To the editor:

In recent pieces appearing in the Journal-World, St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Bill Lambrecht (Aug. 9) and Washington Post pundit Kathleen Parker (Aug. 10) referred to the ongoing nationwide wave of anti-spending protests as “so-called Tea Bag protests” and to the protesters as “Teabaggers.” The correct term for these protests is Tea Parties or Tea Party protests.

The participants do not refer to themselves as teabaggers or to their demonstrations as teabag protests. Those terms were applied by MSNBC commentators David Shuster, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, among others, because the term “teabagging” has, well, other meanings not appropriate for a family newspaper. (Not coincidentally, Shuster was suspended from NBC and MSNBC in 2008 for his remark about Chelsea Clinton being “pimped out” for her mother’s presidential campaign.)

Shuster and company were only too eager to paste the vulgar versions of the teabag terms onto the tea party protests, and they have made their comments with all the class of sniggering junior high school students who think they have single-handedly invented the double entendre. By repeating these terms in their columns, both Parker and Lambrecht have revealed either their abject ignorance or, perhaps, the real source of their “news.”