Obama - Teabagger - Jake Tapper | Mediaite

Obama - Teabagger - Jake Tapper | Mediaite

ABC News’ Jake Tapper took heat from “some liberal bloggers” when he contrasted President Obama’s call for civility in politics with Obama’s use of the term “tea-bagger” in a November interview for Jonathan Alter’s new book. At issue was Tapper’s failure to point out that the term was originally coined by the Tea Party movement, which he addressed in an update.

WaPo’s Dave Weigel, meanwhile, traces the movement’s attempt to frame the term as a slur. It’s time to correct the record once and for all.

Let me first address the criticism of Tapper’s story. The fact that the Tea Party movement coined the term has little relevance to Jake’s point. In comments to Mediaite yesterday, Dave Weigel summed up the civil way to deal with this:

I like to follow a policy of calling people what they want to be called — or at least don’t object to being called. This is why you don’t see me call people “teabaggers.”

Therefore, the origin of the term isn’t nearly as relevant as whether or not it is now offensive to Tea Partiers (Partyers? Spellcheck hates both), and whether Obama knew this when he said it, or knew of the term’s sexual connotations. You could criticize Tapper for not raising that question, but I think he’s giving the President credit for more intelligence than that.