Like a child giggling as he tries to say "truck" with his fingers in his mouth, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was not only visibly pleased with himself as a result of this announcement, he also used the occasion to juvenilely offer his tiny "Countdown" audience numerous double entendres in perverse celebration.
The following makes one wonder if THIS is what the White House considers REAL NEWS (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Hot Air):
KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: The Republicans have, for many months now, put on a pedestal a hard-right group whose name unintentionally invokes an action that cannot be described on television. Our number one story on the "Countdown," the GOP has now, with a little help from us, officially co-opted the word teabagger. It is a runner-up for Oxford's Word of the Year. Rare that an evolution and a word's etymology can be observed in real-time with such satisfaction. But it was Republicans who embraced the tea bag as their symbol with Tax Day protests to President Obama's agenda. And it was Republicans who cluelessly referred to teabagging as if it had no prior meaning. It was they who openly used the phrase that begged for double entendres. "Countdown" April 14th Teabag Eve. The Republican talking heads like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had pushed their own vision of teabagging down the throats of the original teabaggers who were in fact Libertarian supporters of Ron Paul. Cincinnati teabaggers down in the mouth about taxes got a Boehner endorsement from the House Minority Leader. And the nation's teabagging of course impossible without this man, a Dick Armey at the head of it.
Teabagger used as a noun was the natural result. It just goes to show you, if you use the word teabagger over and over, it eventually, sometimes swiftly, takes on a brand-new meaning, somehow. But first, the entry that Oxford University Press chose as Word of the Year 2009, unfriend, as in I decided to unfriend Newt Gingrich on my Facebook page after he supported Dede Scozzafava. Although the youngsters on the staff have informed me that defriend is the more common term for that. So, there might be another vote on this, or protest with tea bags. The most notable runner-up for the New Oxford American Dictionary is teabagger, which Oxford defines as, "A person who protests President Obama's tax policies and stimulus packages package, often through local demonstrations known as "Tea Party" protests [in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773].
So this is what passes for journalism in America today.
As Allahpundit wrote a few hours ago, "Good work; it’s important to have goals, especially when you’re the Edward R. Murrow of your generation."
Indeed.
