Bags?

[blucher]

.....................

?Learn to Speak Tea Bag? ran on my usual client sites, including NPR, which really set off the guys over here, here (note Condi giving child flowers down by "donate" button), here, here and here. Before you could say, ?due to a pre-existing condition, your health coverage has been denied,? there was a full-fledged viral campaign by right-wing media outlets and blogs to jump, scream and shout about this animation. Which, to me, is just great!
I say that not because I get some thrill out of receiving emails that are in all capital letters or have more exclamation points than letters in the alphabet, I say that because one of the most important functions of a political cartoon, or political animation, is to foster a discussion. With thousands of comments posted, loads of emails and tweets, discussion was definitely fostered, and then some. It?s the ?then some? that worries me.
Of course discussion on the web is not known for its civility, but it finally dawned on me the strangeness of receiving death threats at the same time a crazed Somali extremist tried to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Muslim extremist, meet Tea Party extremist. Tea Party extremist, meet Muslim extremist.
That is not to say all people who associate with the Tea Party movement are killers, just as not all Muslims from Somalia are killers. I have very good friends from Somalia, and I have wonderful relatives in Idaho who are pro-gun, anti-government conservatives.
People in this world, my dear Tea Baggers, are not always categorized into easy boxes of Left vs. Right, Socialist vs. Patriot.
As a matter of fact, I myself am a left-leaning, pro-gay-marriage San Franciscan, Catholic, anti-Bush, anti-Nader guy who guts his own fish, has cut down trees with a chain saw and took political science classes with Mary Cheney. Is your head imploding yet?
Surprisingly, one of the aspects of the animation that seems to really enrage the Tea Party set is the term ?Tea Bag.? Their claim is that the cartoon uses ?bag? instead of ?party? in order to take a cheap sexual shot at the Tea Party patriots. You can do your own research on the alternative meaning of ?tea bag,? I won?t link to anything here. Oh, except maybe I should link to some Tea Whatever sites that use the very term that appalls them so. Here a bag, there a bag, everywhere a bag bag! (Too bad the sexual angle eliminates any discussion of why the Tea Party crew thinks attempting to reform a disastrous health care system amounts to Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, etc.)
Another aspect of the rabid criticism is that NPR, an organization living high on the hog thanks to the mother?s milk of government (animal metaphors, all around!), should not be funding my anti-Tea Bagger cartoons with taxpayer money. But alas, NPR does most of its villainous work using sponsorship, pledge drives and good ol? fashioned Capitalism! According to the NPR site, a tiny one to two percent of their yearly funding comes via grants from crazed Socialist organizations like the National Science Foundation, CPB and (gasp!) the NEA. After all is said and done, the amount of taxpayer money that changed hands because NPR posted ?Learn to Speak Tea Bag? was about, um . . . two-dollars and twenty-five cents.

: Mark Fiore

Learn to Speak Tea Bag - YouTube

Learn to Speak Tea Bag - YouTube