by Damozel | How many times can Maddow say "teabagging" in a single sentence? Teabagging, teabagging! Maddow can barely control her tendency to grin, then gives up trying. Meanwhile, guest Ana Marie Cox thinks David Vitter is totally the right spokesman for the movement.
There is only one thing in all the world worth noting about the people behind these things, and it is this: everyone involved is apparently unaware of what the term "teabagging" means. As you will see, this is not the case with Maddow and [Ana Marie] Cox.
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Please, nobody tell them what it really means.
Meanwhile, conservative Andrew Sullivan crossly points out that the actual aim of all this ritual teabagging ain't exactly clear. Why do the conservatives rage, whilst waving teabags?
Oh, Andrew Sullivan. Why ask why? Anyway, he shares his four hypotheses. Then he says.
As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.
These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.
DougJ of Balloon Juice has the dusty answer from Human Events, complete with merchandise. To which commenter Tymannosaurus responds:
You sure "T.E.A." isn’t the new Republican slogan:
Everything
Already?
TBogg has more on free merchandise being given away free and gratis by Pajamas Media to lead teabag tantrum organizer willing to walk around in a shirt proclaiming him -- or her -- to be a "teabag master."
The money must just be rolling in because the lead Tax Day Tea-Party
organizer in each congressional district is about to become the proud
recipient of a Escalade... Segway... Kindle... collectible RedState coffee mug... commemorative t-shirt.
Did the original Boston tea party organizers get t-shirts? I don't think so.
Especially T-shirts with an Asian/ninja theme (no, I don't know why).
Did I mention that these are being handed out by Pajamas Media to the lead organizers absolutely free? Free like the freedom which our Founding Fathers fought to win!
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For all of you intellectually-challenged people: WE THE PEOPLE, are sick & tired of the MASSIVE SPENDING!!! Because it is on the taxpayer's back!! And our children & grandchildren! This is nothing to do with Parties.... Can you people not see what these people are really enraged about? If you can't, then you're not very SMART!!!
Posted by: blatz_rox | April 11, 2009 at 08:11 AM
All of you are just angry because Joe taxpayer can have his say & be heard. This is a grassroots movement because we are sick of the GOVERNMENT telling us what to do with OUR MONEY! And FOX NEWS is brave enough to cover it!!
Posted by: blatz_rox | April 11, 2009 at 08:25 AM
Hmmm...WE THE PEOPLE...last time I looked, I was We the People too, and it seems like We the People elected Obama and the Democrats in droves last November. Who knew Republicans could be such sore losers? And where were you guys when W was taking Clinton's massive budget surplus and turning it into the largest deficit in history? Not about Parties? Me thinks not.
Posted by: Jennifer | April 11, 2009 at 10:09 AM
It's funny how those who think "their voice" is being preserved for Fox News and their pals, are just a pawn. Fox News and those they pal around with have told you what your voice is, cue conservative rage, without telling you why you are speaking at all. Sorry dudes but your party screwed it all up and hey that makes me mad too! Instead of "tea-bagging" the white house, why not send all that merchandise to W's front door, or Eric Cantor, hmmm what about Cheney? The list isn't exhaustive of course but hey tell them how you feel. Next time pick your own voice...
Posted by: April Johnsen | April 11, 2009 at 10:13 AM
How can you even spew such garbage and try and belittle people for expressing their outrage at the fiscal irresponsibility going on in Washington or the debt that they are laying on future generations. How about the fact that they are passing these emergency Robbery bills without even reading them. And tell me when did building a bridge on the campus of Microsoft become a Federal government matter. Perhaps you are OK with the way that they are wasting your money but many of us are not and we want our voices heard. But then again you probably are for disregarding the Constitution and in favor of our new form of Capitalism that embraces private profits and public losses.
Posted by: Robert Muehlbauer | April 12, 2009 at 08:25 AM
Posted by Robert Muehlbauer: "you probably are for disregarding the Constitution and in favor of our new form of Capitalism that embraces private profits and public losses." All of that went on for 8 years under Bush. Where were your "tea parties" then? The Constitution has been more closely followed in the last 3 months than in all of the previous 8 years, and much of the spending under the current administration is just the chickens of Bush's fraudulent budgets coming home to roost (Iraq war off the books; huge expansion of entitlements; tax cuts without corresponding cuts in spending -- "deficits don't matter", said Rove and Cheney). You'd have more credibility if you'd spoken up a lot sooner. Now you just sound like sore losers.
Posted by: Reality-based | April 12, 2009 at 10:36 AM
Paul Krugman pointed out yesterday that one of the teabaggers' sponsors, Freedom Works:
"is basically Dick Armey with a lot of Koch-Scaife-Bradley-Olin support."
Meanwhile, the teabaggers are going out and letting themselves be used and manipulated to help the top five-per-centers.
Posted by: Maryanne | April 12, 2009 at 01:31 PM
It sure is funny to hear the right talking about teabagging, but it's also interesting in a way - I was just listening to an episode of The Joan Kenley Show (progressive Bay Area podcast) called "The Media: What’s True, What’s Not" (http://www.joankenley.com/20090411.html) that addressed how the right-wing corporate media will use catch phrases (like "socialism") and single-line branding to manipulate the information we hear. After getting in touch with all the ways that's worked for them, it's kinda nice to see this entry about a way it clearly is working against them!
Posted by: Lateralgal | April 12, 2009 at 03:19 PM
Funny that during the previous 8 years if you criticized spending or the way the administration ran the country at all you were labeled "unpatriotic" and now when they have sour grapes they want to hope our country fails (that is what will happen if Obama failed), spew complete lies and commit libel against our President daily, call anyone who is for progress a Socialist, and claim to be Christian when they are so not acting like it. First I would like to ask what "too big to fail" means. Last I checked it means we've socialized the risk by allowing huge corporations who are top heavy and will fail if we don't bail them out, to exist. They received record profits, money that would've paid the debt down had the taxes stayed the same, but no they'd rather the money end up in a few pockets. Now they complain about deficits and spending but how did that happen? The low and middle class are tired of getting the short end of the stick. We pay a disproportionate amount of taxes when compared to those who can afford to. If you don't want deficits then give up some extra cash because that is the only way we're going to pay it down. We've taken the money for the govt and given it to the rich. All that money they received really was a case of marginal utility anyway and it would've went to a better cause to pay down the debt or improve the lives of some communities. I don't mind taxes, I like clean water, nice roads, affordable school, building inspectors, meat inspectors, libraries, freeways, street lights, parks, trees and flowers in the medians, firefighters, police officers, cheap gas, the judicial system, art museums, natural history museums, lakefronts and oceansides, vaccinations, public health nurses, hospitals, and the list goes on and on. If you want to be greedy and keep it all to yourself fine, but please don't call yourself a Christian then, first you need to read the book of James and change your viewpoint as such. Also Jesus was a socialist, read the parable of the workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) and read the text Luke 12:48. Stop hijacking my religion stinkin hypocrites.
Posted by: Zurie | April 12, 2009 at 09:32 PM
@Zurie I am afraid your interpretation of the parable of the workers in the Vineyard is very odd given the facts laid out in the parable. Read the reasoning in Matthew 20:13-15...
'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
... That is about as pro freedom of contract and private property rights as you can get. The land owner is saying that they freely contracted with him for a given amount and have no right to complain since he upheld his end of that contract... he also says that it is his money and he can do with it as he sees fit.
Then 2:16 says "So the last will be first, and the first will be last."... and salvation may not be perceived as "fair" but it is His prerogative as God to distribute blessings as he sees fit... it is God's wisdom and I won't claim to understand it.
As for Luke 12:48, I think you are taking it completely out of context. It is about being a good steward of what is entrusted to you...
In addition, the beginning of you post seems quite full of anger... perhaps you feel it is "righteous anger," but it seems far too partisan for that. I agree with you that the term "too big to fail" is a false socialization of risk.... and wrong!! No person or institution is too big to fail... not AIG and not GM, not the administration and not Congress, not the British Empire and not the USA. We should not bail ANY of them out... and while it may cause some severe short-term pain, longer-term we would all be the better off for it... companies would be far more careful in the future and not rely on some "implicit" government guarantee.
Finally, I find your understanding of taxation very disturbing. This post from the NYT shows that the top 20% of earners pay 5 times as much as the bottom 20% as a percentage of income (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/how-much-americans-actually-pay-in-taxes/). However, I will agree that the really very rich and powerful (I include the Bushes, the Clintons, and the Obamas in this category along with "titans of industry" like Buffett and Gates) often do not earn "income" per say and thus pay the far lower capital gains rates and/or are able to afford tax attorneys that help them legally pay even less taxes. Of course, Gates and Buffett then have the audacity that they don't pay enough taxes... implying rates should be raised, knowing full well they would find the loop holes... not to mention that no one is stopping them from paying more!
Paying taxes is not an act of generosity as you seem to imply Zurie... it is an act of compulsion! While good things may be done with that money, it is not charity! Neither you, nor the government, has the right to be generous/charitable with other people's money. By supporting/electing people who believe in "spreading the wealth around" as Obama does (and clearly Bush did as well based on his policies), we are essentially empowering the government to commit theft on our behalf and calling it "charity." Just because the government is doing the dirty work of taking by force doesn't eliminate our complicity and culpability. I repent of that, and will do my utmost to avoid supporting such people in the future. Charity is both a moral duty and a privilege, but it can not be imposed upon people or it it ceases to be charity.
Posted by: Marcus Mateus | April 12, 2009 at 11:34 PM
I was including every kind of tax not just income tax and proportionally people who make less pay more of their income on all types of taxes. BTW everyone interprets the Bible in their own way and I find it odd you did not talk about the book of James. Jesus speaks against the rich and their foolishness all the time, all over the place. I guess I feel everyone deserves a fair shake. It also says in the book of Genesis that if anyone of your people becomes poor you are to treat them as you would a guest in your land. Stop trying to find excuses for greed dude look where it got us.
Posted by: Zurie | April 13, 2009 at 12:02 AM
@Zurie At no point was I excusing greed... I said charity is "both a moral duty and a privilege" (which James makes clear)... that is not excusing greed. However, there is no virtue in giving if someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to do it.... and similarly there is no virtue in holding a gun to someone else's head and forcing them to give. Are you excusing taking by force from someone else because they really "should" have been "charitable" and given it away??
I fully agree that greed had a lot to do with getting us into this mess... that combined with a great deal of irresponsibility... why not simply let those people who were greedy and irresponsible fail... for their irresponsibility and greed they should loose their company, their investment, their job, or their house as appropriate. Not that we shouldn't then help them get back on their feet afterwards, but helping them avoid the consequences of their decisions isn't really helping them (from AIG to GM, from the CDO trader to the person who bought way more house than they could afford)
Posted by: Marcus Mateus | April 13, 2009 at 12:59 AM
I wish we could just "let them fail", I would love to see those who screw up get fired instead of bonuses. I am afraid, however, that those who could've stopped us from having to bail these companies out failed to act in time either because of ignorance or because they just did not care. Allowing companies to become so big that they can topple the global market is a horrible idea. When I was a young, naive adult in 2001 and the "mini-recession" hit even I could see we were putting off today what we shouldn't wait to do tomorrow. When the stock market magically hit high numbers with no new product or ingenious idea, I figured it was Enron-esque number adjusting and it would fall eventually. If I as a 18 year old with very little economic background could figure that out, I would think a team of ivy-league graduates could figure that out. I believed Bush both times and I'm quite bitter that my vote was spat on and those who put them in power were the ones demonized and villianized. Everyone has a right to make money, yes. I don't believe that should be to the detriment of everyone else. I also don't think that those who make it possible, the workers, should lose out while some guy who probably never got his hands dirty, makes off with millions of dollars. How can we look ourselves in the mirror and talk about how great our country is, how prosperous our country is when we have one child starving. I feel like the right stole my religion and not only misrepresented my beliefs, totally went against what Christ was about. How can we expect to be blessed when we don't love our neighbor? There is no "but" in his vocabulary and I feel it is time we speak out about the "puppetmasters".
Posted by: Zurie | April 13, 2009 at 06:55 PM
"Love One Another, as I Have Loved You". If we all could step out side our own reflection, We would reconinize the Common Ground, and Simularities we share with those who have wronged us,.We could see our own behaviors, their manifistations, intended unintensionly,reveiling us our painfull or neglecited past or present, allows us ,to trully "Love Our Enemie" using the compassionate heart of Christ whom suffered wrong doing, judgement and death, conquired all evil through compassion,forgiveness and most of all, agape love.
Posted by: Tammy Cutler | June 30, 2009 at 03:10 PM