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.
