This is just odd.

As CF noted earlier, the Times today highlighted the internal conflicts (read: $$$$) that seem to be roiling around the first ever Tea Party convention, slated for Nashville next month, and which will feature Sarah Palin as the featured ($$$$) speaker.

The strange part is the Times never mentions what should be the other raging controversy; the fact that organizers have basically banned the press from covering the political convention. (Scribes will be allowed to watch Palin's speech, but the rest of the right-wing gathering remains off-limits.) Actually, after first banning reporters, organizers relented and announced they would allow in a limited numbers of 'journalists' who work for outlets that routinely provide the Tea Party with favorable coverage. (Hint: if you work for Rupert Murdoch you have a really good chance of getting in.)

That press ban is a news story, period. Considering how the Tea Party right now is being showered with all kind of media attention, and being tagged as influential and important, the convention press ban is even more newsworthy.

And trust me, if back when it was first launched and was known as Yearly Kos, that annual liberal blogger confab had announced it was banning all outside journalists, the press would have gone bananas, denouncing organizers as secretive hypocrites.

Yet the Tea Party issues its press-hating edict and outlets like the New York Times, which are banned from covering most of the convention, fall silent. And the Times is hardly alone. To date, most of the Beltway press corps has given the Tea Party a pass for planning to lock out journalists, and for only granting access to writers who are aligned politically.

UPDATED: Since Tea Party organizers will only let in writers who have written favorably on the movement, does that mean The New Yorker's Ben McGrath earned his entry this week, thanks to his Tea Party valentine?