“Wingnut” and “moonbat” have their place, I suppose, in the Moss Eisley cantina of Internet message boards. I don’t want the President of the United States using either one; we’re supposed to be a deliberative democracy. And “teabagger,” because of the vulgar sexual connotation the term has that the former two terms do not, is worse.

Wingnut and moonbat are usually slurs. Teabagger has a very common useage, anyone who plays first person shooters or on-line games with any frequency knows exactly what it means.

Definitely a slur. Kind of like the “call a spade a spade” business or “eenie, meanie, minie moe” which has a clear history these days, ever since the top forty song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagger if you have any question about the term …

“As a white boy myself, I can call someone else a white boy”

Dude! you’re such a racists!!!

#51, Wikipedia?? wouldn’t it depend on who wrote the paragraph?? I mean I’ve written some wild stuff in wikipedia too,

explains the difference between racism and racialism…

not only that but Borat is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!!! silly ignorant white boy Smith.

Actually they were suspended for their ignorance.

Borat’s Kazakhstanian!! And Sacha is English -and Jew.

Do you really think “teabagger” is a slur? It seems more like just a nickname to me, like “wingnut” or “moonbat.” Or are those slurs too?

What do you mean “they”? One old guy in Colorado suddenly becomes representative of everybody who ever attended a Tea Party? By that logic, everybody who ever attended an anti-war rally must endorse all those anti-Bush “Snipers Wanted” signs, etc.

You’re fighting a losing battle here, chief. The “teabagger” slur is overwhelmingly the property of the Left. If that old Colorado guy, who I strongly suspect doesn’t quite understand the vulgar connotation of the phrase the young whippersnappers have given it, is “running” with the term, it’s in the nature of trying to take an originally-insulting epithet (like “Whig” or “Tory” or “Christian” and owning it.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the “teabagger” slur is an attempt to discredit the Tea Party guys, and avoid discussing the substance of their movement, by mockery. Fools mock.

If you’d said “not necessarily” racism, I might agree with you. (I’d have to think about it.) But it can also easily be used as a method of dog whistling or race baiting. Then it is most definitely based in, or at least meant to appeal to, racism.

http://coloradoindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Picture-17.png

They still run with it. That guy, that old guy there is holding a button that says “proud to be a teabagger.”

What did happen was this: At one of the first tea party protests, one protestor carried a sign reading “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.” Ha-ha. Another slogan was “Tea Bag the Fools in D.C.” — i.e., send representatives a tea bag. I suspect the person with the sign with the first slogan knew the urban meaning of “teabag”; I’m less certain about the second, and I can guarantee that the vast majority of the protesters wouldn’t know a teabag from a Cincinnati bow tie. (Which I only know about from “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin.”) Jeanne Garafalo and some other losers picked up the slur, applied it to the whole tea party movement (none of which referred to themselves as teabaggers) and it was off to the races.

I find this absolutely typical of a certain kind of smug and juvenile leftist — the kind that reads snarky “alternative” publications like OC Weekly which are amply filled with advertisements for cannabis clubs and escort services. Fine. Let those Dirty Sanchezes have their fun with the “teabag” insult. But the President of the United States is supposed to be above this. Unfortunately, the President’s emotional age is about seventeen, so I suppose it goes with the territory.

#37 — I disagree that there is no evidence that McNabb didn’t receive disproportionate interest — that is, more interest than the usual winning quarterback — because of his race. I don’t think Limbaugh should have raised the point in that particular context — again, I think (unlike most leftists) that there should be safe spaces, untouched by politics. But I think it’s telling that this is the best leftists can do to demonize Limbaugh as a “racist.” Calling attention to others (perceived) racialism is simply not racism.

As for item #4, when the President of the United States is using the slur “teabagger” for dissenters, I’ve got little patience for prim declarations of what kind of language is “not acceptable in this society.”

Hey man, that’s the label they choose themselves. It’s not the president’s fault that there is a double entendre to that word. Maybe they should have thought of that before jumping in and calling themselves that.

Limbaugh’s explanation violates Occam’s razor. It adds an “entity” — race — when we already have a well-known, widely-accepted, simple explanation (quarterbacks get disproportionate credit for wins and blame for losses). That’s an explanation that has applied to most quarterbacks (at every level, not just the NFL) for more than half a century. Why do we suddenly need a different explanation when a black QB wins a lot of games and gets (arguably) over-hyped?

But the idea that it’s the person who calls attention to the racialism of others is himself the only one who cares about race, is not realistic.

In this case, it was to the imagined racialism of others. Limbaugh imagined that’s what the press was doing, but there was no evidence for it. And I think that the idea that when nobody else is talking about race, the one guy who brings it up is only doing so because other people somehow “made” him is very dubious.

{edit by Mormon Heretic. WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. Your moniker is bad enough, and I will personally delete any comments by you that have questionable language if I find them. I have merely removed the offensive words here, but filthy language is not acceptable here. Future messages with filthy language will be deleted from this point forward.

I have been uncomfortable with your moniker for quite some time, and your offensive language is not welcome here, nor is the name-calling which I edited out.}

There may be no “need” to think race has anything to do with the (arguably disproportionate) attention paid to Donovan McNabb, in the sense that there is no plausible alternative. But must race be excluded as a possibility, just because alternative explanations also appear? At the least, isn’t the possibility that the sports media are being influenced by racial considerations a reasonable one? If so, why is that reasonable alternative among alternatives unfit for mention in polite society?

We desperately want to believe that America has moved beyond race and its associated complications. The world we create in the media reflects what we want the world to be like. I find it hard to believe that this kind of wishful thinking never affects what is emphasized. I would rather this not be the case — I would rather we were not so obsessed with race, that it affects how we let ourselves see the world. But the idea that it’s the person who calls attention to the racialism of others is himself the only one who cares about race, is not realistic.

But on the racial part, I don’t know who Allen Barra is, but I think his comparison of McNabb with Brad Johnson makes my point better than it does Limbaugh’s. Johnson went to the Pro Bowl twice, in the only years when he won at least 10 games as a starter. McNabb has been five times, each in years when he won at least 11 games (except one year when he was injured and went 7-3). When his team stopped winning he stopped going to Pro Bowls, even though his efficiency stats were as good or better than all but one of his Pro Bowl years.

And that’s my point: winning quarterbacks get hyped. Johnson got Pro Bowls when he won; McNabb got Pro Bowls when he won too. There’s no need to think race has anything to do with it; it doesn’t explain anything that winning doesn’t already explain.

Who would even think that it’s relevant? This guy, for starters: http://www.slate.com/id/2089193/

I stand by my perception that Limbaugh’s target was not McNabb and his race, but commentators and their racialism. Limbaugh is far less concerned with race than the vast majority of his critics, who are completely obsessed by the subject.

But the problem was that it wasn’t a question of liberals and conservatives and their views on race, it was a question of football: “How good is McNabb/are the Eagles?” Limbaugh turned it into a question of racial politics. Nobody else on the show brought up race; there’s no sign that anybody else was even thinking about it. Because who would even think that it’s relevant? But that was the first place Limbaugh went, because that’s the way his mind works.