re: #522 BunnyThief

Bravo, james. I didn’t think you’d do it.

But I remember the one time I heard a Tea Partier use the term “teabag Congress,” they were referring to sending tea bags (actual little bags of tea leaves) to Congress in a conscious attempt to evoke the spirit of the Boston Tea Party tax protests of the leadup to the Revolutionary War. There was a hint of sniggering at the use of the “naughty” term, but the literalness of the term was unmistakable: actual bags, holding actual tea leaves. Not scrota and odd (and, to me, largely pointless) sex acts.

A few people involved with the movement used it. The vast majority didn’t. And very, very few now sincerely adopt the term.

And you didn’t see Ehrenstein quoting anyone about the “Magic Negro” because he was acting as an opinion columnist, not a reporter, and believed that he was the first to draw the link between Obama and the term:

s→Opinion
`Magic Negro’ returns
March 19, 2007%P%David Ehrenstein, L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.
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But it’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the “Magic Negro.”

Here’s an Obama supporter saying that Obama was trying to be the “Magic Negro.” So, if this gentleman is going to use the term, and spell out in detail how it applies, who are we to gainsay his wisdom and reject his term?

No.

I don’t use the term. I don’t like its application. I don’t cheerfully revel in repeating Biden’s words or Reid’s words, hiding under the juvenile “he said it first!” excuse.

And I won’t use “teabagger” for precisely the same reason.

I have very few areas where I can claim to be standing up for class, for decency, for basic respect, for civil discourse, for what’s right. This is one of very few.

There’s just one small problem with your comparison. “Magic Negro” is a loaded term which also lends itself to suggesting a situation in which a black guy comes along and magically solves everything for our white protagonist. Therefore the term is largely shunned and looked down upon because its racist.

“Tea bagging” on the other hand carries with it no racist connotation, it also carries with it no homosexual or homophobic connotation because its just as easy for a man to tea bag his wife as it is for one gay man to tea bag another.

So I see now way that you can imply that “teabagging” is the equivalent of “magic negro” since only one of those two terms can tap into a painful divide that still lingers in our great nation.