawning 1,200 chapters, a national conference and a march on Washington.”

Well, not much like the Tea Party did this last year. Its first event took place last February in Seattle, where 120 taxpayers answered 29-year-old conservative blogger Keli Carender’s call to “protest the porkulus bill.” Demonstrations in Colorado, Arizona and Kansas soon followed, and in March 2009 a throng of 5,000 assembled in Cincinnati for what some observers called the city’s largest protest since the Vietnam War.

In contrast, the Coffee Party drew 15 people to its initial Seattle meeting—deemed “a better turnout than expected”—and was lambasted by several attendees as disorganized and amateurish.

And while the Tea Party quickly coalesced around average Americans’ outrage at irresponsible and unresponsive government, the Coffee Party is still struggling to brew something stronger than Tea Party backlash and hosannas to progressivism. Its Web site features the vague Kumbaya declaration that “we will come together as a community to create collaborative environments for practicing democracy, online and offline.”

None of this, of course, is meant to imply that there’s anything wrong with citizens—liberal or otherwise—using a social networking site to unite in a common, peaceful interest. That’s as much freedom of speech as the Tea Party protests.

The issue is whether the Washington Post applies identical criteria in evaluating the newsworthiness of right- and left-wing citizen activist groups. Key evidence comes, surprisingly, from the newspaper itself.

Last April, the Post’s own media critic, Howard Kurtz, pulled no punches in assessing national coverage of Tea Party rallies: “Most of the mainstream media fell down on the job, ignoring the growing movement or mocking it as a bunch of wingnuts.” Kurtz even zinged his own employer for journalistic dereliction:

The New York Times has run zero stories … The Washington Post has done zip until today, with a story on two planned D.C. parties on Page B-4 … The Boston Globe, published in the city famed for the original tea party: nothing. CNN ran its first news story on the protests Monday … MSNBC’s coverage had consisted of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox mocking the ‘teabagging.’

But it’s hardly the first time the mainstream media have ignored news that fillets their sacred cows (Climategate, Van Jones, the ACORN scandal) or have used not-ready-for-prime-time citizen activists as ventriloquists’ dummies to mouth their own views (The New York Times’ 2003 hyping of Martha Burk during its quixotic crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club).

In spotlighting the Coffee Party, the Post has promoted another fledgling cause, which counted 9,000 Facebook fans before the article appeared and 37,000 three days later, compared to the nearly 100,000 fans of the Tea Party Patriots. But if cyber-support equaled newsworthiness, the Post would be devoting major space to Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies, which has garnered 1.5 million fans on Facebook.

The Tea Party grew from the grass roots like a lawn on steroids, yet didn’t catch the Post’s eye until tens of thousands of its adherents were practically marching past the newspaper’s front window. Conversely, the Coffee Party received feature-story treatment without ever transcending Web sites and coffee houses.

Bias in The Washington Post’s news coverage? It’s all there in black and white.