On Monday’s Situation Room, Suzanne Malveaux became the latest CNN
personality to use the offensive “teabagger” label to describe
opponents of ObamaCare. Malveaux asked senior political analyst Gloria
Borger, “Do we expect to see the kinds of big rallies and...
the circus atmosphere that we saw...over the summer when you were talking about controversial policy,
‘teabaggers’ and all that other thing?” [audio clip
available here]
The
CNN anchor and correspondent, serving a substitute for the vacationing
Wolf Blitzer, questioned Borger about the upcoming battle over health
care “reform” in the Senate, after a 60-39 vote over the weekend to
begin debate over the Democrats’ bill. Her use of the vulgar term came
14 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour:
SUZANNE MALVEAUX: Now, the holidays are
coming up. Do we expect to see the kinds of big rallies and the kind
of- some of the theatrics, the circus atmosphere that we saw the last
go-round over the summer when you were talking about controversial
policy-
GLORIA BORGER: No-
MALVEAUX: ‘Teabaggers’ and all that other thing?
BORGER: Yeah-
MALVEAUX: Do you think we’ll see something equivalent to that?
BORGER:
You know, it’s my experience that over the holidays, people like to eat
and shop more than they like to do anything else (Malveaux laughs), but
that's why, Suzanne, you really see that the Democrats want to get a
bill out of the Senate, at least, before the Christmas holidays. That
may mean they’re here until New Year’s, or- but they don’t want to
leave a big gap for any kind of a recess where the opposition, of
course, could get stoked. But it’s going to be a long slog between
getting it out of the Senate and getting a compromise version of this
bill-
MALVEAUX: Sure-
BORGER: Out of any conference committee between the House and the Senate.
Malveaux’s colleague, Anderson Cooper,
infamously referenced “teabagging”
during a segment with David Gergen back in April 2009. More recently,
CNN’s senior political correspondent Candy Crowley labeled some of the
supporters of Conservative Party of New York candidate Doug Hoffman as “
tea bag partyers”
on the November 2 edition of The Situation Room.
— Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.