On the eve of Thanksgiving, Tonight Show host Jay Leno appeared to be goading his guest and interview subject Cher into sharing her thoughts on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. Cher seemed to not want to take the bait, recognizing her true thoughts would get her into trouble. Only until she realized that Leno was seeking a “water cooler moment” did she provide her honest opinion.

The Tea Party does not like the term “teabag.” That’s one thing that the party and Conservative pundits can pretty much all agree on. However, there are a few distinct moments when using it is okay. 1) When Rush Limbaugh is using it. 2) When he’s using it to attack Barack Obama. 3) When you’re, you know, actually drinking tea. And 3) When it’s kind of hilarious. During a discussion of all the TSA junk touching today, Limbaugh managed to his three out of four.

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?

I already posted most of my interview with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas following his panel discussion at the liberal America’s Future Now! conference, but the last two topics are such hot buttons for conservatives, I thought they deserved their own post.

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.

A Saturday afternoon Fox News report revealed much about the situation on the ground at the Tea Party Convention this weekend in the lead up to Sarah Palin‘s keynote address. The Fox reporter, though, was careful to note that this convention is by no means representative of the entire movement, focusing on the issue of the Birthers, who believe President Obama is not a natural born citizen and are a cause for concern among conservatives wishing to focus more on substantive (factual?) issues.

Rachel Maddow was not pleased with the National Tea Party Convention’s opening speech from Rep. Tom Tancredo — a “big, loud racist bang,” she called Tancredo’s advocacy for a literacy test for voters. “People who could not even spell the word vote, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House,” Tancredo said, leading Maddow to compare the crowd to the Ku Klux Klan.

Who: Jeffrey Toobin, Calvin Trillin, Janeane Garofalo and Jonathan Alter, moderated by Andy Borowitz What: The Andy Borowitz Report: Obama’s First Year Where: 92nd St. Y When: January 27, 2010 Thumbs: Up Host/moderator Andy Borowitz set the tone for the evening with ten minutes of stand-up comedy at the top of the event. It sent [...]

For a third straight night, Countdown host Keith Olbermann pressed his attack against Scott Brown, whom he first called “racist” and “homophobic,” among other things, then apologized for not attacking harder. Last night, he noted that defenders of Brown had accused him of lying, but offered no refutation. He then laid out the proof of his claims in his new “quick comment” segment and dared someone to disprove him. I’ll give it a shot.

A segment from last night’s Countdown is generating a lot of heat in the conservative blogosphere, with the general consensus being that Keith Olbermann cried “Racism!” on the Massachusetts special election, and cited Scott Brown’s pickup truck as an example.

I watched the exchange between Keith and Howard Fineman last night, and I don’t think the right is being fair to Keith. In fact, I think they might owe him an “attaboy” or two.

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.

Frank Rich, in today’s New York Times op-ed “The Great Tea Party Rip-Off,” argues that a grassroots movement is being exploited, not only by politicians seeking election, but by companies, marketers and lobbyists. “Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement,” Rich writes skeptically, wondering if the group is “being co-opted by hucksters.”

At yesterday’s White House Briefing, Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the Tea Party protest that was occurring on Capitol Hill yesterday. Gibbs responded by saying that he was tempted to make a joke about Tea Party speaker Jon Voight. Despite cajoling, he resisted. Despite that, we couldn’t resist an attempt to get him to clarify.

Rachel Maddow took some time on her show to vet a number of yesterday’s Bachman rally highlights, including Rep. John Boehner’s constitutional misstep, as well as offering up some questionable past statements from rally goers like Mark Levin who recently described Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor as “Ruth Bader Ginsburg plus about 50 pounds.”

President Obama just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to holding the nation’s attention with details of his health care plan. Perhaps the President should embrace an ‘if you can’t beat’em, join’em’ mentality and stage his own outburst. It may be a good last resort before all is lost. Consider this.