Tea Bags: History as remembered

Jack was commenting on the origin of using the term "tea baggers" or "tea bagging" in reference to the various protests that coalesced under the name "Tea Party."

This is the way I remember it, so this must be the truth (for purposes of this blog anyway):

When groups began referring to themselves as the Tea Party, they also started using the tea bag as their symbol and referring to some of their activities as to 'tea bag' something or someone, as seen here in an early protest in Feb of 2009. I distinctly remember at least a few protesters referring to themselves as tea baggers who were going to tea bag the tax and spend budget buster. I knew this from articles I read on TPM at the time, before either Josh Marshall, or poor naive Clemens learned what the term REALLY means in our modern culture.

Once we were all educated to the use of the term for a sexual practice (Josh even had a clip from "Sex and the City" where the girls discuss doing this) that the liberal media hit upon it as a snide way to put down the movement.

So neither the movement nor the liberal media invented the term's sexual connotation. That apparently was already part of a part of our culture.

Since I would never want to impart a snide flavor to Sententiae I hereby declare a moratorium on the term .... at least until the next time I need to use it.

UPDATE: Just discovered this little article from NRO by Jay Nordlinger giving a brief history of the term. I love new terms.

The course of true love... etc.

Especially when you are a male Darwin's Beetle. BTW, it will make a human female appreciate the fact that male humans simply fall asleep after they are done.

and male humans appreciate the fact that they don't have to fight their way up a three mile tree to meet her. [thanks to Sullivan again]

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What IS it about Florida?

Of course, this could just be vile gossip and character assassination. Well it could be. Remember Mark Foley, the Congressman from West Palm Beach who got a little too hot in his e-mails to congressional pages? Remember the guy who replaced him? Democrat Tim Mahoney. Here's an interesting little news item about him.

FWIW: this guy's a Democrat.