Posted by
aPennyforyourthoughts on Friday, November 13, 2009 12:35:19 PM
Do you know what a tea-bagger is? I'm not sure a lot of people in Middle America do. Heck, conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham admitted last night on TV to only recently learning about it.
If you watch the news, you might believe that the citizens who have come out to protest the direction of our government under Pres. Obama's administration in general and the increasing federal deficit and expected subsequent tax increases in particular are tea-baggers.
But they're not.
Yes, they call their gatherings "Tea Parties," and their inspiration is well rooted in the history and foundation of this great nation. Even elementary children know the story of the early colonists in Boston who were angry with a government across the Atlantic Ocean that sought to tax their tea. Perhaps the slogan "taxation without representation" might ring a bell? The protest -- which saw 342 chests of tea on three shipped ceremonially dumped into the harbor's waters -- was among the pivotal events that led to the Revolutionary War and the birth of this great nation.
But they were not tea-baggers -- and not because the actual tea bag had yet to be invented.
No, the expression "tea-bagger" is slang for a sex act. Because it is important in the understanding of this column, I will explain in some (graphic) detail. The act of tea-bagging involves a man placing his scrotum on the face or in the mouth of another person and dipping it in and out, in a motion not unlike one would make with a teabag.
While often employed in consensual acts of bondage and domination, tea-bagging is sometimes used against another's will in an act of hazing or bullying. In other words, a sexual assault.
Make no mistake. This is not a case of "boys will be boys," although many times, a victim or his or her parents may want to sweep the memory under the rug. It is an actual crime, deserving of prosecution. How do I know? I talked to a special victims detective, and sadly, not for this article.
Two years ago, while on a junior high trip to our nation's capital, a student at my son's school tea-bagged another boy in a hotel room. The same hotel room my son was sharing with three boys. To the sleeping boy who shared the queen-sized bed with my son. The victim awoke to find genitals in his mouth. The accused spent the week playing pranks on all his roommates, and it culminated in this sexual assault.
Boys being boys, it took a few days before news of the assault came to the attention of adults. I cannot describe the internalized rage I felt, along with the feeling of powerlessness. In talking to the Baltimore detective, I learned that my son, as a witness, could not press charges. Neither could the school itself nor even the parents of the victim. Only the targeted boy could press the issue, and that's a lot to ask of a 13-year-old.
(As an aside, the abuser was promptly expelled from school as soon as the administrators learned and investigated the incident.)
So excuse me if I don't find the left's labeling of the Tea Party demonstrators as sexual predators amusing. It is vile and has no place in political discourse. Someone on the left with a sense of decorum (if there is anyone) ought to mention this to former Pres. Clinton, who used -- and therefore legitimized -- the term earlier this week.
The irony is that the original tea party was carried out by just 30 to 130 protesters. The modern-day tea party movement has attracted tens if not hundreds of thousands at its myriad events. You'd think that might carry some weight, at least among politicians who monitor the polls. But even a group that large finds it difficult to sway public policy despite being armed with cogent facts and on-point debate when it's been marginalized ... and lumped with sexual predators.
It needs to stop, and the request should come from every sober-thinking citizen, including those who disagree with the tea party participants.
To those who knowingly use the term, I offer a favorite saying of my father's: You have a lot of class. All of it low.