My Apology to the Tea Party

Many of you will recall that several Tea Party members attended the September 20th City Council meeting to oppose the idea of a ban on single-use plastic bags. Subsequently, quite a few Tea Party members contacted me and chastised me for using the term "teabaggers," which they regard as derisive.

I did not recall using this term, and in fact I referred most of them to my blog on the plastic bag issue, in which I did use the term "Tea Party activists" but not the term "teabaggers". However, I stand corrected. As the video of meeting shows, I did use the term "teabaggers" in noting that we would welcome any further late testimony on the topic. (One Tea Party member had shown up after public comment because we had moved the item up.)

I did use the term in a kind of a flip way (pairing it with a reference to "tree-huggers"), which
I actually hope shows that I did not mean it derisively. That's no excuse for using a term that the Tea Party dislikes, however. I was unaware that Tea Party members dislike the term and did not know that it has a sexual connotation that the Tea Party, understandably, finds offensive.

I am sorry that I used this term in public and I certainly won't use it again. Thanks for understanding.