In Praise of Dirty Minds

"Teabagging" refers to a specific sexual practice involving one party's testicles and another party's mouth. It even has its own emoticon similar to the "heart" sequence of a bracket and the numeral "3." So the choice of the term by GOP tax resisters in recent days for Moveon.org-style house parties and online petitions has generated considerable mirth in the blogosphere and talk-show circuit. I'm interested in how Internet activism is envisioned by these political actors on sites like teaparty.GOP.com using familiar online interfaces for web-based forms and check boxes. The GOP website now says the interface will allow users to "send" a virtual tea bag to an official e-mail address and avoids the offensive verb entirely. (I also learned that online craftivists also are engaged in a traffic in plush tea bags like this and this.)