Hey, you.

If you’re one of the people complaining about how the liberal media made short shrift of the series of “tea party” protests on and around April 15, here’s a bulletin: The media is liberal. The media has been liberal. The media will be liberal.

Write all the letters you want to write. The media is not the problem. And even if the media were the problem, the media is not going to change.

Conservatives have two major obstacles to being heard.

First, probably due to a lack of practice, they don’t know squat about protests.

You want network time? Holding aloft a neatly printed poster with “Read The Constitution” on it isn’t going to get you there. Try a scrawled poster featuring George Washington with a stake through his heart. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few people dressed up as Ben Franklin or James Madison and have them garbed in bloody shirts with ropes around their necks. Of course, you have to hope a TV reporter knows who Washington, Franklin and Madison were.

Showing up at an appointed time in a public park and having speakers in khaki slacks and sports shirts follow an orderly schedule and make reasoned, verifiable statements isn’t going to get you on the Evening News with Katie Couric. There’s nothing to take pictures of in an audience of middle-class husbands and wives with one kid on a hip and another in a stroller. When people listen to whoever has the microphone and politely applaud — or even applaud with a moderate degree of enthusiasm — don’t expect assignment editors to care.

If you want air time, you’ve got to make a pinata of a politician — any of them will do — and beat it with sticks and then set it on fire. There has to be shouting, cursing (so the bleep guy will have something to do) and hurling of objects. Take a page from the book of Al Sharpton. Get a bullhorn. Practice appearing to be shocked and insulted and giving short, pithy replies that divert attention from whatever question is being asked. Being rational gets you nowhere these days.

For time immemorial, the people yelling “down with …” have gotten more ink than the people yelling “up with …” The press responds to those screeching for action against the grain, not those making sense.

The second — and far more serious — problem for conservatives is they’re coming off 12 years (1994-2006) when the conservatives they elected to be their leaders were anything but conservative.

They’re trying to close the gate after the cows are out. Face it: The people primarily responsible for doubling the national debt to $12 trillion were Republicans. Democrats just went along for the ride. And these days when one of the “conservatives” re-elected to Congress shows up on “Meet the Press” to fuss about excessive spending, his arguments can be thumped away like a fly from the lip of a soup bowl. The people who now have the keys to the kingdom are not just about to take advice from the “do as I say, not as I did” crowd.

Of course, it’s this very reality that has led conservatives to at least try to do something.

But in the big picture, the national media decided long ago that it’s a lot easier to couch everything in an us versus them perspective. Their view is that conservatives lost and should shut up about it. The notion of conversations without resorting to labels is completely alien in a world where sound bytes rule and no story is worth reporting unless it has dramatic visuals or a histrionic goofball like Barney Frank.

If there is good news for conservatives it is this: If things keep going as they are, there will be more protests. And maybe, with practice, they’ll get better at it.