Enlighten me

[Tom Storer]

So this guy wrote a letter to Obama criticizing this, that and so forth. Obama sent back a hand-written reply in which (echoing the language of the letter-writer) he referred to "tea-baggers."

A newspaper article says this:

"‘Tea-bagging’ commonly refers to a lewd sexual act. Since the rise of the Tea Party movement, which vehemently opposes big government and Obamacare, critics on the left have been using the controversial term to poke fun at the right-wing protesters."*

I didn't know that--either that people have been poking fun at right-wing protesters with this term, or that the term commonly refers to a lewd sexual act. What sexual act does it commonly refer to? Can it be that President Obama is as naive and ill-informed as I am?

(Monte Smith will point out that Internet search engines make it easy to answer a question such as the one about "tea-bagging" for oneself. True enough. But a thread about lewd sexual practices and politics can only be a good thing.)

[Jazzooo]

It's all true--getting tea-bagged is having someone's balls slamming against your face as you perform oral sex on them; and we've all been making fun of the tea baggers from the moment we heard the name of their association.

[Tom Storer]

I must admit that slamming one's testicles against another person's face during that intimate moment could indeed be classified as a "lewd act."

But is the teabagger the person slamming or the person being slammed? Or both?

[pig pen]

As for the political faction, I personally make fun of them because they're a bunch of whiny dipshits. I couldn't care less what their name is associated with. They're a joke unto themselves.

Yeah, I definitely don't need to use an insulting name to make fun of them.

I kind of see the power that these idiots have attained as the ultimate result of voter apathy.

[sozamora]

I always assumed 'tea bagger' was used by their critics to make fun of them and in reference to the lewd act.

[sozamora]

In my case I didn't know the sexual term, but called them teabaggers due to images of imbeciles in tricorn hats with tea bags stapled to them.

I think I first heard the term in the context of multiplayer FPS games.

[jwaggs]

i wasn't under the impression that tea bagging someone involved plunging an erect penis into someone's mouth and bouncing his balls off of his/her chin.

I thought it had to do with football players, frat boys and English boarding school lads holding down their friends and rubbing their scrotums against said friends' faces.

So, yes, it qualifies as a lewd act, but doesn't necessarily involve oral sex in the way Bill Clinton might describe it.

[LennyH]

Shit. Now I'm worried that I've been doing it wrong.

[Tom Storer]

And stlll no one has replied to my question: is the teabagger the person slamming or the person being slammed? Or both?

[jwaggs]

It's teabagger and teabagee.