Liberty Street Downtown

To quote from the Chronicle’s Comments Policy…

“sufficient reasons for removal of a comment and/or suspension of commenting privileges: writing something that is slanderous, in poor taste, off-topic, gratuitously profane…”

…and yet the “Stopped. Watched.” above drops a slanderous, in-poor-taste, and gratuitously profane insult against those who supposedly were expected at the tax protest.

Would appreciate and respect it very much if you would stand by your own professed comments policy, remove his vile submission from your site, and hopefully “suspend” the submitter.

Re: [1]. I suspect that the vast majority of Chronicle readers might be somewhat flummoxed by the objection to a standard -er word formation in American English. For those who are not, I think the principle of The Chronicle’s commenting policy that applies here is this: Be Generous. Specifically, that includes generosity with respect to the interpretation of Bill Merrill’s description. I would venture that it can only be parsed as an insult if you presume to know the contents of Merrill’s mind — which I do not, despite the fact that I do have some limited social acquaintance with him. Given that I am familiar with the slang term, yet did not make a connection to it on approving the original Stopped.Watched. item, I think it’s fair to say that a profane interpretation is not the most immediately available understanding of the description.

When a person uses *that* word in *that* way in a public statement, it is perfectly reasonable and “common sense” to infer that it means *exactly* what it appears to mean.

Especially when the exact same obscenity is being used widely by “the left” in recent days, and accompanied by assorted sexual double entendres (looking at you, MSNBC), in an attempt to denigrate and marginalize these tax protests and their participants.

link to CBS story

Apparently folks were handing out tea bags (referencing the Boston Tea Party) as part of a tax protest at some locations.

My Stopped and Watched submission was composed for brevity and no other purpose.

David,

I wonder what it is you find profane about the entry?

My biggest concern about the protests is their seeming lack of focus; they also seem a bit late, don’t you think?

Given the news referring to it as ‘teabagging day’ for a while, I don’t see what’s wrong with the comment. I laughed when I read this. I don’t see how it’s slanderous, in poor taste, or anything.

I will reference the urban dictionary for “teabagger”

link to definition

not safe for work, you are warned.

The Grey Lady reports

“Rain-streaked tea bags hung from the umbrellas and eyeglasses of protesters as Tea Party Day got off to a soggy start along the East Coast on Wednesday. ”

The original protest, of course, used loose tea link to Boston Tea Party

and if you were going to be all ann-arbor about it you’d scatter locally harvested mint or catnip tea into the air.

Technically the word tea only refers to the actual tea plant – from wikipedia: “Tea refers to the agricultural products of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods. “Tea” also refers to the aromatic beverage prepared from the cured leaves by combination with hot or boiling water[1], and is the colloquial name for the Camellia sinensis plant itself.”

If you use herbs, it is a Tisane.

And many of us have been laughing about this reference to teabagging — for other reasons – for weeks. Even us herbalists.

And to think I subscribed to this fishwrap believing it was a family paper!

Oh, wait, I haven’t donated to the tip jar in a month or two. Off to do that now.

Linda Diane, do you really believe Wikipedia? Come on. There are some weird people typing things into wikis these days.

“Tea” is the colloquial name for a wide variety of brewed hot beverages that are not coffee; if you want to call it herbal tea, you call it herbal tea, not by the french name. (Or you call it Krautertee which you can buy by that name at TeaHaus).

Ed, I do take wikipedia with a grain of salt but I stand by the information, which is technically correct. Even though common usage is destroying the distinction. Dictionaries favor this strict definition as well.

But even when I teach about teas, tisanes, infusions, decoctions of leaves, roots, bark, flowers, and seeds people tend to call it all tea no matter the plant, no matter the process. It is a losing battle, I know.

Now, if you look up teabagging on wikipedia… Rachel Maddow is included in the listing. Politics can be very funny.

This thread is just so, so Ann Arbor. It makes me happy.