John Dingell is the longest currently-serving member of Congress (and the third longest-serving ever). The acerbic 85-year-old Michigan Democrat had long been contemptuous of Tea Partiers. He found them unruly and difficult to get along with. Dingell tended to refer to them as “tea baggers,” a phrase that has an alternate sexual meaning. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem in the hall of Congress, but when Dingell was booked to appear on The Daily Show with John Stewart, his staff felt the need to finally warn and educate him. When his chief of staff shared the other meaning of “tea bagger” with Dingell, the Congressman went through three different stages of reaction. At first, he said “hah,” then said “that’s disgusting,” and finally the octogenarian congressman reached the plain of acceptance and said, “It’s funny and I’m going to keep using it.”
Yeah it is
funny. Teabaggers. Yes definitely funny.
A while ago I was
listening to a lecture via the web from a Coastal Elitist University Professor.
It was part of a series from an upper division class on political science
around 2009-2010, I think. During the lecture, the Eggheaded Professor referred
to the members of the so-called Tea Party as "Teabaggers." This was
followed by great laughter from the students in class prompting the Egghead to
ask the class what had did he say that was funny. This happened a couple of
more times through out the semester. The
Professor would be talking about group dynamics or some other bullshit term
that over educated know-it-alls throw around to show that they are better than
the rest of us, and would use the term "teabagger" to refer to the
unwashed Tea Party protesters. Students
laughed and the Profession babbled a while in confusion wondering why people
were laughing. Since the course was upper division, and the subject matter dry,
the references to Teabaggers was probably the highlight of the semester for the
students.
However toward the
end of the semester, the Professor, having learned at some point what
Teabagging was and what Teabaggers did (preferably in private - not that there
is anything wrong with it), apologized for his earlier use of the word to the
class and expressed outrage over the fact that his local Democratic Congressman used the term in his presence at a townhall meeting. "Why lower the discourse. Why use a term
like that just to offend people, some of whom may be his constituents,"
the Egghead asked the class.
Well we have the answer now. It is funny; that's
why. Teabaggers are funny.
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