Teabag -- the word that reveals a world

When commenting on right-wing sites, one must be a bit careful when referencing members of the "Tea Party" movement. They often don't like it when you refer to them as "teabaggers", even though everyone else has long grown used to doing so. They take it as insult, now that a lot of them know what "teabagging" actually means.

I maintain that it's OK for non-teabaggers to call teabaggers teabaggers because teabaggers called themselves teabaggers back before non-teabaggers told them what it means. So there. Remember this (from 2009)?



They chose the word and now they're stuck with it. It's not everyone else's fault that they didn't know what it means.  In fact, it's rather revealing. What a quaint little bubble world they must inhabit! Not one of those people who proclaimed "Teabag Obama", etc. even knew anybody who could take them aside and quietly point out that, uh.....

Is it any wonder that they periodically get caught circulating caricatures of Obama as a chimpanzee, or the White House lawn planted with watermelons, or this (found via Progressive Eruptions) apparently oblivious to how such innocent japes look to the broader society?  They don't know..... much of anything, really. It's cluelessness turned proud and militant.

Secluded in their Ozzie-and-Harriet time capsule, they also probably think slash is just what the bad guys in horror movies do, bareback is how you ride a horse when you forgot your saddle, a shipper is somebody who uses Fedex a lot, and a safeword is -- what? A word that doesn't offend anyone? (Which they'd doubtless denounce as political correctness.) And they'd be quite baffled to hear talk of Larry Craig or Rush Limbaugh having beards. Who knows what expressions they'll innocently glom onto in the future? I can hardly wait to see what the next right-wing splinter group calls itself.