UPDATE: It appears that NJ.Com has pulled Jamie Duffy's incredibly juvenile "teabagger" story.
To read the way Jamie Duffy of NJ.Com gleefully tossed around the crude and childish term "teabaggers" seven times in a local story about a tea party in Morristown, New Jersey, you would think she was some snarky teenage intern who enjoyed using that vulgar pejorative. However, according to her profile, Duffy has been around a long time so she has no such excuse for her juvenile behavior in print:
Jamie Duffy is a social correspondent for The Star-Ledger and MorristownGreen.com. She lives in Morris County with her husband and two sons. She spent 10 years abroad, two in England and eight in France. She has a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Okay, it appears that Jamie Duffy is no goofy teenager so what was her excuse for acting so unprofessionally juvenile in her Morristown tea party story? Let us review Duffy's acts of extreme childishness. First of all we know where she is coming from with the term "right-wing" (along with "tea bagger") in her story. That is one of the strongest tells that the reporter is, well, left-wing:
Students from Drew University, the first organized group to appear on the Green opposing the right-wing tea party organization, discussed health care, illegal immigration and whatever else was on their minds with the tea baggers, who at first circled the protesters to smell the gunpowder.
Okay, that was the first example of Duffy's biased unprofessionalism but there is more to come:
Another teabagger ready to do verbal battle with the students was Alan Clemens, 64, from Oakland. He has spent 25 years working in pest control. If he lost his job - which he does not expect to do - he believes he could get another job. But in any case, Medicare is just a year away.
That was the second example of Duffy's angry childishness. Stand by for example #3:
The takeaway was that for all their dislike, if not downright hatred, of President Barack Obama and his administration, many of the teabaggers are with him on insurance deregulation-- if only in the area of “portability,” or crossing state lines to access different health carriers.
More! More! We want more "teabagger" references from Duffy to demonstrate just how unprofessional she is:
Drew student spokesman Matt Carroll said his group wasn’t so aware of the tea party groups when the teabaggers had their first Morristown rally on tax day. When the July 4 and Labor Day tea parties rolled around, they weren’t at school.
Well, folks, that was all the "teabagger" references that Duffy went out of the way to include in her story text but wait, there's more! In addition to the previous four examples of unprofessionalism in the extreme, Duffy also provided bonus examples in her photo captions. So let us now enjoy Duffy gleefully rolling in the dirt with the first of her photo captions:
Drew University students and teabaggers face off at the tea party at Morristown Green.
And another "teabagger" caption to go with one of several story photos that Duffy herself took:
Teabagger at the Morristown Tea Party, Sat. Oct 31.
One can almost hear Beavis & Butthead in the background chuckling, "Heh-heh-heh! She said 'teabagger' huh-huh, huh-huh!" Keep in mind that this is a NJ.Com social correspondent who keeps up the childish entertainment with this photo caption finale:
Illegal immigrants were a special focus of the teabaggers as they decried Obama's health care revisions. John Coleman, ctr, Paramus said it was "so hard to get these costumes. You have no idea." The costumes at first were available on Target and Amazon and then pulled due to public backlash, he said. The man on the right only identified himself as Nathan.
And what costume were you wearing, Jamie? Surely you weren't dressed up as a journalist because you certainly don't act like one when you go out of the way to repeat "teabagger" over and over again.
And doesn't NJ.Com have copy editors to watch for these childish outbreaks of complete unprofessionalism?
