CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller revived the use of a
vulgar sexual term to refer to Tea Party protesters on
Saturday afternoon via Twitter [1]: "Obama's motorcade arrives at
Capitol Hill. Boos and jeers passing tea bagger protests."
A last-minute demonstration, organized by a coalition of 30 conservative
organizations [2] and featuring actor Jon Voight, filled the West Lawn
of Capitol Hill on Saturday afternoon. President Obama arrived later in
the afternoon to meet
with Democratic congressmen [3], and the chief executive encountered
the shouts of the conservative protesters as he entered the halls of
Congress.
CNN's Anderson Cooper was among the first to use the "tea-bagging" or
"tea-bagger" term almost a year ago on April 14, 2009 [4]. Since then,
the vulgar reference has been used by many liberal members of the
mainstream media, including Chris Matthews [5] and Keith Olbermann [6] of MSNBC, CNN's Candy Crowley [7], and more recently, by left-wing radio flamethrower Mike Malloy [8].
-Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You
can follow him on Twitter here [9].
