Some 15 years ago or so, my buddy Roger and I were talking on the phone as we did pretty much every week , and the subject turned, as it usually did, to baseball – this was before I got the soccer bug and started to put baseball matters behind me. We were chatting about this and that, and one of us made some comment about how well some infielder or other ( Omar Vizquel? Rich Dauer?) played defense. I then said something like – “but it does seem like the overall level of defense is improving all over – I see so many great plays these days . . .” before I recognized how stupid a comment that was. Of course I was seeing more great defensive plays than I had 10 or 20 years before – because 10 or 20 years before there had been no Sportscenter (or equivalent). In 1992 (or whenever exactly this was), I could turn on the TV and catch 20 or 30 minutes of great highlights every night, including 5 or 6 truly spectacular defensive plays; in 1980, or 1960, to see 5 or 6 truly spectacular defensive plays, you had to watch 20 or 25 hours of baseball, minimum. [That’s what ESPN was doing, in effect – watching 10 or 12 games simultaneously and pulling out the highlights]. It was just my mind playing a trick on me; I had unconsciously made a very simple mistake. The way in which I was perceiving the world of baseball had, with Sportscenter, changed fundamentally, but I hadn’t taken that into account. Without thinking about it, I had plugged into a simple formula:
Old Days: 5 spectacular plays in 25 hours of baseball watching
New Days: 5 spectacular plays in ½ hour of baseball watching
And I had reached the obvious (and obviously wrong, on reflection) conclusion that the rate of spectacular playmaking had gone up.
I call it the ESPN Effect – mistaking filtered reality for reality. We do it a lot. All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right. It is true that we’re seeing more crazy people doing crazy things on the other side (whichever side that may be, for you) coming across our eyeballs these days. But that’s all filtered reality; it bears no more relationship to reality than the Sportscenter highlights bear to the game of baseball. My very, very strong suspicion is that there has never been a time when there weren’t truly crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum doing their truly crazy things. Maybe 1% or so, or even 0.1% — which is a very large number, when you’re talking about a population of, say, 100 million. They didn’t get through the filters much in the Old Days, but they do now. All this talk about how extreme “the debate” is becoming – how, exactly, does anyone get a bead on what “the debate” really is? In reality?
JimCopland says:
I agree, and I was just making this point to a friend earlier today. The apparent increase in political craziness and incivility is a misperception owing to 24-hour news channels, talk radio, blogs, news filter sites, You Tube, and the like.
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September 28, 2009, 12:37 pmEinhverfr says:
I guess, I see your point, but I also think there is more to it than that.
In the Norse Pagan world, group schisms usually are accompanied by both sides declaring the imminent death of the other because “they’re all crazy.”
The issue IMO is that there is a strong tendency to look to the sanity of one’s own group and to the insanity of one’s opponents. The ESPN effect may help make that more noticeable but we filter our own realities enough to do it on a level playing field, no pun intended.
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September 28, 2009, 12:38 pmSMatthewStolte says:
Three cheers.
Except.
One of the troubles is that the ESPN effect (at least in politics) has a feedback of sorts. Since the spectators and the participants in the debate more or less overlap, as people perceive more nuttiness, they are more likely to respond as if reality were nuttier than it is (and hence irrationally). Suspicion breeds nuttiness, and nuttiness breeds suspicion. And so the amount of nuttiness N(t), actually does increase with time. So if only people would listen to you, you would be right.
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September 28, 2009, 12:42 pmBruce Boyden says:
There could be a feedback effect, such that the crazy people are now spurred to greater heights by the realization that there are, in fact, lots of crazy people just like them.
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September 28, 2009, 12:43 pmgerbilsbite says:
I think this is correct, and anyone who worked political campaigns on either side in the days before the 24-hour news cycle can vouch for the long-running presence of crazy. So it seems as though the appropriate mechanism for evaluating relative crazy is to examine the magnitude of the extremes, not just the frequency of their appearance.
And also important to remember: the LaRouchies and Birchers have always been with us.
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September 28, 2009, 12:44 pmBruce Boyden says:
Jeez, preempted by 1 minute.
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September 28, 2009, 12:47 pmDon says:
This is similar to what happens with the NBA. ESPN shows only the vest highlights. When the Portland Trail Blazers were attempting to get Arvydas Sabonis to come to the NBA, they were sending him video of the best the NBA had to offer. Ironically, he waited until past his real prime to come to the NBA because he was concerned he might not have been good enough. If the Blazers had simply sent video of regular games so he could see how much better he was than most of the NBA players, the Blazers may well have won a couple of championships.
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September 28, 2009, 12:52 pmresh says:
Well, just for the record, watching Jimmy Rollins today or Ozzie Smith yesterday would obviate the ESPN effect. Whether you watched them once or fifty times in an hour, their defensive brilliance would stand the test of time and not eclipse some seemingly-filtered reality.
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September 28, 2009, 12:53 pmMark N. says:
Though I don’t think the Conspirators would agree with his politics more generally, this particular observation, that modern reality is a filtered reality that accentuates spectacular events like the amazing catch and the crazy protest, to the extent that spectacular events begin to substitute for and overshadow actual reality, is one of the main theses of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1967).
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September 28, 2009, 1:11 pmSnaphappy says:
The question is whether there is anything that can be done about the level of crazy that we hear about on a daily basis. From my perspective, the left is currently handling their crazy better than the right in that I hear about it less, but this could well be because the democrats are currently in power. But both sides are currently overplaying the right’s crazy people. For example, I saw Orly Taitz on the Colbert report and at least one actual news channel. Colbert tried to engage her in comedy, and the news person tried to engage her in a logical debate. Neither succeeded because she is a lunatic, which is only funny for a very short time (long past) before it becomes sad, and is never succeptible to logic.
On the other hand, the right actually panders to birther lunatics, and one reads seemingly serious arguments that the tea baggers are an actual movement about something coherent, and people like Glen Beck continue to exist and supposedly people actually watch him for reasons other than irony. I would much rather have a new Contract with America from the right, even though the original helped throw my preferred party out for a good long while, than hear more of what I’ve been hearing from the right’s crazies for the next 8 years.
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September 28, 2009, 1:11 pmShelby says:
David Post: Excellent point.
Bruce Boyden: Yes, but you put it better.
Don: That’s very sad. But, when Portland takes it all within the next 2–3 years, it’ll be that much sweeter...
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September 28, 2009, 1:22 pmwfjag says:
Sounds like you’re looking at another variation of the Curse of King Tut Effect. For various reasons, in the 1920s it was popular to assert that the Curse of King Tut had resulted in the deaths of those who entered his tomb. Actually, there was nothing exceptional about the death rate when compared with the death rate of people who hadn’t entered his tomb (but, the headline “Another person lives” isn’t especially dramatic, and so doesn’t sell).
The Curse of King Tut Effect is noticing patterns that don’t exist due to a dramatic effect in presentation.
I saw another example today in the AP story captioned ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ Subject Lucy Vodden Dies. Towards the end of the story, it breathlessly states:
Gee, after about 50 years from the time that the Beatles were formed until today, is it surprising that a few people “associated” with the group one way or another died relatively young is surprising?
Of course ESPN trys to make the mundane dramatic — otherwise you’ll quit watching. It is entertainment, after all. It’s just the Curse of King Tut Effect.
@Snaphappy:
Orly Taitz is not “a lunatic”. Rather, as a Dentist (in addition to being a California lawyer), she merely has unlimited access to Nitrous Oxide.
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September 28, 2009, 1:37 pmgab says:
Leaving politics aside, there is no doubt in my mind that the level of defense in the big leagues now surpasses that of just a few years ago.
I’ll use just one example — shortstops throwing out runners at first from deep in the hole. In the past, even fairly recently, there was maybe one ss in the bigs who could go deep in the hole and throw out a reasonably fast runner at first. It was a play that very, very few major league shortstops could make. Now, you see it all the time. Many times the shortstop will throw the runner out while being airborne. That takes an unbelievable arm. The arm strengh of shortstops in general now far surpasses that of shortstops of old.
And that’s just one example.
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September 28, 2009, 1:43 pmcx says:
I couldn’t agree more about the ESPN effect with respect to political loonies. The apparent change in nutjob noise is because of the their new access to wide distribution via the internet (and the fascination of everyone with freak shows of all kinds, including political ones).
Oddly, I think you are wrong about the ESPN Effect with respect to baseball though — you used to be able to see all those great plays from around the league: you just had to wait for your weekly dose of “This Week in Baseball” to get them all at once (without the increasingly lame one liners that are required by law on Sportscenter).
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September 28, 2009, 1:44 pmJohn Salmon says:
ESPN effect aside, the quality of play, because of conditioning/nutrition etc., has been improving for at least a couple decades. In fact, Bill James argues that QOP has been improving fairly steadily for many decades indeed, integration being a key reason.
It’s very likely that more great defensive plays are being made, for this reason.
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September 28, 2009, 1:50 pmRandy says:
There is no doubt truth in this assertion. However, with the internet, it is easier — much easier — to find crazy talk. And it’s easier to believe in it. I think there has been an increase in crazy.
Before the internet, you really had to search hard to find conspiracy theories. Now they can appear sua sponte, and you can find them without effort. So some people are more persuadable to the crazy part, and therefore we have an increase.
Additionally, I think that in the US, it’s very easy to become socially isolated. You can exist in your home without any interaction with the outside world, and your view can easily become warped. Or, worse, you find a group of crazies, and join them. It’s very easy to isolate yourself with a small group of crazies (or cults), and think that everything is now figured out.
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September 28, 2009, 2:07 pmwkwillis says:
The internet now allows the Left to bypass the newspaper and broadcast filters of the rich and show the crazy things that the Right is doing. Before the internet, you had to have newspapers like Pravda to show us what was happening that the rich people didn’t want us to know about, and there was no broadcast television access at all.
Now we get access to more information. So do the Russians, come to think about it.
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September 28, 2009, 2:13 pmkrs says:
Does this mean that Glenn Beck isn’t consistently ravingly bonkers for his entire show, as a few youtube clips would suggest?
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September 28, 2009, 2:14 pmBT says:
How many active commenters are there for VC? How many have been banned? My guess is that there are several hundred active commenters but only a handful that have been banned through the years, probably less then 1%, yet those that were banned probably caused some havoc for the time they were here. I don’t know what this proves other than the fact that I should be banned for making stupid arguments, but what the heck. I feel better now.
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September 28, 2009, 2:17 pmMartinned says:
I don’t think the analogy entirely works. Presumably, baseball is played exactly the same regardless of whether ESPN are broadcasting it. The same good, spectacular and spectacularly good plays occur regardless of who’s watching. But in political commentary, the broadcast is the game. It’s not like Glenn Beck (to pick a favourite target) talks exactly the same as he always did, but now there’s a camera pointed at him. So it is valid to say that the political debate has gotten more crazy, and to support that by pointing at the increase in air time devoted to crazy talking heads.
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September 28, 2009, 2:26 pmhattio says:
Speaking of people who are clearly insane, Shelby says;
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September 28, 2009, 2:40 pmkumquat says:
To expand on Randy’s point, I think the internet had made conspiracy theory nuttiness more common by making it easier for people to “examine the evidence” themselves. Without the internet, Bob Random probably can’t see Obama’s birth certificate anywhere other than as a picture in the newspaper, if that. He’s certainly not going to be able to make a website claiming to show detailed evidence that said birth certificate was altered, based on his own experience learning Photoshop from free tutorial videos on YouTube.
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September 28, 2009, 2:43 pmgeokstr says:
It would really be nice if, particularly on a classy site like this, the leftists could refrain from referring to those who disagree with them in lewd sexual terms, especially ironic since it’s a fave position of part of your team, not ours? Or are you going to pull the “Oh, I didn’t really know it meant that” BS that the mainstream “news” people like Gwen Ifill use when they get called on it?
Perhaps those of us on the right could begin calling all those on the left “fudge packers”. Is that OK with you?
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September 28, 2009, 2:44 pmFub says:
Loony and loud political conspiracy theories have been endemic in American politics since colonial days. Even then they were often recycled or rebadged versions of English political conspiracy theories.
The difference between then and now is the available channels of communication: pamphlets and screeds in newspapers then, versus newspapers, radio, TV and the intertubes now.
One phenomenon common to both ancient and modern political screeds is the use of ALL CAPS. IF IT’S ALL CAPS THEN IT’S VERY IMPORTANT AND INDISPUTABLY TRUE!!!1!!
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September 28, 2009, 3:09 pmModa says:
There seems to be a lot of misinformation about what “tea bagging” refers to. Various other commentators have indicated they think it refers to fellatio. You seem to think it implies some kind of homosexual activity. None of this is accurate.
At the risk of sneers, wikipedia and urbandictionary carry similar definitions, which are also consistent with the definition I’ve always heard:
The person on the receiving end of this maneuver is not necessarily a woman nor man, and thus there is nothing inherently homosexual about it. And it is quite obviously distinct from fellatio. It is not even necessarily an inherently sexual act; sometimes it’s practiced merely as a prank or as a hazing ritual.
Thus, I’m not even sure how you can object that it’s demeaning. The “teabagger” is the man placing his scrotum upon the head of the victim. I’m sure the tea party protesters would love to tea bag Congress, no? Which they did, by sending Congressmen bags of tea in the mail or by throwing tea bags at them in public.
More importantly, the first uses of the term “tea bag” in reference to the protesters were made by conservatives, not liberals. The protesters named themselves. Only after salon.com pointed out that the term had an alternate meaning did conservatives get upset, and particularly after MSNBC had a field day with it. I’m sorry, but the protesters brought this on themselves out of ignorance.
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September 28, 2009, 3:11 pmRecovering Law Grad says:
The thesis is appealing, but, unfortunately, the data just isn’t there. For instance, a recent poll indicated that a majority of Republicans, nationwide, either doubt or outright disbelieve that Obama was born in the U.S. I’m not sure where I can go with that, but to conclude that something has gone very, very wrong with a very large number of people.
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September 28, 2009, 3:11 pmModa says:
Further, more Americans believe in anthropogenic global warming than in evolution. And more believe in the active intervention of angels and demons in our day-to-day lives than either.
If two sides are actively accusing one another of succumbing to insanity, neither of them is necessarily wrong. And possibly both of them are correct.
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September 28, 2009, 3:16 pmCharles says:
But doesn’t the ESPN effect cut both ways. Don’t we regularly hear from players that they want to try to get on the highlight reel. ESPN by existing has increased the number of people creating the highlights.
In the same way I think 24 hour news networks and the internet have increased the hyperbole amongst the various sides in order for them to get on the highlight reel of the news networks. Maybe people are not actually crazier, but the amount of crazy things people are doing has most definitely increased as what you have to do to get attention has increased.
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September 28, 2009, 3:17 pmDaily Pundit » First, Define Your Terms says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The ESPN Effect: I call it the ESPN Effect – mistaking filtered reality for reality. We do it a lot. All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right. It is true that we’re seeing more crazy people doing crazy things on the other side (whichever side that may be, for you) coming across our eyeballs these days. [...]
Daniel Chapman says:
“Maybe people are not actually crazier, but the amount of crazy things people are doing has most definitely increased as what you have to do to get attention has increased.”
As evidenced by several in this thread.
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September 28, 2009, 3:40 pmDaniel Chapman says:
Hmmm... we don’t need passwords to submit a commend under a particular name now? That will cause problems down the line. I might have to stop commenting under my real name after almost six years.
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September 28, 2009, 3:41 pmSara says:
Are omments being modEratated and delayed?
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September 28, 2009, 3:45 pmricky says:
We choose our own filters. An ESPN-type objective source would point out flaws and extremes on both the Left and the Right, but that’s not what people want. They want self-righteous pundits who agree with them yelling about how crazy and stupid the other side is. The internet is even worse, since you can choose among millions of sites and find someone who agrees with you on everything.
The polarization is real.
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September 28, 2009, 4:00 pmSMatthewStolte says:
I wonder if our perceptions aren’t more distorted (in this regard) by the history books than by the blogs. The history books necessarily filter out a lot of the garbage that didn’t matter. And even what makes it through (the amusing political cartoons or vicious rhymes) seem to pack a much smaller punch with hindsight than they would have at the time. Good arguments, made by people who seemed to know what was at stake, will and should make the history books precisely because they help to clarify the issues that were confusing at the time. (But of course, that means we don’t get to share in the confusion and may be misled to feel like it wasn’t there).
By contrast, the nuts that really make history are the nuts that caused major damage.
So our view of history is distorted into thinking that large numbers of irrational people in politics is (a) new and (b) much more dangerous than it really is (which isn’t to say there is no danger there).
The other point that I would make is that I notice a not infrequent phenomenon of someone with good judgment and lousy logic. If I see someone making an exaggerated point or making a point badly, I do try to look towards what they might be trying to get at. It isn’t always what they say, but sometimes a few pointed questions can help get them on track. Obviously, this only works if the pointed questions are designed to be helpful and not designed to dance over the gravesite of their fallacies. This is why conversations with fewer than six people are so nice. But just because the conversations that require many people are not nice doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary, and it simply isn’t possible from any practical point of view to expect them to be nice.
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September 28, 2009, 4:06 pmgeokstr says:
No, I have no doubt what it refers to, and it certainly isn’t a particularly hetero activity. And please don’t BS me with this:
You know very well that this is NOT meant as a compliment by the left.
I even had one of the commenters on this very thread tell me on another post that he hoped I got “tea bagged” in response to a fairly innocuous comment that wasn’t even directed at him. But you would have me believe that he was only giving me a compliment, right?
Yes, there are such things as “tea bags” that are used for things like making tea. But your contention is that sending tea bags to congressmen must mean that those at the Tea Parties meant this disgusting sexual activity? Maybe it actually had something to do with being a symbol of the original Tea Party.
So much of the left is literally repulsive.
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September 28, 2009, 4:09 pmgeokstr says:
No, I have no doubt what it refers to, and it certainly isn’t a particularly hetero activity. And please don’t BS me with this:
You know very well that this is NOT meant as a compliment by the left.
I even had one of the commenters on this very thread tell me on another post that he hoped I got “tea bagged” in response to a fairly innocuous comment that wasn’t even directed at him. But you would have me believe that he was only giving me a compliment, right?
Yes, there are such things as “tea bags” that are used for things like making tea. But your contention is that sending tea bags to congressmen must mean that those at the Tea Parties meant this disgusting sexual activity? Maybe it actually had something to do with being a symbol of the original Tea Party.
So much of the left is literally repulsive.
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September 28, 2009, 4:09 pmPatrick S. O'Donnell says:
Is this not simply an illustration of the “availability heuristic?” And what Bruce Boyden terms a feedback effect appears to be what might also be called a “norm cascade” (which is causally connected to ‘informational signals’ and ‘reputational pressures’).
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September 28, 2009, 4:10 pmHelene Edwards says:
Are you contending that the kinds of disciplinary actions for speech, to which FIRE has been riding to the rescue over the last few years, were occurring before 1990 and just went unreported? Doubt it. By the way, Rich Dauer played his last game in 1985.
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September 28, 2009, 4:36 pmJohn Burgess says:
In addition to there being more means of communication, there are simply more people. If 1% of a society is certifiably nutz, the a larger society is just going to have more nutz. Same percentage; bigger number. That they all now have access to public media certainly doesn’t help the perception business, though.
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September 28, 2009, 4:45 pmJames Oaksun says:
I call this the Daily Kos effect. I’m convinced that site began when 3 radical vegetarians from Berkeley used the Internet to connect with 4 anti-WTO activists in Seattle, and a coven of Wiccans in Madison.
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September 28, 2009, 6:14 pmModa says:
And what activity IS particularly hetero, other than standard vaginal sex? Every other act is practiced by some orientation other than heterosexuals.
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September 28, 2009, 6:29 pmohiolawdog says:
Omar Vizquel was a joy to watch.
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September 28, 2009, 6:40 pmkrs says:
My current thought about ESPN is that Scott Van Pelt is awesome.
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September 28, 2009, 9:30 pmBruce Hayden says:
Let me suggest that the reason that the right seems crazier right now is that we see this through the prism of the left. The reality is that there was a lot more violence at the G-20 than probably at most of the tea bagging parties combined. But that violence was downplayed, or, even ignored, by much of the “mainstream” press. And, ditto for the pictures that you see of each. At the Wash., D.C. rally, there were thousands of signs present, most of which involved either protesting specific Democratic policies or agenda items (such as health care reform), or were classically anti-government (“don’t tread on me” type signs). Yet, what you saw in the papers and on much of the media were the few extreme ones, that were probably less than 1% of the signs present.
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September 28, 2009, 9:58 pmMark N. says:
I don’t really like the site, but it doesn’t seem to come from that sort of crowd: it was founded by a strongly pro-capitalist ex-Army guy, who now makes a bunch of money from the site, as essentially a (very successful) media entrepreneur.
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September 28, 2009, 10:10 pmWayne says:
The other reason you see more lunacy from both left and right is that there are numerous bloggers and pundits that are looking for anything they can publicize in an effort to discredit the other side, and/or to make a name for themselves. Upon finding something they can use, it is published on the web and then bounces around the blogosphere, and eventually, FOX or MSNBC. Thus, a videotape of an ill-advised school activity in New Jersey becomes evidence that Obama is setting up a cult of personality, despite his total lack of involvement in the incident. I’m sure the left has dredged up similarly obscure nonsense in an effort to discredit conservatives, but I don’t feel like looking for it right now.
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September 29, 2009, 12:44 amMark Field says:
I think there are at least two factors going on here. It’s always been politically useful for one political side to emphasize the worst, craziest aspects of the other. That happened before and it happens now. What the internet does is (a) give the crazies a voice due to easy access and relative anonymity; and (b) make it easy for the opponents to identify the insanity and highlight it. It’s a way of discrediting your opposition; the technology just makes it more effective. This is why, for example, at Kos they ended up banning the Truthers — they were discrediting the site and its goals.
The other factor is that, as the “ESPN effect” shows, wider publicity can reinforce the extremes. That’s probably a good thing for baseball, but it’s dangerous for politics. Sure, the crazies can be highlighted more readily, and IF the public turns away in disgust that can be useful in the long run in improving discourse (e.g., Kos and the Truthers). But there’s always the risk that in a crisis people will turn to the extremes (see Nazi Germany). In that case the wider publicity given to the extremes can destabilize the whole system.
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September 29, 2009, 12:46 amJoan in Juneau says:
I can see some of the ESPN effect in that there are so many sources for news and avenues of communication that we did not have before. Even now more are opening up every day with blogs, tweets and connectivity to places we never thought possible even 20 years ago. I think perhaps it is much deeper than that though. Children for the most part aren’t taught manners or even civility any more. They are taught that if they want something they had best speak up or go after it with all they have. Most spend more time in a school atmosphere than with their parents and most schools aren’t allowed to paddle and many parents don’t paddle because of what their friends might think. Even the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ seem to be disappearing from our vocabularies. Respect for your elders is disappearing too and instead of thinking of others, ME comes first. Political correctness is replacing respect, sincerity, and general politeness. Some of this can be blamed on the ESPN effect because they see the outrageous nature of these things and figure it acceptable but that has also permeated much of the other programming that is watched, read and listened to these days.
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September 29, 2009, 12:55 amMike says:
I largely agree.
But I don’t think the situation is symmetric. I think there is a higher degree of lunacy among the fringe of conservative TV and radio hosts, than among liberal ones. I don’t know if this is simply the effect of Fox News (and MSNBC hasn’t “caught up” yet) or if it reflects a higher tolerance of conservative lunacy than liberal lunacy or something else.
But, we shouldn’t be surprised if this asymmetry in media talking heads generates an asymmetry in the population, among those susceptible to the sort of brainwashing these extremes feed on.
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September 29, 2009, 5:46 amFantasiaWHT says:
I apologize for threadjacking, but...
Does anybody know how to set up subscriptions on this new site so that I get an email every time a new blog is posted, instead of once daily as a digest? I went to the FeedBlitz account site, looked at preferences, but I didn’t see it there.
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September 29, 2009, 6:15 amSnaphappy says:
For the record:
* On Feb. 19, 2009 Rick Santelli, in a CNBC rant against plans to help failing mortgages, says its time for a “tea party.”
* On Feb 27, 2009, protests are held for the “New American Tea Party.” Protesters display signs saying, for example “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems before they Tea Bag You!” Liberal sites like wonkette.com snicker at the unintentional hilarity of conservatives talking about “teabagging.”
* Posters at freerepublic.com coin “Operation Teabag,” encouraging others to send tea bags to their representatives to protest various bailouts, resulting in several letters being detained under Congress’s procedures to avoid anthrax threats. “Teabag” starts to become commonly used as a verb to describe tea bag protests.
* The “teabag movement” then plans another round of protests for tax day, April 15, 2009.
* By the beginning of April, MSNBC picks up on the other meaning of “teabag,” lampooning the teabaggers’ efforts.
* Individuals like geokstr eventually cry foul when others use the teabaggers’ own self-designation against them.
Sorry, but “teabag” and “teabagger” were terms adopted by the protesters in the first place. When some liberal group starts unironically calling itself “fudge packers,” you may lampoon them to your heart’s delight for doing so.
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September 29, 2009, 6:52 amZara says:
Snaphappy, could you provide a link to pictures of the signs you say were in evidence at the February 27, 2009 demonstration (or a link to a specific description of them from some relatively objective news source)? Because, out of the sequence of events you describe, that would be the only instance of tea party protestors actually using the name themselves.
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September 29, 2009, 7:31 amCJColucci says:
Nothing to contribute here. I just wanted to see if I could post a comment.
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September 29, 2009, 7:44 amJMA says:
You guys have a particularly naive concept of the American public if any of you think these protesters didn’t get the joke when they scribbled those signs about “get them before they get you.”
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September 29, 2009, 8:00 amNickM says:
The larger population effect that another commenter has pointed out has a direct corollary in baseball — there was generally 1 additional game per day in 1994 as compared to 1984 (2 teams joined Major League Baseball in 1993).
Nick
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September 29, 2009, 8:52 amlosantiville says:
Then I wonder why Europe suffered more from cults like Nazis or the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades that caused a lot more trouble there?
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September 29, 2009, 9:18 amlosantiville says:
I listen to most of the conservative radio and tv hosts from time to time during the week and (aside from Michael Savage who may not actually be a conservative) don’t hear any shouting. I hear more shouting on Air America or MSNBC (even though they won).
Dr. Levin does speak forcefully but is in no sense “fringe” and doesn’t shout.
I don’t listen to left radio and tv as much but do encounter clips.
Note that the General Social Survey and other studies suggest that lefties are more likely to be treated for mental illness than conservatives (self selection error?) and much more likely to commit suicide (self selection error?). They also report much lower levels of happiness or life satisfaction and they die younger.
Conservative behaviors like marriage and regular church attendance are associated with longer lifespans (as is staying home on Friday and Saturday nights rather than hitting the clubs).
I did note at the DC Taxpayers March that the attendees were better dressed, better tressed, and cleaner than the average of left demos I’ve attended since the ‘60s. Reports of the lack of trash were certainly correct. Not quite as much bodily mutilation either.
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September 29, 2009, 9:39 amSnaphappy says:
Here are some links:
Feb. 20, 2009: “Operation Teabag” (Freerepublic.com)
Feb. 22, 2009: Free Republic poster suggests, “Every movement needs symbols and icons. I propose the various groups promoting new “Tea Parties” adopt the simple and lowly teabag, clipped to the lapel with a plain paperclip as a badge.” Responses include “GREAT IDEA!!!!”, “Count me in,” and “new slogan ‘Tea Bag Obama.’” Some posters point out the less-well-known meaning of “teabag,” but are overridden: “Well, maybe some folks will have that repulsive image in mind everytime they see a teabag, but the vast majority of regular folks aren’t aware, and wouldn’t take it that way even if they did.” “Never be afraid of what left scumbags will say.”
Photo of Tea bag the liberal dems sign
Another (from Feb. 28, 2009)
April 1, 2009 post, “Tea Bag the fools in D.C.”, promoting the April 15 tea parties.
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September 29, 2009, 12:35 pmWhat He Said « The American Catholic says:
[...] He Said Here’s Prof. David Post at the Volokh Conspiracy describing politics through an analogy to sports (the easiest way to explain anything to me): I [...]
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