Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was barely even over when some conservatives on Twitter began clamoring for stories about offensive signs at the rally, which only seems fair given the attention paid to offensive Tea Party signs. However, like comparing Restore Sanity‘s Funniest Signs with the funny (for a different reason) Tea Party signs, it only seems fair.

Still, there were a few signs that drew outrage (faux and otherwise), and one that would have if I’d been able to get a sh

After a week of good behavior brought on by the presence of “Tea Party Person” Dana Loesch, Real Time with Bill Maher returned to “Teabagger”-baiting with a renewed gusto. Besides returning to the free and frequent use of the Liptonian metaphor, Real Time panelist Rob Reiner deployed a guest bogeyman that’s also popular with the Tea Party: Hitler.

Real Time host Bill Maher, who normally says “teabagger” more frequently than a foreman on a Lipton assembly line, was on his best behavior last night for “Tea Party Person” (and Hottest Conservative New Media Woman) Dana Loesch. Both he and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas, another aficionado of the term, studiously avoided using the Tea Party-coined-then-rejected appellation throughout most of the show, obviously in deference to Loesch.

Lance Baxter, the voice actor who was fired by Geico for a nasty voicemail he left in Freedomworks’ inbox, is following up his “Teabagger Boogie” with a new ad that takes aim at the Tea Party group’s president, Matt Kibbe. He starts out by scoring a few amusing, if simplistic, points on the Tea Party, but it soon becomes clear this is an exercise in personal score-settling when his Kibbe character says he thinks his subtle, side-burn-fueled attempt to get laid “is working on Tabitha.”

Who is Tabitha, and why is Lance Baxter flashing her picture as Matt Kibbe’s object of lust?

President Obama’s use of the term “teabagger” in an interview last November has some people up in arms about the lack of civility from the Democrats, not least of which is Sean Hannity. Hannity had the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell on the program to discuss the offensive nature of the word and the lack of outrage from the media on the issue, and Bozell agreed, noting that if George W. Bush were tossing “gay slurs” around like that, the media would be all over him. Wait a second– gay slur?

At today’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked, by CNSNews.com reporter Fred Lucas, to comment on President Obama‘s use of the term “tea-bagger” in an interview for Jonathan Alter‘s book. Gibbs replied that he hadn’t read it. I followed up by asking Gibbs if he could find out if the President was aware of the controversy, or if he had any comment about his word choice. Short reply: Not a tea bag’s chance in hell.

ABC News’ Jake Tapper took heat from “some liberal bloggers” when he contrasted President Obama‘s call for civility in politics with Obama’s use of the term “tea-bagger” in a November interview for Jonathan Alter‘s new book. At issue was Tapper’s failure to point out that the term was originally coined by the Tea Party movement, which he addressed in an update.

Recently-fired Geico voiceover actor Lance Baxter has posted a video response to all of the “tea-baggers” who got him fired for leaving a message on Freedomworks’ voicemail asking what percentage of the Tea Party were “mentally retarded,” and how they would spin it when one of them finally killed someone. While he may have a decent point or two, Baxter is in no position to play the hero here.

On today’s “This Week” roundtable, The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel invoked the term “tea-bagger,” prompting a disgusted protest from Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson. Vanden Heuvel’s response was to plow through Carlson’s objections, a strategy which, no doubt, delighted liberals and infuriated conservatives. The term “tea-bagger” has become a gargantuan red herring, almost a “red spermwhale,” if you will.

A big story for the coming year is not just the mid-term election, but how the growing Tea Party movement will affect the elections. MSNBC host Chris Matthews did his best to explore this issue, but revealed more about both his ignorance on the matter and his bias towards the group (derisively referring to them as “teabaggers.”)

Last night on her show, Rachel Maddow dedicated an entire segment to tracing the etymological history of the right-wing campaign. In addition to the “often entertaining in-fighting among all of the warring tea party factions,” Maddow noted, a new question has come to the forefront: “Should the Tea Party folks really be calling themselves ‘teabaggers?’” The National Review worries, while Maddow and MSNBC keep chuckling.

On Monday, we reported that the New Oxford American Dictionary had named “teabagger” a runner-up for its “Word of the Year.” Notably missing from Oxford’s definition was any mention of the term’s other meaning. We contacted Oxford University Press to find out why, and the answer is sure to either please, or disappoint, the MSNBC anchors who put “teabagger” on America’s lips.

As we noted on Monday, “teabagger” was one of the runners-up for the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year. From the start, it threatened to get more buzz than the winner, the trendy/techy neologism “unfriend.” Enter: Keith Olbermann.

In a press release touting “unfriend” as the word of the year, the New Oxford American Dictionary may have unwittingly made a more controversial move than the New Oxford American Dictionary pretty much ever does. No, it wasn’t another cutesy tech neologism: they included “teabagger” as one of their Word of the Year finalists. Their definition after the jump — it doesn’t include some of the raunchier connotations.

By virtue of being Alan Colmes, you know that Alan Colmes has to be a bit of a masochist. For more than twelve years, he endured the unenviable ‘liberal whipping boy’ slot on Hannity & Colmes – and, by extension, on all of Fox.