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Sexually degrading insults aimed at the Tea Party Patriots

By Scott Tibbs, March 25, 2010

We're approaching one year since the beginnings of the Tea Party movement, a name chosen to remind people of colonists who dumped tea into the Boston harbor to protest a British tax on tea. Leftists love to call Tea Party activists "teabaggers."

For those who don't know what it means (and forgive me for the graphic description) "Teabagging" is the act of a man putting his scrotum into someone else's face or mouth. "Teabagging" is a common way for players in online video games to taunt players who were "killed" in the game. Anderson Cooper of CNN certainly knew exactly what he was saying when he said during last year's protests that "It’s hard to talk when you're tea-bagging."

So why are Leftists determined to use a sexually degrading and homophobic insult to describe Tea Party activists? It lowers the level of discourse and is unworthy of inclusion in civil discourse. It is one thing for a broadcast "journalist" like Cooper to use the insult in an off-the-cuff manner on live television, but print media should filter it out. Bob Zaltsberg should have known better when he printed columns by Deke Hager and Kevin Haggerty and an "instant message" response calling the protesters "teabaggers."

Let there be no doubt that this is intended to insult based on sexual orientation. It is meant to degrade male Tea Party activists by implying they are engaged in homosexual activity. It is both ironic and hypocritical that the very same people who screech endlessly about equal treatment for and acceptance of homosexuals would use homosexuality as an insult. Would these Leftists dare insult Tea Party activists by suggesting they are partially black? Why are homosexual-rights activists not denouncing these homophobic insults?

Leftists have been known to infiltrate Tea Party rallies with intentionally inflammatory (and sometimes outright racist) signs meant to make the Tea Party movement look bad. One Bloomington Leftist bragged about doing just that last year. While some of the inflammatory signs at various protests were carried by legitimate Tea Party activists, many of the worst signs you see scattered about the Internet are scams. Because Tea Party rallies and protests are loosely-organized events where the leadership has little control over the content of the message, it is especially vulnerable to this kind of monkeywrenching. I fully expect more of the same in a couple weeks.

If Leftists think the Tea Party activists are stupid or that they are simply wrong, they could engage on the field of ideas and honestly debate the merits of Obama's public policies. By using sexually degrading insults and monkeywrenching opposition rallies, they say much more about themselves than about their opponents. What they really know is there is a lot of anger at the unprecedented deficit spending by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress elected two years before he took office. That's why Leftists are trying to personally discredit the Tea Party instead of engaging in a legitimate discussion of issues.

It is not working. Obama's poll numbers are plummeting and the Republicans are on a clear path to reclaiming the House of Representatives in November. Leftists can only blame themselves and their arrogance for that.