When I read the lede of this TPMDC piece on teabagging, I expected something different from the rest of the article.
Nordlinger’s article isn’t about tea bagging in the fun sense, nor is it about the long-term effects on the GOP from teabagging in the tri-corn hat-and-the-time-on-your-hands sense. Rather, it’s the story of how conservatives are trying to fix the fix (sic) the mess they made when they first decided to call for the “teabagging” of Nancy Pelosi with a straight face.
Sitting here working on my first cup of coffee, I thought the piece was going to be about how conservative elites are trying to extricate themselves from a poisonous relationship. After all, Sarah Palin just came out as a birther, and there has to be a point where elite Republicans just can’t take any more stupidity. But, no, the article is not about anything sane like GOP elites distancing themselves from nonsense.
It’s about how the term ‘teabagger’ originated, metastasized, became a permanent fixture in our political discourse, and what to do about it. Should the tea partying patriots embrace the term in the same way that urban blacks embrace the n-word? Should they, in effect, own the term but express outrage whenever anyone in the press voices it? Or should they do all that is in their power to discourage the use of this word, even in their own ranks, in the hope that they will eventually get beyond the ridicule and marginalization associated with it?
I think they should set up a Teabagging political party. Just own it.
Teabagging: nature or nurture?
The decision on what to do about the term “teabagging” doesn’t matter. Marching in lockstep once they receive their orders on what to do about the term “teabagging” does.
The Founding Fathers had no tea bags.
But I’m sure they would have if they’d been invented back then.
So yes — own the word! Why should gay men and porn stars have exclusive rights to it?
Gee, are they trying to make it the equivalent or “honky” or “redneck” or “cracker”?
Wheeeee. We now have an epithet without racial or regional overtones. Go for it, teabaggers.
OK, now we need some teabagging jokes, teabagging stereotypes, obnoxious teabagging cartoons, all distributed to our teabagging friends through chain emails.
I think they should definitely set-up a party and be done with it. They can control the state legislatures in Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc., etc., etc… Then the remaining members of the Republican party (if there are any) can try to get back to some semblance of sanity. Either way, they will all be out of the way for awhile. Then what? I haven’t seen anything from what is supposed to be my side that leads me to believe all would be well.