Somewhat unexpectedly, at least to me, my part of the world has turned into a hotbed of teabag activity. There was a major tea-ruption at a recent Dan Maffei (NY-25) townhall meeting and a friend just forwarded me an email from some winger mailing list about plans to teabag all of Eric Massa’s (NY-29) townhall meetings. I’m hoping to get friends to send me a lot of good footage of this.
Now, I have to be honest, I’m afraid there is a real fear of a teabagger going too far and doing something violent. But I also think that best chance to stop from happening is to turn this into a political liability for Republicans and that probably involves mockery.
Marc Ambinder sees the teabagging as a righteous display of God-fearing middle-American anger (neo-birfer Sully apprently agrees). The key with all of this is how it gets framed. If it continues to be framed as righteous red-state anger, it will probably continue until a teabagger shoots someone. If it’s mocked as the delusional right-wing craziness that it is, maybe it will be nipped in the bud.