This morning, my piece on the Audi “green police” ad made its way onto the Drudge Report. Grist got crushed with traffic, and as always when my work drifts into the rightosphere, I got some choice emails. Most emailers objected to my use of the terms “teabag” and “teabaggers.” Appaaarently, there’s some sort of deviant sex act that goes by that name. Not sure why all the tea, er, partiers know this …

More serious thoughts below, but first, some of my favorite excerpts:

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Davids comments about the”teabagers” is just what a left wing commie would say…. just because we believe in freedom, limited government and the fact the government is not there to take care of us from cradle to grave…we believe and will defend the CONSTITUTION” david must be a little commie geek who is scared of the sun and people…. I guess that why he writes a blog in the basement of his moms home … he probably is on food stamps, collect welfare, gets tax payer financed health care and has an illegal alien up his ASS.. and gets “medical” pot… you will one day grow up to be a big boy or if you stay in your moms basement a mushroom… so go suck your moomies teet you commie ass wipe!

… would David Roberts ever step out from behind internet anonymity and say these things to someone’s face. My guess is he is just another unaccomplished fat-ass.

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But, if he is up to the challenge I will travek anywhere in the US for a chance to meet so he can prove otherwise.

You are obviously a gay-basher, as you use the term derisively to demonize your enemies. You also show your ignorance and your inability to accept reality. Therefore, you are irrelevant in the discussion. Please shut up.

Please inform Mr. Roberts that if he wishes to be viewed as someone who actually knows what he is talking about, the people he refers to are “Tea Partiers”, as in the modern reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War’s movement for liberty and freedom against tyranny. They are not “teabaggers”, which he ought to know full well is a vulgar term. Are you really this stupid? Or simply that arrogant?

Tea Bagger is a slanderous sexual term that is associated with oral sex with a man. ‘Tea bags banging against her chin’ Get it? Bill ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ Clinton referred to tea baggers for the sheer sake of being rude and classless. Was that your intention? I dare your writer to walk up to a six foot Tea Party participant and call them a tea bagger, your writer wouldn’t and should not leave with his teeth.

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Dear Teabaggers,

I am not an anthropologist and you are not some tribe whose folkways I’m professionally obliged to examine but never judge or disrupt. Angry white southerners with a victim complex and a sense of entitlement don’t date back to the American Revolution, but they sure aren’t new, and their record is pretty clear. While I’m sure there are exceptions, for the most part you’re a force for reactionary nihilism and irrationalism in American life and the world would be a better place if the media quit fawning over you.

So yeah, I know “teabaggers” is demeaning. It’s also pretty funny.

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You get to demean American public life; I get to demean you. If it’s any consolation, you’re winning.