From WNYKYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is out.

I'm Bob Garfield.

This week, in town halls around the country, elected officials found themselves shouted down

by mobs of conservative protesters infuriated by Democratic plans for major government

intervention in the health care system.

The episodes were noisy, disruptive, and, in at least one case, in Tampa, Florida, a bit violent.

You were for us!

Here are boys!

Here are boys!

Here are boys!

Here are boys! Here are boys! What the protests weren't was spontaneous.

They'd all been cooked up by a right-wing political consultancy called Freedom Works,

the fact of which shocked, shocked the media left.

This is an ad put out by the Democratic National Committee.

This mob activity is straight from the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives.

And here's MSNBC's Keith Alberman and Rachel Maddow.

Good evening from New York. A so-called grassroots movement is fake as the purportedly spontaneous

Tea Party protests that broke out on tax day. Our fifth story on the countdown, the astro-turfing

of health care reform

in a desperate bid to defeat it. The more time you spend looking into this seemingly organic

outrage at these town hall meetings, the more clear it is that this isn't organic at all. This is

...