Well.. isn’t that a kick in the head….

Anderson Cooper doesn’t have any significant claim to popularizing the word. He isn’t given credit for coining it as a label for tea partiers or popularizing it by liberals (who are in a good positions to know where they themselves heard the word), he’s just been blamed for it by the right wing because he’s a gay male.

The use of “tea bag” as a verb started with some tea party organizers in expressions like “tea bag Obama!” (like on this blog: http://teabagobama.blogspot.com/ ). Naturally when people on left wing sites noticed the unintentional double entendre they started making some jokes (like the right wing no doubt would if a campaign on the left started using unintentionally laughable expressions like “Blow Bush!”). It was picked up by MSNBC TV personalities who introduced it to TV audiences and who used it extensively in discussion of the tea party rallies in footage that was broadcast and posted as clips on left wing websites. After MSNBC personalities like Rachel Maddow, David Shuster and Anna Marie Cox had already popularized the term, Anderson Cooper made one rather subtle joking reference to the label that was noticeable precisely because it had already been popularized.

The right wing blogs and press have continually wrongly credited Cooper with coining the term “tea bagging” for protesters, bringing it to TV and popularizing it. He was immediately attacked when he used the term by right wing blogs saying explicitly it was a gay term he knows because he’s gay, and they provided pics of him on the cover of the gay magazine the Advocate in their posts to drive things home.

The question is, will there be a photo of Anderson or Keith under it or over it as the case may be? BTW, if the New Oxford American Dictionary is interested in using my avatar, I will be more than happy to accommodate them.

“Anderson Cooper made one rather subtle joking reference to the label that was noticeable precisely because it had already been popularized.”

@nam, “A subtle joke”???????? Anderson was very insistent on getting that joke heard. Go back and listen to the exchange between Anderson and Gergen. Even when Gergen tried to get passed it Anderson snarkily repeated it at least three times.

So what you are saying is that as long as the others joked about it, that gave him permission to do it. Is that the excuse you are trying to make?

I’m confused, I thought Republicans wanted to dangle their testicles in the mouth of Government as a pleasurable exchange for the enormous tax burden they were paying… is there another definition for it? I’ll pay taxes, but hey can you at least suck my nuts so I can smile while I do it… that sort of thing.

It was a rather subtle joke, especially in comparison to the long sets of jokes already done by MSNBC personalities.

Maybe YOU should review the clip, Libra. He did not repeat it at all, he just slipped it in rather deftly the one time after Gergen had finished talking and Gergen started laughing. There was no effort by Gergen to “get past it” since the segment was already at an end and Anderson just threw the quip in when he was doing the wrap up. It was not even made directly about the protesters since they were talking about the republican politicians, which makes it all the more ridiculous that he gets blamed for it being a label for protesters themselves. He did not sound snarky (and he is a man who can really sound snarky), although it has been mischaracterized that way in right wing media, if you review the clip he plainly made the joke straight faced and with an even tone of voice.

I am not saying others making jokes “gave him permission”. I am saying there are true facts and false claims and Anderson Cooper being blamed for coining the term as he has been and, like in this article, blamed for any significant part in popularizing it are false claims. The false claim is also one based largely on bigotry and stereotypes against male homosexuals.

If organizers in a movement make themselves sound ridiculous inadvertently by public sexual double entendres they themselves have already invited the jokes, and I hardly think making a joke on the topic requires “permission”. Certainly FOX News personalities made negative insulting and dismissive references like “pinheads”, “just sour grapes” and “traitors” towards left wing protesters under the Bush administration and they had not had the invitation of a laughable language misstep by organizers of the left wing protests, and those references were made seriously not as jokes. If left wing protester organizers had used a slogan like “Blow Bush!” I don’t believe for a minute that right wing bloggers and FOX personalities would have abstained from mocking them with sexual double entendre jokes over it.

Anderson himself had already participated in a skit that mocked left wing Code Pink protesters before he made the tea bagging joke. The Code Pink protester was shown as a troublesome little dog wearing a pink “Code Pup” t-shirt. Anderson, appearing as himself hosting an event, announced that they didn’t have time for the dog’s agenda and “get this bitch off the stage!”. The bitch joke was an ad lib he reportedly came up with himself. You probably didn’t hear about that much because there wasn’t anyone villainizing him over that and left wing bloggers weren’t trying to attack him for making a joke about a left wing protester with his gay mouth while being gay.

@nam, Really? What clip are you listening to? Let’s take a look at the transcript from 4/14/2009 shall we?

COOPER: Tea bagging. They’ve got tea bagging.

GERGEN: Well, they’ve got the tea bagging. But there was an interesting Politico survey that was out today that said that the President — the trust level in the President on economic issues is extremely high. And, you know, everybody else in the administration is well below him.

But the Republicans are a little below that. So Republicans have got a way — they still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. They’re still — this happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.

COOPER: It’s hard to talk when you’re tea bagging.

I count 3 times for Anderson and once for Gergen.

I don’t agree with FNC’s use of the word traitor, but calling someone a “pinhead” or saying “just sour grapes” is not comparable. It doesn’t matter if he was directing it at the protesters or the politicians, it wasn’t a respectable thing to say and I hold both parties to the same standards.

I am not sure if you are suggesting that it was a serious comment or a joke? Why would he say the word “tea bagger” if he wasn’t being facetious? And why would Gergen and Velshi laugh about it if it wasn’t a snarky remark? I think people can make up their own minds when they watch the clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64Ed5iLu4M

I saw the Code Pink skit on The Daily Show. I have my doubts about Anderson’s “gayness,” but either way he works it to his advantage and definitely gets a lot of press over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if his publicist planted the info about the “rose petaled bubble bath” vacation.

BTW, I am a supporter of gay rights and gay marriage, but I am not a supporter of inappropriate vulgar language on a news program.

It simply amazes me how ignorant some people are when they make obnoxious comments. I’ll be watching Fox News Channel for more on this.In fact, the term “teabagger” has been around since the earliest days of “TEA PARTIES” and initially used by the organizers–long before the media adopted the term. In fact, they were quite proudly proclaiming that they would “teabag Obama before he teabags you”–it’s open to interpretation as to whether they had any idea of the colloquial use of the term. In any case, once the media publicized the issue and connected the term to the slang, the organizers did a 180 and stopped using it in their publicity. Either way, the term is richly deserved, as the comments here clearly attest.
Slimming Pills

Hey, I’ve got one for Oxford Press:
Rim Job: an unhinged liberal media personality without the critical thinking skills to avoid blind adherence to any Obama policy or position, causing our country to go to the edge of a very bad place.

I don’t agree with FNC’s use of the word traitor, but calling someone a “pinhead” or saying “just sour grapes” is not comparable.

Suggesting political protesters in a democracy are traitors for protesting is completely against what America stands for and the way the system is supposed to work.

The thing about the pinhead and “sour grapes” comments were that they were not only rude and dismissive, they were entirely the product of the news people making them. If the protesters were using pins in their protesting and saying “come be a pinhead!” then they would be inviting mockery and would reasonably have to acknowledge that they set themselves up even if they hastily changed their slogan to something non-silly after realizing the error.

I wasn’t saying Anderson was being serious, I was saying the FOX News people were being serious when they denounced the liberal protesters with insults. In the average person’s book, an insult is worse when it is made as a serious comment than if it is made as a jest. I did say that Anderson did the tea bag joking in a serious manner (straight face and even tone of voice), but I just meant that he was joking in a deadpan way not in a “snarky” way as it has been repeatedly described.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the full thing instead of the clip linked in this article, so I forgot the word was said three times by Anderson.

I agree with you that vulgar references don’t really belong on news, although at least the double entendre would go over the heads of kids. I do firmly believe, though, that if liberal protesters had presented the same kind of tempting opportunity by making accidental vulgar double entendre in their slogans right wing blogs and some of the FOX News personalities would make jokes similar to the tea bagging ones and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Anderson participated in that too to the same degree he did in this.

@nam, At the risk of being smacked down by Steve for talking about Anderson, I will answer your question.

I respect your opinion, but I disagree. The pinhead and sour grapes comments are mild compared to the tea bagger comment. It was inappropriate for a supposedly respectable journalist to say. IMO, people like O’Reilly and Hannity are not respectable journalists so I couldn’t care less what the hell they say, but I always thought Anderson was a respectable and decent person until he made this comment no matter who said it first or under what circumstances it occurred. As a long time Anderson admirer, I was very disappointed to hear him lower himself to this level. IMO, it doesn’t matter if it was made seriously or in a snarky way, it was still insulting and offensive. It was disrespectful to the viewers.

I have to disagree with you, I don’t believe that Anderson would have taken part in any off color jokes about Obama or the Democrats, he is much too loyal to them. He uses every opportunity to make excuses for them or to downplay their bad judgment. For example why is he wasting time on Palin and ignoring the fact that Obama is taking over the investigation of the Ft. Hood attacks and barring the Congress from getting the information so that they can have a hearing on it? Anderson is downplaying this attack just like Obama has.

I have one question, what do you think Anderson’s intent was when he made that remark? I cannot think of an acceptable reason. I think he was just playing to his pro Obama base. The excuse he gave at the Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture that the tea party protesters used the term first doesn’t make it any more acceptable, it just makes him sound childish and irresponsible.

@Steve, Feel free to delete this comment if you must.

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