A Tale of Two Countries...

Yesterday The New American (click at your own risk) teamed up with Fox News and the American Family Association to bring you the delightfully, hilariously named Tax Day Tea Party Protest, where hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered to protest... umm, not having their taxes raised... by teabagging.

Yes, that's right. Teabagging.

Now, anyone who has had sex in the last decade, or who knows someone who has had sex in the last decade, or has watched a show where someone talked about having sex in the last decade, knows what teabagging is. And if not, a quick google search will bring up the Urban Dictionary as its first three hits, with definitions for teabagging that do not include Boston, Redcoats, Rick Perry or Rush Limbaugh (thank god). Apparently, however, hundreds of thousands of Americans and the entire crew of Fox News remain utterly (and did I mention hilariously?) clueless to the previous meaning of their co-opted hobby. Rachel Maddow had this to say about the pre-teabagging frenzy that had so many in its thrall:



The actual events, of course, were much less humorous. And lest you think I am only presenting a snidely slanted liberal view, here are some teabaggers explaining the protests in their very own inchoate sentences. And some footage from a Cleveland Teabagging Party. Don't worry, there's no sex (as explained above), though the bigotry might make it inappropriate for children. Courtesy of bloggerinterrupted.com:





And what was the rest of the world doing while America teabagged for (already-lowered) taxes? In Afghanistan, where the American-backed government recently passed a law legalizing marital rape and curtailing numerous other rights for women in the Shiite minority, 300 women gathered in protest in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrasa run by the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric. Women police officers formed a human shield around them as nearly 1000 men and women hurled rocks and death threats:

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Soraya Pakzad, head of the organization Voices of Afghan Women and winner of the 2008 Women of Courage award, gave a recent interview at GlobalPost.com about connections between economics and women's rights in Afghanistan:

“People are very poor,” she explained. “I have had fathers cry and say ‘I love my daughter, I do not want to give her up. But give me an option.’”

Pakzad has recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she met with prominent figures as part of a delegation of Afghan women.

She tried to explain her world — the falling numbers of girls in school, the increasing violence, forced marriages, self-immolation. Pakzad herself is the mother of six children, married at 14 with little say in her own future.

“I met Michelle (Obama) and Hillary (Clinton),” she said. “Michelle cried when I spoke about the way our women live. But they told me that more schools have been built, more roads have been paved. Why are they so concerned about the buildings? I think because a building is something they can measure, they can count. But who is going to be able to go to these schools?”

And somehow all the teabagging nonsense no longer seems so entertaining. But the rest of that opening sentence has been floating around my head all day...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."