son of witless wrote:
I have stated many times that I am a big free speech fan. I saw many attempts by the left when they were the dominant ideology in America to silence the speech of anyone opposing them. I encourage anyone to speak their mind as long as they do not threaten, over use profanity, or spew jibberish. That is as far as I go being open to all views. At this time in my life you may call me rigid, set in my ways, etc. I am unlikely to be changed, but I allow all to speak.
" With President Trump in the White House, and the GOP controlling both houses, it is safe to say that the nation is currently in a conservative cycle. " So far the Republicans under Trump, Ryan, and McConnell have not shown they can enact the Conservative agenda they have promised their supporters. The best thing you can say is they are not pushing America any further left.
" I was fairly sure that your criticism of the piece, although accusing Moss of hypocrisy, was primarily based on said extended criticism of the supposed far-right, overly-zealous type of conservatives he penciled in as the tea-partiers (initially self-proclaimed tea-baggers.) "
I do not accept that Tea Partyers are over zealous. They are people defending traditional values and accounting standards. They were not in your face, they were polite and they cleaned up after themselves, unlike the Occupy Wall Street Pigs. They did not call themselves teabaggers!
" But, as I pointed out (though apparently overlooked by you) his criticism was far-ranging in including many '-isms' regarding political or religious ideologies. "
I absolutely did not overlook it. You did not understand my meaning, even though I was careful to spell it out. The author criticized his " isms " only to set the paradigm so he could link " rigid conservatism " to it. Most of the " isms " were of historical nature and easy to defend as rigid. He was careful not to list his own "rigid " Liberalism. That is the hypocrisy.
" And, as Dave Mason famously sang..."There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy...there's only you and me and we just disagree." "
I reject that absolutely. Perhaps my description of hate needs clarification. The hatred I see in myself and my opposing numbers are not for the peons on both sides. I consider myself a conservative peon. The hatred is for the ideas and the leaders of the opposing agendas. I have very close relatives and friends who are passionate Obama, Hillary, and Bernie fanatics who hate Trump as much as I hate Obama and Hillary. We do not hate one another. We merely refrain from talking politics except under extremely controlled circumstances.
What we just engaged in is what I have tried to accomplish and mostly failed in with the Liberals on OPP. You and I debated our ideas fairly intensely. We kept it on the ideas. Exactly what I have said to the flaming Liberals, put your ideas out there and defend them, while I attack them and I will defend mine from your attacks. They cannot do it. As you questioned me in detail, so I question them, they do not deal with my arguments, and they call me an idiot. That is why most discussions on OPP degenerate into insult fests.
I have stated many times that I am a big free spee... (
show quote)
You wrote "They did not call themselves teabaggers!"
I will later address the rest of your response, but this one demands an immediate reply. You simply are in error on this matter. However innocently or naively Tea Party organizers did it, they coined the term 'Teabaggers' early on in speaking of themselves.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The National Review...'Rise of an Epithet,' by Jay Nordlinger December 7, 2009
‘Teabagger’ and what to do. To “teabag” or not to “teabag”: That is not the most pressing question of these times, but it is a question to consider. Routinely, conservative protesters in the “tea party” movement are called “teabaggers,” and those calling them that do not mean it in a nice way. Many conservatives are mulling what to do about this term: fight it, embrace it, what? First, a little history.
After Barack Obama was sworn in as president, with his big majorities in Congress, the Democrats launched quite a bit of federal spending: particularly with the “stimulus” package. Some Americans were determined to counter this. And, before you knew it, we had the “tea party” movement. What protesters were doing, of course, was invoking the spirit of the American Revolutionaries, and their Boston Tea Party.
According to the website of the Tea Party Patriots, the movement is committed to three “core values”: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. The first big day for this movement was Tax Day, April 15. And organizers had a gimmick. They asked people to send a tea bag to the Oval Office. One of the exhortations was “Tea Bag the Fools in D.C.” A protester was spotted with a sign saying, “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.” SO, CONSERVATIVES STARTED IT: STARTED WITH THIS TERMINOLOGY. But,
others seized and ran with it.
I have no doubt you are sexually hip, but just in case you’re not, please know that “teabag” has a particular meaning in certain circles. In order to have a discussion of our general topic, we must be aware of that meaning, and I call on the Source of All Knowledge, Wikipedia: Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio. The practice resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea.” I could quote you more, but you have had enough.
The liberal media, to use a convenient tag, went after the protesters with glee. Take Anderson Cooper, the acclaimed anchorman for CNN. He was interviewing David Gergen, the political pundit. And Gergen was saying that, after two very bad elections, conservatives and Republicans were “searching for their voice.” Cooper responded, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.” He said this with a smirk. MSNBC had an outright field day. Rachel Maddow and a guest of hers, Ana Marie Cox, made teabag jokes to each other for minutes on end: having great, chortling fun at the conservatives’ expense. And here is the performance of another host, David Shuster: “For most Americans, Wednesday, April 15, will be Tax Day, but . . . it’s going to be Teabagging Day for the right wing, and they’re going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals. They want to give President Obama a strong tongue-lashing and lick government spending.”
Shuster went on to say that Fox News personalities were “looking forward to an up-close-and-personal taste of teabagging.” Etc., etc., etc. All the while, MSNBC was picturing Republican figures, and the following words were on the screen: “TEABAG MOUTHPIECES.” Ma and Pa America may not have been in on the joke, but plenty of other people were. On HBO, the lefty comedian Bill Maher commented, “When the year started, ‘teabagging’ was a phrase that referred to dangling one’s testicles in someone else’s face.” And the tea-party protesters “managed to turn it into something gross and ridiculous.” Tuh-dum. After Cooper and the others smirked about “teabagging,” the word went utterly mainstream — although you could say that, if Cooper used it, it started mainstream: because how much more mainstream can you get than a CNN anchor?
On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, E. J. Dionne, the liberal columnist, spoke of “a right-wing candidate supported by the teabaggers.” The host himself, Stephanopoulos, followed suit. On PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, senior correspondent Gwen Ifill used “teabaggers” as well. At the New York Times, Paul Krugman used it in a column. Elsewhere, Roger Ebert used it in a movie review. And so on. Some politicians — Democrats — have talked about “teabagging” and “teabaggers” too. And that includes the biggest Democratic politicians of them all. Recently, both President Obama and former president Bill Clinton spoke to congressional Democrats behind closed doors. They were giving pep talks on health-care legislation. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse reported Clinton as saying, “The reason the teabaggers are so inflamed is because we are winning.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer reported Obama as saying, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?” It will be interesting to see whether the president — or Bill Clinton, for that matter — ever uses “teabag” and the like in public. And if not, why not?
Some on the right are using “teabagger,” but mainly the word is a putdown from the left. Conservatives realize that nothing friendly is meant by it. You can tell by tone and context, for one thing. (Or is that two things?) Of course, some people use “teabagger” in innocence — unaware of any vulgar connotation. One such person is, or was, Gwen Ifill. Some of her NewsHour viewers wrote to complain. And Ifill later said, “Turns out I am the only person with access to email who never knew this was a term with a sexual meaning. I used it in an offhand manner as a shorthand referring to the ‘tea party’ movement. It was a slip I was unaware of, and I regret it.” Now to the question of what to do. How should conservatives handle this matter? Should we challenge the language, let it slide, adopt it? Many conservatives — most, I would say — are of a mind to fight. According to this point of view, people who use “teabagger” and such should be called on it, especially if they smirk. “What do you mean by that?” one might ask. “What do you mean by ‘teabagger,’ and why do you smirk?” In other words, conservatives want to introduce a little shame. And the responses of liberals could be kind of interesting. I myself have enjoyed “calling out” opponents in debate — not on “teabagger” (no opportunity yet), but on other words. “Neocon,” for example. “What do you mean by ‘neocon’?” I’ll say. “What’s a ‘neocon’?” Also “Zionist”: “What do you mean by ‘Zionist’? What’s a Zionist, in your mind?” These words have real meanings, but often people don’t know them. They just mean them as putdowns. Some conservatives are happy to embrace “teabagger,” or are at least willing to do so. They are “owning the insult,” which is to say, taking what is intended as a slur and wearing it proudly.
There are many words and names in our vocabulary that started out as slurs and became something else. Several of these words and names are found in religion — “Christian,” for example. According to a Bible dictionary, this was “the name given by the Greeks or Romans, probably in reproach, to the followers of Jesus.” Soon enough, it “was universally accepted.” “Jesuit” had a defamatory beginning. Same with “Methodist,” “Unitarian,” “Quaker,” and “Shaker.” (You can sort of tell with those last two, can’t you?) We have had this phenomenon in politics, too. “Tory” and “Whig” were putdowns when they originated, and so was “neoconservative.” (All things are new again, I guess.) “Yankee Doodle” was none too nice. That second word probably relates to the male organ. In the world of art, “Impressionist” was a putdown directed at those who painted rather gauzily or suggestively, rather than accurately. But no one today would consider Monet defamed if called an Impressionist.
What about a special case — the worst word in American English, as some of us see it, namely the N-word? When I was growing up, in Ann Arbor, Mich., there was a little debate: Should school officials try to prevent black students from using the N-word? I don’t believe the issue was ever settled. And this brings up the question of whether “teabagger” could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family. We grant that one can always look at things too literally, or too etymologically. In 1998, a major Clinton foe, Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.), called the president a “scumbag.” The same year, Sen. Al D’Amato (R., N.Y.), running for reelection, called his opponent — Rep. Charles Schumer — a “putzhead.” Many in the media were careful to explain to people that Burton had called Clinton a “used condom,” and that D’Amato, borrowing from Yiddish, had called Schumer a “penis head.” (Always with the penis.) But did Burton and D’Amato mean those words in quite those senses? In any event, it may well be too late to purge “teabagger” from our discourse, certainly from discourse controlled by liberals. But I’m for giving it a try: for running “teabagger” out of town, even at this late date.
It is really a lowdown term. “Tea partier” is a neutral term. “Tea-party patriots” is a positive term, used by some of the protesters themselves. “Teabagger” — not so positive, and not so neutral. It could well be that liberals at large are recognizing this too. In a discussion at Slate, the online magazine, Sam Tanenhaus wrote, “Even today the right insists it is driven by ideas, even if the leading thinkers are now Limbaugh and Beck, and the shock troops are tea-baggers and anti-tax demonstrators.” As he told me, he subsequently learned that “teabagger” had this vulgar meaning, and was used as a pejorative. So he changed his text to “tea-partiers”: “tea-partiers and anti-tax demonstrators.” Much better, don’t you think?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This article first appeared in the December 7, 2009, issue of National Review.
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357138/rise-epithet-jay-nordlinger>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So, as this article from William Buckley's conservative National Review states, the Tea Party movement initially came up with the 'clever' idea of sending Tea bags to members of Congress. It was in their initial rallys that they started referring to this act of sending their representatives boxes of tea bags as 'TEABAGGING." Any reasonable research of the origin of the term would confirm it was by the organizers of the tea party.
Now this may be a generational thing but somebody should have told those people that 'teabagging' was already in wide use as a term for performing oral sex on a man. That started people like Tucker Carlson to plead: "Stop saying Teabagger".