Try to keep a straight face when a reporter tells you that reporters only report the news, they don't shape it.

Art Cashin lives on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and because he's not hobbled by a college degree, he's a fount of knowledge and a very sharp observer of current events - on or off the markets. Here's an interesting piece of historic trivia that he shares with us today, illustrating that "making it up" is not a new thing for newspeople of all genders and sexual preferences.

On this day (-1) in the year 1900, American and European forces broke through Chinese lines around the Imperial City of Peking (now Beijing). They freed hundreds of terrified non-Chinese hostages and thus broke the back of the "Boxer Rebellion".

History books will tell you that the original anti-foreign rebellion in China was sanctioned by the Dowager Empress and driven by the secret "Society of the Harmonious Fists" (Boxers - get it!). While those facts are true, the real facts may be more ironic.

The Boxer Rebellion may have started, by accident, in America. According to some reports, about a year or more earlier, a bunch of hard drinking reporters were sitting around exchanging their frustrations that the "event du jour" had failed to appear.

How could they meet their deadlines. Being good journalists who needed the meager paycheck they agreed to do the obvious thing - - make up a story. But it had to be a good story. And it had to be a lulu. But these guys were pros. So they invented a story that wealthy Americans and Europeans were planning to buy, dismantle and transport the Great Wall of China (as nearly a century later some would do with the Berlin Wall). What the hay -- it was fun -- it met the deadline -- it sold papers.

But somehow the short-lived story reached China. Chinese nationals were inflamed. Word of mouth said foreigners wish to rape our heritage and national treasures. Hostility turned to aggression and then it inspired the Boxer Rebellion.

Today, the need for a paycheck is just as great for the storytellers in the press; at least the ones still collecting one in that failing industry (faster please).

Just as the Chinese were a handy and despised tool for the racist media of that time, the Tea Party folks fill that niche for the modern day opinion shapers. This may be why my local waste of newsprint – the Virginian Pilot (motto: "True to the Democratic Party in victory or defeat") fills its editorial pages with the confident prediction of the demise of their enemies. Perhaps taking their cue from one of their leaders, Harry Reid, they tell us that the Tea Party is OVER, DEAD, DYING, FINI, DEFUNCT, “pining for the fiords.”

I suspect that this is designed for Republican running for office, to influence the more susceptible ones to betray their natural constituents. Even as the anti-Tea Party standard bearer is sinking in the polls, the modern day scribblers are telling us that Americans really don’t want the debt reduced, that they really like the federal government telling us what to eat and drink, how to flush and what light bulbs we can use; that we don’t want our electricity made with coal and we’re willing to see our power bills skyrocket; that Obama really is focused like a laser beam on jobs especially on the golf course and on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. They really want us to believe that the US debt was downgraded because the Tea Party was calling for a default when the only ones talking about it were Democrats and their amen corner in the press. They want us to believe that the path to jobs and prosperity is more spending and more debt because that has worked so well the last three years. They want us to believe that if we don’t like Obama’s policies we’re racists because there cannot be any other reason. They want us to believe that raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires and people who own jets is the answer to ending the deficit, and that providing health insurance to 30 million people will lower health care costs.

I find it easier to believe that rich Americans and Europeans will buy the Great Wall of China and move it to Las Vegas because I may be gullible but I’m not stupid.