Anatomy of a Teabag Meme
The disproportionally large amount of attention being given to the relatively small numbers of conservatives who are protesting taxes by sending their representatives tea bags, seems propelled by the group’s nickname’s unfortunate sexual double entendre.
Rachel Maddow’s segment on the Tea Bagging movment seemed more like a sketch from OnionTV, than a highly regarded political show:
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The Washington Time’s Amanda Carpenter was quick to bemoan Maddow’s “lewd” segment, and complain about the “sexually vulgar variation” of the phrase, but the humor didn’t seem to be lost on the protesters themselves:
It wasn’t just Maddow who was amused. Anderson Cooper facetiously played on the double entendre. Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall titled a post on the movement, “Don’t Let That Teabag Smack You in the Face!” David Shuster also batted the language around.
While a quick search on Urban Dictionary reveals over a dozen similar descriptions for the slang sex act, the political movement of tea bagging has already become the 10th most popular definition:
The moronic act of conservatives/Republicans sending used teabags to lawmakers because they think Obama is a Nazi.
The levity of the meme is certainly welcome in what has been a pretty dark few months of news, but it also underscores the ridiculousness of the movement’s real goals. I’m fairly certain that the only reason this fringe movement is getting so much attention is because of its similarity in name to a fringe sex act, not in spite of it.
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Protesting against unfair taxes is what got this country started in the first place, so these protests are nothing new. What’s new is the media’s reaction to them.
Its interesting, Kate, that you would think its “(a) relatively small numbers of conservatives who are protesting taxes…”
Are you kidding me?
You think its only CONSERVATIVES who are up in arms about the over-taxation going on these days.
You need to get out of your “Maddow Bubble” and into the real world! This isn’t a “fringe” movement as you called it. Taxpayers in all socio-economic realms are sick at heart that major banks and corporations that were so badly run now get bailed out with OUR money. This movement you call ridiculous isn’t just about over taxation its about what the nimrods in Washington do with all the money we give them!
Like Nora Barry’s comment above – protesting unfair taxes and distribution is a birth right to Americans. To dismiss the growing sentiment is shortsighted.
PS – I’m not a Republican
The moronic act of conservatives/Republicans sending used teabags to lawmakers because they think Obama is a Nazi.
Whoever wrote that definition really has little grounding in history and/or politics.
I think Mark Steyn said it best in a recent column:
Besides, what are these whiners so uptight about? CNN’s Susan Roesgen interviewed a guy in the crowd and asked why he was here:
“Because,” said the Tea Partier, “I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln’s primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty, and had the right …”
But Roesgen had heard enough: “What does this have to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you’re eligible for a $400 credit?”
Had the Tea Party animal been as angry as these Angry White Men are supposed to be, he’d have said, “Oh, push off, you condescending tick. Taxes are a liberty issue. I don’t want a $400 ‘credit’ for agreeing to live my life in government-approved ways.” Had he been of a more literary bent, he might have adapted Sir Thomas More’s line from “A Man For All Seasons”: “Why, Susan, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for a $400 tax credit?”
But Roesgen wasn’t done with her “You may already have won!” commercial:
“Did you know,” she sneered, “that the state of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of this stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.”
Really? Who knew it was that easy? $50 billion! Did those Navy SEALs find it just off the Somali coast in the wreckage of a pirate skiff in a half-submerged treasure chest, all in convertible pieces of eight or Zanzibari doubloons?
Or is it perhaps the case that that $50 billion has to be raised from the same limited pool of 300 million Americans and their as yet unborn descendants?
And while I know many here may not like the fella, I’d love to see responses to his argument rather than the pro-forma ad-hominen rant-fests.