I've been watching the media onslaught aimed at these townhall protesters, and now think I understand why we saw a huge pickup in coverage on the birth certificate controversy over the last 2 weeks.  Media Matters and other 527s, like Moveon, send daily communiqués to left-leaning media with their issues highlighted, and talking points suggested. 

Clearly, they decided to hype attention to the birthers over the past couple of weeks, so that they could now use them to try to discredit other legitimate protest, especially that occurring over the health care takeover.  Since Obama has declared this the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, that it will destroy his presidency if it doesn't pass, and since his poll figures have dropped dramatically (as have Congress'), they are getting desperate on this.

Obviously, the White House is pulling out all the stops.  Obama has now asked in an email for masses of counterdemonstrators from his Org for America list of 13 million email accounts.  The last time they asked for people to sign up to personally demonstrate and knock on doors, not much happened. So, it appears that instructions went out to drum up coverage of the birthers and townhall anger, partly as a way of getting his own troops fired up again and willing to take to the streets on his behalf.