Eat-Me-ology

Teabagger.

First, yes it was the Tea Party People themselves that chose the label. Even Jay Nordlinger, admits as much and he's not one to just throw away an opportunity to be outraged by liberal leftists. But that doesn't mean that folks in the Tea Party Movement can't take offense at the term. No movement is a monolith where the thoughts or expressions of one represent the entire group - despite what the right is attempting with their continual purges. In fact, the Tea Party People probably best exemplify this fact, as there seems to be no unifying element (aside from being older, whiter and more entitled than the board of trustees for an exclusive country club) amongst them. That's why they can't express what they actually want - or if they attempt to, it winds up looking like the MaineGOP Manifesto.

Okay, that out of the way - let's get going because there's a very important nuance that's beeng lost in the hooferaw about the word. The act of dunking your testicles into someone else's mouth is not what is meant by the word. Sure it may have meant that historically, ages ago, when there were few enough people willing to talk about sex that the practices of a very small minority could spawn new words.

Seriously folks, most people don't have mouths wide enough for this to be practicable - the dunking motion, obstensibly achieved by crouching up and down - this is awkward as heck. It is at best, a contrived made-up not-real sexual practice. Note: I am not saying that no one does it, in the wide and varied world that is human sexuality I would surprised if no one did it. My point is that it's non-widespread enough that it probably shouldn't have its own word. Thus teabagging is a fake sexual practice, kinda like skullfucking - it's something that doesn't actually get done.

But it is a hilarious concept - to thirteen year old boys who would probably faint from excitement if they had the opportunity to engage in oral sex. It's a joke designed to appeal to the adolescent mind - and that is how it became widespread.

Little background for the non-gamers in the audience: multiplayer gaming, especially online - is a cesspit of sociopathic offensive hate. We're talking about behaviour that make the Freepi seem almost civilized. And the pinnacle of offensive asshole-ish-ness (aside from Barrens Chat, but that's another story) is in the world of First Person Shooters. Now in the FPS genre, players typically have the ability to crouch (so as to be able to take advantage of the ubiquitous "chest-high wall"). Even in games with well developed "cover systems", a crouch ability is still included.

This is how teabagging came to be. Gamers would celebrate kills by running over to the corpses of their victims and repeated crouch over their faces - "teabagging" them. It's Urban Dictionary definition number 7. Here's a video of how it's done. Here's a video of how sophisticated the humour behind it is.

So in context, consider this photo from the Feb. 27, 2009 protest at David Weigel's old digs. The guy holding up the Tea bag sign? Tell me that's not a Halo afficiando.

So to clarify - teabagging isn't a sexual term, it's a term used by virgins to imply something sexual. It's really a juvenile way of proclaiming victory - a petty act to declare "I WON U LOST". In that sense, the term does really fit the Tea Party People and their bravado coupled with ignorance (hey there's something else the fragments of the movement share!).

Nonetheless, it's a term with a history of "Hyuk hyuk, it's funny because PENIS". Well that's my kind of humour and I'm uncomfortable sharing it with the tri-corner hat brigade. Plus it also implies that the Teabaggers are victorious anad that they are teabagging Washington or teh Soshulists or whatever their fevered imaginations view as teh ENEMY. They haven't won anything yet - even the Rand Paul nomination and the centrefold Senator elections don't really make much impact.

So, I'll be calling them the Tea Party People from here on out, or if they decide on a new name "Tea Patriots of Freedom" or somesuch, I'll use that. Or maybe I'll call them racist fuckwits, ignorant sociopaths, greedy hateful bastards or something much the same. But not "teabagger".

And I'll still roll my eyes whenever folks claim that teabagging really does mean participant in awkward and contrived oral sex practices.