"Teabaggers" Upset. . .And It's Still Funny. Still.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about the feigned indignation of tea party members about being called "tea baggers."  One look at the breathtaking civility displayed on the always properly spelled and punctuated signs at one of their rallies will show you, that being disrespectful of the tea party is just so uncalled for, right?
Presently, I'm having a little brushfire in the comments section of the blog from one of these tea party supporters.  I had to go and look up this post, and was unsurprised to see that this guy fits the template I've laid out exactly.  The post is even more timely now, with the faux "grass roots" organization (which is really a rebranding of the GOP base) managing to secure primary victories for their candidates. We'll see how many of them win in a couple of weeks, and perhaps more interesting, we'll get to see how these wackados legislate.  In the meantime, here's my take on the whole "tea bagger" thing.

ORIGINAL POST: Sunday, January 17, 2010

Teabaggers get upset when you call them teabaggers. Even though they used the term first, with full knowledge of its use as a sexual term. Signs like "Teabag Obama!" and "Teabag Democrats in Congress before they teabag you!" make little sense unless they knew what it meant. Yet they still get bent out of shape when their movement is referred to as teabaggers. [By the way, I'm watching ABC's This Week on DVR, and The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel used several tea bagger references! And uptight Tucker Carlson got pissy about it! Hee hee!].

Here's a little secret: if the "teabagger" double-meaning had stuck as a funny put-down of Democrats, the movement wouldn't mind at all. They'd use it with glee, and they'd use it with gusto. Instead, it got turned around on them. They're not used to that. Democrats rarely get to capitalize on this sort of thing. But they did. And the tea party movement keeps getting annoyed, and it keeps being funny.

The irony is, the more upset they get about it, the funnier it gets. And part of the funny comes from them acknowledging what it means, while trying to distance themselves from the gay. When they do try to address the gay, they do so by feigning how appalled they are, that anyone using the dirty meaning must be somehow deviant and immoral. And yet, they keep using the tea bag as their symbol, with countless offshoots, from Tea Party Patriots to Tea Party Express and beyond.

Pretend that there never was a sexual double meaning. Don't they realize that "tea party"--beyond being a political protest in the 1700s--sounds incredibly dainty? Like a little girl's imaginary social gathering? Here's what I think of (besides balls) when I think of these people. . . Eric Cartman's Tea Party

[Excerpt]

Top Teabagger is mad: Don't call us 'an offensive sexual slur'

The teabaggers don't like being called teabaggers. Yesterday, via email, I got a press release from one of the leaders of the teabagging movement, David Webb, the "Co-Founder Tea Party 365, Inc." Webb is steamed at Senator Chuck Schumer. . .

Read more at: AmericaBlog


EDITOR'S NOTE:  Aside from the nasty things tea baggers often say about the President, Democrats or anyone that disagrees with them, there's another thing.  I'd venture to say that most tea partiers (damn, that sounds girly) use the phrase Democrat Party, just like their favorites on FOX "News" and talk radio do. A cursory reading of some of their writings tends to verify this. The accurate name is the Democratic Party.  They do this because it tested well (or because they're ignorant, and parrot what they hear). "Democratic" sounds too much like other words the right has turned into slogans, like "liberty" and "freedom." Can't have that. Plus, they can pronounce it "DemocRAT!"  So, as long as Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann, Michael Weiner Savage, Mark Levin and the rest stop using that incorrectly, I'll stop saying "tea bagger." Deal?