CNN's Anderson Cooper: 'It's Hard to Talk When You're Tea-Bagging'

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper followed his colleague David Shuster into the gutter on his Anderson Cooper 360 program on Tuesday in making a vulgar “tea-bagging” joke about Republicans/conservatives. After CNN’s senior political analyst David Gergen remarked that Republicans were “searching for their voice” after two electoral losses, Cooper quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging.” [audio available here]

Cooper had Gergen and chief business correspondent Ali Velshi on to comment on President Obama’s economic speech earlier that day at Georgetown University. Cooper had asked Gergen about the Republicans’ “positioning” in response to the speech. The analyst touted how the GOP was “in disarray” and that they “have not yet come up with a compelling alternative, one that has gained popular recognition.” Cooper replied, “Tea-bagging. They’ve got tea-bagging.”

Gergen continued by bringing up a recent survey by The Politico about the public’s apparent trust in President Obama concerning the economy:

GERGEN: Well, they’ve got the tea-bagging. But there was an interesting Politico survey -- it was out today that said that, you know, the president -- the trust level in the president on economic issues is extremely high, and, you know, and everybody else in the administration is well below him. But the Republicans are a little below that. So, Republicans have got a way -- they still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. They’re still -- this happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.

Cooper followed this by making his low-brow remark, which Gergen responded to with laughter. You would think the two were still in eighth grade, instead of being two employees of an international television network.

Update [from Managing Editor Ken Shepherd]: Fox News Channel's "Red Eye" host Greg Gutfeld skewers liberal journalists obsessed with making "tea bag" jokes about the Tea Party protests. You can read it here. It should serve as his monologue for tonight's show which airs at 3 a.m. EDT.