The Media Research Center detailed the teabagging references in an informative press release. The Huffington Post noted the references as well as more “jokes” in the same vein (including a video of Cooper’s jape, over which David Gergen cluelessly chortles).

While sitting in for Keith Olbermann on April 15, MSNBC’s David Shuster packed the teabagging puns into his report on the protests. Shuster is like a juvenile student who has commandeered the loudspeaker system at his high school to commit the prank of a lifetime. Maybe it was just a case of Olbermann’s writers feeding Shuster the same good stuff they usually give to Olbermann.

Andrew Sullivan is giddy; he seems to think the phenomenon is a big ball of fun.

There is something funny going on here, if not exactly where Cooper, Maddow and Sullivan find it. Cooper is widely reputed to be homosexual. Maddow and Sullivan are of course public homosexuals. It is funny in an ironic sort of way that these folks choose to disparage the tea party protestors from somewhere inside the homosexual subculture. Why not just call the protestors girly boys and let everyone in on the joke? Or would that spoil the fun?

via Power Line – An obscene insult.

Or Rachel Maddow pointing out the fact that the right-wing over on Fox News actually called their astroturf protest action “teabag the White House” – and that the commentators were only responding to the stupidity.

So, Scott Johnson, just because you didn’t bother to realize that your side actually started this by calling themselves teabaggers, doesn’t make this fault of Maddow, et al. Sometimes when you do something stupid, you laugh at yourself and move on, hopefully learning something in the process.

John McCain thinks that the health of the mother is meaningless.

Based upon his Congressional record, here’s what a John McCain women’s health clinic would look like:

That’s right:

• No prescription birth control
• Abstinence-only Sex Education
• No Abortion

These views are extreme and far outside the mainstream thought on this important issue.  But that’s the Maverick McCain for you.