As Fox News, the Wall Street Journal et al are heavy-breathing about Tea Party protests on Tax Day, Gallup discloses that Americans’ “Views of Income Taxes Among Most Positive Since 1956.”

But reality is no more a deterrent for Rupert Murdoch than it was for William Randolph Hearst when he was stirring up the Spanish-American War in 1898 with a drumbeat of scare headlines. To a message from artist Frederick Remington reporting “There is no war,” Hearst famously replied, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” And he did.

In a 24/7 news world, however, Murdoch’s efforts seem less like Hearst’s than those of the mental case who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” blowing a bugle and rushing up the stairs with a sword, yelling “Charge!”

One reason the Tea Parties won’t work as a Wag-the-Dog move lies in Gallup’s report that Americans who say taxes are too high has fallen from 68 percent in 2001 to 46 today:

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