Much Ado About Teabagging

WARNING AND DISCLAIMER: Though there is no nudity shown in these video clips, the subject material may skirt the boundaries of some people's conceptions of "polite company" and is a bit on the risqué side. However, if you're a fan of the clever use of double entendre, you'll likely find the following video segment from tonight's Rachel Maddow Show positively hilarious. We saw it in real time and we both laughed so hard that I was in tears by the end....

If you're not familiar with Rachel Maddow or her nightly news and commentary show on MSNBC, let me tell you, she's probably the smartest and funniest woman you'll ever see commenting on current events and politics. We watch her program religiously (she follows my other media idol, Keith Olbermann every weeknight on MSNBC) and tonight, she just totally broadsided her audience with this segment called "Insanitea." Watch it and let her explain about the current Wingnut obsession being promoted by such esteemed arbiters of political thinking as FAUX NEWS, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and others of their ilk. If you've never heard the term "teabagging" before, don't despair, because although Rachel never explains what she's really talking about, I'll do it for you after the segment. (Click on the image to play the video.)

Honestly, I don't know how Rachel managed to keep from totally cracking up while she did this piece, and her guest Ana Marie Cox did an excellent job of providing wry and knowing counterpoint to the whole segment. I couldn't have restrained my laughter had I been doing this commentary, so kudos to both these smart and sassy women!

Of course, Rachel's whole point here is to expose the sheer insanity of the "teabagging" and "going Galt" mini-movements sweeping the ultra-fringey "conservative" movement, and her basic argument is (as it often is when she comments on such matters) that they just have no idea what they're talking about. And doing this commentary tonight is a perfect example of how much fun it can be to shoot proverbial fish in a barrel. Ever since I read about these "Teabag Parties" and FAUX, Beck and Malkin's encouraging their followers to "Teabag Obama" or "Teabag the Democrats Before They Teabag You," I've chuckled many times thinking: Do they have any clue what they're saying and promoting? Thank you, Rachel, for bringing this to a wider audience and delighting your fans. In fact, when I decided to write this post tonight, I immediately tried to go to MSNBC to see if they had the video posted. It appears that they are being totally slammed (or having some other kind of outage) and I couldn't get the site to load. So I Googled "Rachel Maddow Teabagging," got a lot of returns that had the video posted, but none of them would load either. Finally, out of desperation, I tried YouTube, and voilà, someone had the whole segment posted already. (Thank you, heathr456!)

So ... what's the big joke all about? "Teabagging" is a slang term for a certain sexual practice. Without going into detail, here's what Wikipedia has to say about "Teabagging." Go read it (it's brief) ... now aren't you glad that I didn't explain that in less clinical terms on the pages of this (usually) g-rated blog? I have to admit, I had never heard the term before I saw John Water's 1998 film Pecker, in which there's a brief scene depicting the practice (rather tastefully for Waters), which I was also lucky enough to find on YouTube (click image below for video if you dare). A bit of context before we proceed ... the main character, Pecker (so named because he "pecks at his food") is just an ordinary young Baltimore man who obsessively photographs everything around him and hurtles to sudden fame with his photography, inadvertently becoming the darling of the New York artsy-fartsy crowd. In this scene, he ventures out to a gay bar where his sister works so he can photograph some of the underground Baltimore bar night life.... (The "Teabagging" begins at about the 1:23 point in the clip.)

So there you have it. This is what those of us in the know interpret as "Teabagging." Like Rachel, I wonder how long it's going to take the ultra-fringe "Teabagger" proponents to figure this one out. Personally, I find this irony so rich and delicious that I hope they never do. That just gives the rest of us more time to enjoy their antics in these admittedly depressing times. It all reminds me of that old saying: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.