A Haft Made of Dudgeon

Just when I was calming down!

In large part, the deescalation in my gastric acid production is attributable to not reading or listening to the rhetoric of the extreme right, the crazed element of the conservative movement. I think they're well represented as assorted PacMan Blinkies, chowing down on whatever gets in the way.

I plan on using this long PacMan video as a point de repère for mindful meditation -- now that my Palm has died a good, but lingering, death and I no longer have recourse to Crazy Daisy. You see, it wasn't under warranty; It had no recourse, no place to go. I was awesome at Crazy Daisy and on endless mode, it kept me calm and distracted (but way zen-focused) even when in intense pain.




So, uncentered and bereft of handheld technology, I decided to follow some demented Twitter feed... and ran smack dab into this:

Nobody likes a racist…
Nobody likes a race hustler either.

On Saturday March 20th the leftist media reported what they described as a horrible story from their sources at the anti-military Jew-hating conservative-hating Huffington Post. The media claimed that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called n*ggers and spat on by tea party protesters as they walked from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building. At least one report said that it was “a chorus” of racist hatred. Another report said the Congressional members heard the n-word at least 15 times. Reporters from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, (including Bill O’Reilly), MSNBC, and so on, repeated this horrible story.

Unfortunately, it was a fake. The media had no evidence… Nothing. As the story was a complete fabrication. It was totally made up.
[....]
Last Wednesday, video was released that confirmed the spitting incident was bogus, too.

Dan Riehl reported:

There’s some higher resolution video... I hadn’t seen before. Unlike what was claimed during recent Tea Party protests in Washington, DC, it would appear Cleaver was simply walking close by in front of a protester. The protester’s hands were cupped as he was shouting. While it appears Cleaver may have experienced a spraying of sorts as a result of the yelling, it does not support a conclusion that he was intentionally spat upon, as claimed.
[....]

Again. Another liberal lie.

On Thursday of last week Andrew Breitbart* at Big Government offered $10,000 to any of the reported victims for proof of a racial attack. No one will! And, in this economy you know someone would if they could. No one came forward. Nothing happened.

It was all a lie.

It’s time for these race hustlers to apologize to the tea party movement and the American people for this horrible racist lie.

We demand that these Black Caucus members apologize for their fabricated hate story.

It is tough to know what tags to apply to such virulent, yellow pus -- particularly as the tag situation chez this blog is abominable -- but it seemed right to pair political rhetoric with noise pollution, as well as with a PopThatZit video.

How would you tag this?


*Andrew Breitbart:
As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.

On Saturday, during the peaceful and patriotic tea party protest at the Capitol, the Democrats staged a series of symbolic acts meant to manipulate the media to do its bidding. The Congressional Black Caucus pulled the Selma card and chose to walk through the crowd in the hopes of creating a YouTube incident.
[....]
It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.

And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.

THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

Rep. Lewis, if you can’t do that, I’ll give him a backup plan: a lie detector test. If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the tea partiers, or you pass a simple lie detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.

They used to make me laugh. Then they made me mad. Now? Now, they have succeeded in planting fear in my heart. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. Mostly, they provoke tears of angry laughter.

The tactic of planting the lie, then repeating the lie in feigned high dudgeon, manufacturing "unbiased" support, and putting the attacked on the defensive? It's low brow propaganda.

Some people comfort themselves with salty, fried things, others with sweets. I turn to etymology, my private puff pastry. Okay, and low fat plain yogurt hit with a good measure of excellent vanilla extract.

dudgeon: Middle English dogeon, from Anglo-French digeon, dogeon
Date: 15th century
1 obsolete : a wood used especially for dagger hilts
2 archaic : a dagger with a handle of dudgeon; obsolete : a haft made of dudgeon

A Thousand Little Wacos:::Apples and Cabbage

I know, I know. Given all that I have read, seen, and heard in just the past week, how can I continue to claim astonishment? I don't know, but it is the truth.

I am profoundly shocked, surprised, and appalled -- yes, again!

The Washington Post reported on the angry, and sometimes violent, reactions of those whose universe was apparently rocked by the signing of the health reform bill on Tuesday. As previously noted, bigoted speech and threats of physical harm began to percolate, then boil.

A good part of my day was spent making composed salads, boiling and poaching anything I could get my swollen and fumbling hands on. Faced with the remains of such an effort, I always try to make stock, something that cooks everywhere value as gold. I visualize all this hatred as that nasty, speckled foam that sometimes forms a head on a pot of bubbling chicken stock -- you know, the stuff that begs to be skimmed away.

Yes, I would much rather think about cooking. Have any of you used the much-touted-by-Alton-Brown Grains of Paradise, in lieu of pepper?

Who would knowingly or willingly incite people to such offensive extremes?

Meet imminent blogger and budding brain trust Mike Vanderboegh.

Some of the vandalism appears to have been instigated by an Alabama blogger, Mike Vanderboegh, who encouraged his readers to throw bricks at the windows of Democratic headquarters across the country. Vanderboegh, a former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia who is headlining an open-carry gun rally in Northern Virginia next month, issued a call to the modern "Sons of Liberty" on his libertarian political blog to break windows nationwide to display opposition to health-care reform.

A vandal threw a brick into the glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee's headquarters in Rochester overnight Saturday, attaching a note that quoted Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."

Vanderboegh did not respond to questions Wednesday from The Washington Post, but he took credit for the incident in an interview earlier this week with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "I guess that guy's one of ours," he told the newspaper. "Glad to know people read my blog."

Vanderboegh is a member of an Alabama militia, once worked as a warehouse manager but is now disabled by diabetes, hypertension, and congestive heart failure, for which he receives a disability check from the government to the tune of $1300/month. Someone in TwitterLand says that he doesn't use Medicare, to which he'd be entitled virtue of being a gimp, but instead enjoys excellent coverage from his wife's work benefits. More power to him.

His Blog, the Sipsey Street Irregulars, flies under the waving rubrique of The Doctrine of the Three Percent:

The Three Percent are the folks the Founders counted on to save the Republic when everyone else abandoned it.

And we will.

There will be no more free Wacos and no more free Katrinas.

For we are the Three Percent.

We will not disarm.

You cannot convince us.

You cannot intimidate us.

You can try to kill us, if you think you can.

But remember, we’ll shoot back .

We are not going away.

We are not backing up another inch.

And there are THREE MILLION OF US.

Your move, Mr. Wannabe Tyrant....

What is a "Three Percenter"?
During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.

Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.

The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any futher circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.

We are the people that the collectivists who now control the government should leave alone if they wish to continue unfettered oxygen consumption. We are the Three Percent. Attempt to further oppress us at your peril. To put it bluntly, leave us the hell alone. Or, if you feel froggy, go ahead AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.

Again: I know, I know. I copied and pasted Vanderboegh's brilliance above just before passing out from exhaustion in the wee hours -- I thought that, like my many bowls of composed, succulent, and enticingly fragrant composed salads, it would improve for having sat unmolested overnight.

I am, as you and I share this convivial moment, munching on one of the chicken salads. It is close to sublime, the sweetness of some of the ingredients set off by the bite of quickly sautéed mustard greens: Not your average chicken salad. Very little mayonnaise, yet enough. I am most pleased that the bowl is now almost empty as the Minions of Marlinspike Hall have apparently been scavenging while I slept, confident that upon awaking, The Doctrine of Three Percent would have homogenized enough to make palatable sense.

My un- and sub- consciouses rival such rabid gun-owners' intent by making plans to feed the world on composed salads (chicken, potato, cole slaw, salmon, shrimp, taco) until we are all so sated that the notion of hurting, killing, or humiliating one another smothers under the weight of gustatory contentment.

Sometimes I feel sorry for God, and render unto Him fervent apologies. More often, though, I cook.

So Vanderboegh took for the title of his blog the story of one Phillip Sheats Gordon, an "ATF target" who booby-traps his home with all sorts of exciting little technologies and weapons before facing off with government-type intruders. As he is, sniff, riddled with cancer, what does he have to lose, holed up as he is in his -- you guessed it -- Sipsey Street home?

Philip Sheats Gordon figures in what is described as "Vanderboegh's upcoming novel, Absolved."

My forthcoming novels all disappeared a few years back, sunk by the embarrassment of their many announced yet never-accomplished arrivals. I decided that kitchen duties were more my thing. Anyway, as best I can figure, Vanderboegh has written five chapters, neatly, correctly, and duly numbered and then he has, in apparent frustration, jumped to Chapter 31. Wannabe writers everywhere understand that impulse!

Over at Think Progress blog, I discovered that Vanderboegh is currently driven to "protect" the lives of the Democratic leadership. (Well, that's how *he* put it. Were I listed among his protectees, I'd be in full-fledged flight away from his sort of defense.)

VANDERBOEGH: I am telling you we are motivated to break windows, we feel a deadly threat from the Federal government and the orders that the Democrat party has given us. [...]

COLMES: You’re telling people to break the windows of Democratic headquarters. You’re telling people to commit acts of vandalism. You’re supporting breaking the law.

VANDERBOEGH: May I tell you my personal motive for doing this? I’m trying to save the lives of Nancy Pelosi, and every one of these people who do not understand the unintended consequences of their actions. [...] Because they are not paying attention to the million of people across this deepening divide that politics no longer avails them. [...] We refuse to participate in the system, and we refuse to pay the fines, and we refuse arrest. Now where do you suppose that’s going but a thousand little Wacos.

Excuse me while I go whip up something for the populace -- something filling, warm, comforting.

I am thinking apples and cabbage, followed by an insulin-challenging dessert. I might even fall head-over-heals into my own pitiful stereotype and brew a pot of Earl Grey. Ah, but that means making scones...

A thousand little Wacos. Sweet Jesus.

***** ** ***** ** ***** ** *****

Red Cabbage and Apple Salad With Ginger Vinaigrette

Ingredients
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons grated peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cups packed shredded red cabbage
2 cups packed shredded Napa cabbage
2 cups thinly sliced Granny Smith apple
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup golden raisins, plumped in hot water
1/4 cup toasted, unsalted sunflower seeds

Media Matters for America has tackled a summation of the right-wing media's history of violent rhetoric. Serve yourself a heaping bowl of this delicious and detoxifying cabbage salad and ponder the map Sarah Palin has made, marking the locations of legislators who voted for the health care reform initiatve -- marking the locations with cute little crosshairs. I think a nice loaf of crusty bread would go well with this vegetable dish, as it soaks up irritating stomach acid.

Has It Come To This?

New Vigilance Needed in Wake of Healthcare Vote

by David Silverberg
Monday, 22 March 2010


Violent domestic extremism poses a real threat.

In the wake of the divisive 219-212 House vote passing healthcare reform, authorities need to heighten vigilance against extremist violence against government facilities.

The year-long healthcare debate was emotional and divisive and while the vote may have resolved the issue legislatively the passions it aroused are unlikely to die down soon.

In such an atmosphere extremist violence is a real possibility, particularly directed against government installations or symbols of government authority. Coming on top of a census process that has also been infused with extremist charges, homeland security officials at all levels of government should be especially vigilant against potential attacks from domestic sources.

Domestic extremist terrorism has long been on the homeland security radar. In 2009 a report by the Office of Intelligence & Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment noted that while there were no specific plots under way, "rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues." These included the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn. It also reported that extremists were recruiting returning Iraqi war veterans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano later disavowed the report as having been released prematurely without proper vetting.

More recently, on March 2 the Southern Poverty Law Center released its own report, Rage on the Right , reporting that "The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation." According to this report, 363 new "Patriot" groups formed in 2009, with 127 of them being militias and the formation of 136 new anti-immigrant groups.

As though to underscore the volatility of the current situation, yesterday, as the House of Representatives voted on healthcare reform legislation, tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform, an issue that may prove even more passionate and divisive than healthcare.

Read the rest here, at Homeland Security Today

Stand, and Remember

I just heard that Glenn Beck has admonished John Lewis for "comparing" himself to "civil rights activists."

He is not worth my time, Glenn Beck, yet he requires attention because of the uncritical thinkers who are following him.

John Lewis, though, needs no defense from anyone; He need only stand, as he has always stood.

The rest of us, however? We are required to remember, and to share those memories with an abundant spirit.

From The Biography of John Lewis:

He was born the son of sharecroppers on February 21, 1940, outside of Troy, Alabama. He grew up on his family's farm and attended segregated public schools in Pike County, Alabama. As a young boy, he was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he heard on radio broadcasts. In those pivotal moments, he made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Ever since then, he has remained at the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggle in the United States.

As a student at Fisk University, John Lewis organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1961, he volunteered to participate in the Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. Lewis risked his life on those Rides many times by simply sitting in seats reserved for white patrons. He was also beaten severely by angry mobs and arrested by police for challenging the injustice of Jim Crow segregation in the South.

During the height of the Movement, from 1963 to 1966, Lewis was named Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form. SNCC was largely responsible for organizing student activism in the Movement, including sit-ins and other activities.

While still a young man, John Lewis became a nationally recognized leader. By 1963, he was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. (The others were Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer and Roy Wilkins). At the age of 23, he was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963.

In 1964, John Lewis coordinated SNCC efforts to organize voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The following year, Lewis helped spearhead one of the most seminal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. Hosea Williams, another notable Civil Rights leader, and John Lewis led over 600 peaceful, orderly protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. They intended to march from Selma to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights in the state. The marchers were attacked by Alabama state troopers in a brutal confrontation that became known as "Bloody Sunday." News broadcasts and photographs revealing the senseless cruelty of the segregated South helped hasten the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. After leaving SNCC in 1966, he continued his commitment to the Civil Rights Movement as Associate Director of the Field Foundation and his participation in the Southern Regional Council's voter registration programs. Lewis went on to become the Director of the Voter Education Project (VEP). Under his leadership, the VEP transformed the nation's political climate by adding nearly four million minorities to the voter rolls.

Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

From Outrage to Grief: Trying to Understand

When I read the news this morning, my outrage boiled over, pooling into disbelief. As the day wore on, it evolved into something akin to grief.

I have decided it to be a good thing that I am shocked, as opposed to nodding sagely and murmuring that "I am not surprised."

I am shocked and I am surprised. Profoundly so.

The insanely angry, sputtering atmosphere the Tea Baggers have created allowed one of their peculiar fetishists to think it a grand idea to yell "nigger" at John Lewis, who has lived a life of integrity and service, first as a civil rights leader, and then as an elected representative from Georgia.

Obscenities were shouted at other members of the Black Caucus, and, just to be equal opportunity bigots, Barney Frank had to endure lisps and being called a "faggot."

Someone spit on Congressman Cleaver of Missouri.**

Signs screamed: "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can" and "We came unarmed [this time]." Then there is the artwork depicting President Obama, sporting a Hitleresque moustache for good measure, being shat out the arse of an ass.

ADDENDUM:

And racism and gay-bashing apparently wasn’t all. Add anti-Semitism to the list.

A staffer in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s office reported a stream of hostile encounters with tea partiers roaming the halls of Congress. The less harmful stuff was mockery. But they left a couple of notes behind. One asked what Rahm Emanuel did with Weiner in the shower, in a reference to... ex-Rep Eric Massa. It was signed with a swastika, the staffer said. The other note called the congressman “Schlomo Weiner,” among other [things].

There is good stuff being written every minute of every day, and some of it helps me to understand the fear-filled feelings of disenchantment (or whatever, searching for an honorific mot juste on behalf of the right wing nauseates me right now).

But not much tops what The Onion did last November. It came back to mind as I attempted to watch Meet the Press and skim commentary on yesterday's doings because the Word of the Day for Republicans, in advance of the historic House vote on health care reform, turned out to be unconstitutional.

If I thought something unconstitutional, I'd use that argument straight away, and not pull it triumphantly out of my... hat -- at the very last. But that's just me.

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.

"Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. "It's time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are."

According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left "traitors" to strip it of its religious foundation.

"Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: 'one nation under God,'" said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. "Well, there's a reason they put that right at the top."

"Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation," continued Mortensen, referring to the "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. "The words on the page speak for themselves."

According to sources who have read the nation's charter, the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments do not contain the word "God" or "Christ."

Mortensen said his admiration for the loose assemblage of vague half-notions he calls the Constitution has only grown over time. He believes that each detail he has pulled from thin air—from prohibitions on sodomy and flag-burning, to mandatory crackdowns on immigrants, to the right of citizens not to have their hard-earned income confiscated in the form of taxes—has contributed to making it the best framework for governance "since the Ten Commandments."

"And let's not forget that when the Constitution was ratified it brought freedom to every single American," Mortensen said.

Mortensen's passion for safeguarding the elaborate fantasy world in which his conception of the Constitution resides is greatly respected by his likeminded friends and relatives, many of whom have been known to repeat his unfounded assertions verbatim when angered. Still, some friends and family members remain critical.

"Dad's great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head," said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. "He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn't even know that it guarantees universal health care."

Mortensen told reporters that he'll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.

"The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes," Mortensen said. "In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life."

"Don't just take my word for it," Mortensen added. "Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime."

**Battery: A battery is the willful or intentional touching of a person against that person’s will by another person, or by an object or substance put in motion by that other person. Please note that an offensive touching can constitute a battery even if it does not cause injury, and could not reasonably be expected to cause injury. A defendant who emphatically pokes the plaintiff in the chest with his index finger to emphasize a point may be culpable for battery (although the damages award that results may well be nominal). A defendant who spits on a plaintiff, even though there is little chance that the spitting will cause any injury other than to the plaintiff's dignity, has committed a battery.

Education Sentimentale

From the Urban Dictionary, submitted by Demon Phoenix 1347 on April 10, 2005:

Definition of TEABAG:

1) To insert one's nuts into the mouth of another (of either gender), usually while they are sleeping. Can either be a situation of laughter or of excruciating pain, depending on whether the victim is a biter. (verb)

EXAMPLE: Devon teabagged his girlfriend Veronica, then for shits and giggles he teabagged his friend Barton. And Barton bit Devon's left testicle off and beat the shit out of him.

2) When after being brutally killed in Halo 2, your opponent squats repeatedly on you, imitating the act of dipping his balls on you. Rather humiliating, especially when there's more than one of them doing it. (verb)

EXAMPLE: After I sniped five guys on a Multi-Flag CTF in Coagulation (including two in a Warthog) for a Kill Frenzy, two of them killed me with SMG fire and then simultaneously teabagged me.

3) A small bag of dried herbs, that magically makes tea when you add water and give it some time to steep. (noun)

EXAMPLE: I placed the teabag in the boiling water and gently stirred, five minutes later I had hot peppermint tea.

4) The scrotum of a man who has had his testicles removed. (noun)

EXAMPLE: Jenna broked up with her boyfriend Jacob because when she saw his equipment, she noticed he had a teabag.

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From the Twitter account of Andy Borowitz, "Comedian and Writer, New Yorker humorist, Creator of BorowitzReport.com," January 15, 2010:

"The Teabaggers just found out what teabag means & freaked out. They're now calling themselves the Dirty Sanchezes."

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From the Wikipedia entry for Teabagging;

In 2009, Tea Party protests were formed to protest against United States government tax and spending policies. The use of the term "Tea Bagger" to describe these protesters has been used by several journalists, including Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Anderson Cooper. Cooper later apologized, calling the term "silly" and stating that his use of it detracted from his serious reporting. The term's growth in the political arena earned attention by the Oxford American Dictionary, and the word "teabagger" achieved finalist status for the OAD Word of the Year.