According to Guest of a Guest Tinsley hosted the tea party for Serena and 15 of her littlest pals at the Samantha Thavasa store on Madison Avenue. There wasn't any pin the tail on the donkey at this party. Instead there was some makeovers by a Christian Dior makeup artist, and styling consultations with the Tinz herself. These littlest girls know how to shop!

Just how did Serena Bancroft land such a stellar host for her little bash? Well, she is the daughter of socialite Debbie Bancroft and her banker husband Billy, so that probably helped. As GoaG points out, La Tinz probably wants to get in good with these little rich things now, so that in 10 years she'll still be getting invites to the hot parties. Ms. Mortimer is the face of Japanese handbag maker Samantha Thavasa (and designs several bags for the fashion house each year) so she definitely has a financial interest in bringing attention to the brand, especially among the junior Junior League set.

Since 13-year-old girls (and gays) are CWs target demographic, maybe this is her way of cozying up to an audience she is going to need to be a ratings blockbuster come January. Throw in an appearance guest bartending with Anderson Cooper's boyfriend at gay bar Eastern Bloc and she'll have her base shored up just in time for the premiere.

This might be a make good to Debbie Bancroft, who used to be the muse of polite society's favorite designer Douglas Hannant, until they had beef in 2005, when Hannant chose Tinsley to be his new public face. Burn. Before her reality show airs, Tinsley has to make all the allies she can or else she won't be able to show her face in Southampton ever again. Serving up cupcakes to a bunch of fashion-conscious teens isn't such a bad price to pay.

[Image via Guest of a Guest]

While we keep waiting to hear more reasons to be jealous of this muscled business owner who gets to go on lavish vacations with Anderson Cooper, we can console ourselves with some yummy images.

Being the co-owner of Eastern Bloc, a popular divey gay bar in the East Village, there must be even more party pictures of Mr. Maisani lying around. Please, email them in!

This is the promo shot for Eastern Bloc with the three owners. Maisani is on the right along with Gabriel Beaton and Darren Dryden. Yeah, we wanna hang out with them.

Photo by Michael Wakefield

Here's Maisani working hard behind the bar. [Image via Twerking]
Check out those guns! No wonder he reeled in a silver fox. [Image via Twerking]
Well, if you own a gay bar, there are going to be pictures of you making out with boys floating around, now aren't there. Let's hope this was before Anderson! [Image via Twerking]
Ditto on gay bar owner=pictures of you with drag queens. This picture is sort of indicative of Cooper's public persona: it's fuzzy and he has his hand on a lady's boob, but everyone knows the person in the dress is really a guy. [Image via Twerking]
The back patio of Eastern Bloc sure looks like a fun place to hang. [Image via Twerking]
Here he is with Cooper this June. Matching outfits! Cute. [Image via PCN]
Here he is getting close to the DJ. It's so Lindsay and Sam. [Image via Homo-Neurotic via Next Magazine]
Hey Ben, any time you want to share a beer, let us know. It's on us. [Image via Twerking]
Oh, Ben, you'd be so nice to come home to. [Image via Homo-Neurotic]
Maisani and his DJ friend, wearing a lot less clothing. We like this version much better. [Image via Homo-Neurotic]
Who's your friend, Ben? Is he single? [Image via Homo-Neurotic]
Do them come for the strong drinks, or the strong man behind the bar? [Image via Homo-Neurotic]

Not exactly all of them, but a whole bunch. It was like watching our nightmares come true on Live with Regis and Kelly. Daytime's dizzy duo do a bunch of really ornate and totally uninspired costumes for Halloween every year. Because it's 2009, they chose the Gosselins, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Lady Gaga (with a Susan Boyle). If that wasn't bad enough, their producer, Michael Gelman, made a guest appearance as Balloon Boy. Yes, all of those were on the list. For people who are going to put a ton of time, money, and effort into the execution of their costumes—and these are professional-grade turkeys—why not spend a little bit longer on the concepts and make that Mad Men John Deere lawnmower incident come to life?

The only acceptable exception to our list would have been if sometimes guest host Anderson Cooper showed up dressed as his favorite Real Housewife, NeNe Leakes. Now that is a frightening bit of unoriginality that we can endorse!

Nearly everyone who talks about Maisani—whose real name is Antoine—mentions what a nice guy he is. He and spends a lot of time working out at the Crunch on Lafayette newly-opened David Barton Gym on Astor Place—someone even said "obsessively"—and is frequently spotted spotting Andy himself while doing squats. He likes horror movies, is an amateur photographer, and doesn't go out much, other than the work at his own bar. He broke up with his last boyfriend last winter and started dating Cooper shortly thereafter. We can't pinpoint exactly when, but most people seem to think it was about eight months ago. The gossip is that the couple are planning to buy (or have already bought) a converted firehouse on West 3rd Street together.

Maisani (on the right in the photo above, taken at Eastern Bloc), who comes from an upper-middle-class Parisian family, came to New York in 1995 to study film for a year, and ended up staying until now. He was a valedictorian with a perfect 4.0 when he graduated from Hunter College in 2000 with a B.A. in art history. He then worked in a museum, but was attracted to the nightlife by the more leisurely hours.

He started tending bar with Gabriel Beaton and Darren Dryden at Barracuda, a popular gay haunt in Chelsea. Legend has it that they found the old Wonder Bar space on E Sixth Street for sale on Craigslist and decided to pool their money together and open their own bar. Eastern Bloc opened in 2005 and is often packed with the sort of hip fashionable gays that hang out in the East Village. It is done up with lots of homoerotic communist propaganda and achieves a vibe somewhere between shabby chic and camp, with stools spray-painted with the words "Mary" and "hooker" on the seat. On the weekends, the small divey joint (that used to have dozens of men's briefs hanging from the ceiling) is often so packed that it's hard to make your way through. They have an especially hip party called Good Times on Wednesday night that attracts a crowd of gay hipsters living it up on a school night.

So there you have it. Know anything else or have pictures? Leave it in the comments or email us!

[Top image courtesy Homo-Neurotic via Next Magazine, bottom via Twerking]

Here's the New York Post's gossip column item about Cooper going to the "best hotel in the world" in India:

Anderson Cooper has been consoling himself over falling ratings by living it up in Jaipur, India, at one of the world's most opulent hotels. The CNN star was spotted Tuesday with his muscular friend, Benjamin Maisani, an owner of East Village bar Eastern Bloc, at the Rambagh Palace, named the best hotel in the world by Conde Nast Traveler. Cooper's $3,200-a-night room features a four-poster mahogany bed and views of the gardens of the former Maharaja palace. Our source said, "Anderson's room has a large round bathtub. On the first night it was filled with bubbles and sprinkled with red rose petals." CNN declined to comment.

Saying Cooper is gay is no longer a scoop. It's not a scandal. Even the humor involved in all the clever winking and nodding is past its expiration date. With today's item Page Six may have exhausted all the ways to say "He's GAY GAY GAY!": the room only has one bed, Maisani's "muscular," and perhaps most blatantly, he owns Eastern Bloc. Every 'mo in New York knows Eastern Bloc is a gritty, dirty gay bar ("a true man meat bar") that often has boy-on-boy porn playing on its TVs. (The stencil over the DJ booth offers "Free Moustache Rides" and one outside once read "One Gay at a Time, Sweet Jesus.") All the patrons know Maisani, because he's big, and know he's dating Cooper. Word on the street is that Madonna's recent appearance there had less to do with her getting back to her East Village gay roots and more to do with the fact that she was with Cooper, who wanted to play "whose boy toy is hotter" with Madge.

Cooper's see-through closet is such a joke that it doesn't make sense to call him in the closet anymore. If he won't say it, we will: Anderson Cooper is officially out. There's no difference between him and Neil Patrick Harris. They both play it straight at their day jobs and then openly go about town with their boyfriends and do TV interviews about how much they love Kathy Griffin and The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

It's not like Cooper's in a club all of his own, either. He is part of an increasingly large crowd of notables who won't come out but have given up trying to hide that they are gay. Queen Latifah denied that she was going to marry her girlfriend, a girlfriend who she tries to pass off as her "trainer." Kevin Spacey got busted lying about being mugged in a London cruising park. Ricky Martin has stopped even trying to fight the gay rumors. Jodie Foster has never said she's a lesbian out loud, but she basically came out when she thanked her partner in an acceptance speech.

These gay-not-gay celebrities are different from the Hugh Jackmans, John Travoltas, Tom Cruises, and Kenny Chesneys, who are all constantly plagued with gay rumors that they strenuously try to deny or deflect. If they're gay, they're doing it in secret. Cooper and his set of cohorts live openly gay lives — and that's a good thing — but they refuse to acknowledge what the public already knows.

In Anderson Cooper's specific case, we sort of understand why he won't open his mouth and let the rainbows fly. All the guy has ever wanted to do was be an old-fashioned newsman and unfortunately him coming out would make him a part of the story. Every time he tried to cover something having to do with gay civil rights (or Madonna or Fire Island) plenty of people would claim that his reporting was biased because of his sexual orientation. It's not fair: Katie Couric doesn't have to worry when she covers pay inequality for women, and neither does Harry Smith when discussing new medicine that will eradicate baldness.

Coming out would open Cooper up to irrational accusations from those waiting to pounce on the "liberal media" just as quickly as A.C. pounces on his muscle man in an Indian hotel room. That sucks, but it's the way it currently is. How does it get changed? Well, by having some major national news figures come out and show that they can still get blown over in a hurricane or report live from a war zone without breaking into a anti-Prop 8 rant.

That's right, Anderson, it's going to take you to change it. Rachel Maddow has paved the way, but all the baby gays out there need you to man up and be our Jackie Robinson. The first step is the easiest, you just have to say what everyone already knows.

Top pic of Cooper and Maisani snapped in June by Pacific Coast News; pic of Eastern Bloc via Alice Bartlett's Flickr

Daniel Nardicio, a spokesman for Playgirl, said that both sides agreed to do the shoot the weekend of November 6 here in New York. The online publication hopes that Levi will be posing all day on Saturday while also getting in some promotional appearances while he's in town. Also, Playgirl is thinking about reviving the print edition for a Levi special. If the shoot takes place on the arranged date the images will hit the web a few weeks later, and the print magazine—with additional images—a few weeks after that. So far just how naked he is going to get still isn't part of the contract, which should be signed in the next few days.

Tank Jones, Levi's svengali, told us that he didn't have any additional details about the shoot and that they're still trying to nail down the date. He said he was talking to the Playgirl camp later this afternoon and will have more details after the meeting. Well, Tank, we want to know everything! Now! If you can successfully broker this deal, you deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. It doesn't take much these days.

In other Levi Johnston news, Bravo honcho Andy Cohen, who started all this mess on his masturbatory talk show, has changed his position on the matter for the second time.

Last night on Watch What Happens Live, Cohen hand his "Mazel of the Week" to the viewer Steve, who wrote in the question about whether or not Levi would pose nude in the first place. Levi famously said yes, and the whole thing began. Now Cohen is celebrating the dirty pictures with Playgirl because it started on his show. He also says his show is contributing to culture (full clip below) and asks Anderson Cooper what he is doing. Well, he's probably getting all worked up at the thought of a naked Levi photo shoot.

Anyway, what happened to warning the kid against doing porn? Is being naked in Playgirl not porn because it's "tasteful?" God, Andy, get your story straight. PS—Thanks. We never could have done it without you.

We reported a little over a month ago that the Today show had booked Blagojevich to appear on the morning he happened to be arrested by the FBI, but bumped the interview so they could flack for Jay Leno's new show. We found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request to the state of Illinois asking for e-mails from representatives of the media to Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich's press secretary (we got the idea from South Carolina's The State, which did the same thing—to comic effect—after Mark Sanford's Argentinian Rhapsody).

The first raft of e-mails we got were from December 8, the day before Blagojevich got popped, and it included one from Today producer Lexi Dauber apologetically canceling a scheduled remote Q-and-A with Matt Lauer to make room for Leno news. We just got another batch covering the 48 hours after the arrest, and guess what? Dauber and her fellow Today producer Stephanie Siegel all of a sudden really wanted to talk to Blagojevich!

The traditional route for a reporter desperately trying to convince someone to submit to an interview when it's obviously not in their interest to do so is to drop all pretense of toughness and objectivity and lie to them: We will be your friend! Not like all those other mean reporters. While Dauber and Seigel's e-mails to Guerrero are understandably sympathetic, an internal write-up of a phone call with Siegel outlining the terms of her interview request shows what they were really willing to give up. Matt Lauer or Meredith Vieira would call Blagojevich before the interview to "go over the line of questions," and Seigel stressed that "they are sensitive."

CBS's Early Show also went the simpering route, telling Guerrero that there is "far too much hearsay going around" and offering Blagojevich an opportunity to "set the record straight" and "clear his own name." They were even willing to "rent a private space to keep him away from the rest of the media's view." We all know how annoying prying reporters can be.

ABC News' Diane Sawyer, on the other hand, didn't try to buddy up to Blago. To her credit, Sawyer's producer offered a fairly straightforward pitch that managed to avoid over-the-top sycophancy.

Larry King's producer relied on the rogue's gallery that has traipsed through King's studio in the past, positioning the host as the go-to guy for crooks, liars, and other humiliated figures—go with us and you can be in the fine company of Jeffrey Skilling, Gary Condit, and Bob Packwood!

King's CNN colleague Anderson Cooper wasn't even trying: His producers sent in a perfunctory, We-asked-Governor-Blagojevich-to-come-on-the-show requests that they knew weren't going to open any doors.

Likewise the producer for CNN's Campbell Brown dashed off an email that would allow her to dutifully report that a request was in.

Sometimes brevity is your best bet when dealing with a harried flack who's clearly deluged with requests. That's what Andy Shaw, a political reporter for Chicago's local ABC station, decided to go with.

That kind of approach is important when you know your target is dealing with all manner of zany proposals. Like a request for comment from "a representative for Dan Ackroyd [sic] and Jim Belushi" on their call for Blagojevich's resignation. When a press aide forwarded that message to the governor's press assistant, she responded, "What? I want you to explain."

(For the record, it looks like that was a hoax call—we can't find any evidence that one-half of the Blues Brothers and the talentless brother of the other, dead, half ever made such a demand.)

The most pathetic request comes from Pat Curry, the news assignment editor for WGN, a local Chicago station. He wasn't even asking for an interview with Blagojevich—he wanted Guerrero himself to come on, and delivered a masterwork of flattery and faux sympathy. "I wouldn't expect you to be able to comment on a federal investigation, and could easily brush that off," Curry wrote, signing off with, "Humbly, Pat Curry."

A producer for a local Chicago talk radio show hosted by husband-and-wife pair Don and Roma Wade wins the award for discretion, declining to put in writing the "incredible offer" he had for Guerrero.

We'll never know what that offer was, but guess who got the first post-arrest interview with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich?

You can read the whole batch here. Interestingly, not one e-mail from Fox News turned up. It could be that they relied solely on the phone, or that their e-mails somehow got missed by our FOIA requests. Or maybe they figured it wasn't worth trying.

Last night, Barney Frank called into the Bravo honcho's masturbatory talk show (and our favorite 30 minutes of the week). At first, we thought Cohen would use the time to talk about important things and not about, you know, himself and Bravo. He even got Frank to say he would not run for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. That's like, almost news!

It lasted for about a minute before Cohen humiliated the Congressman into playing "House of Representatives or Real Housewives." We give Frank credit for being game but also for not pretending like he was in on the joke, he was obviously not amused. Nor were we.

In fact, the whole thing was a little cringe-inducing, especially because Barney Frank is an amazing guy and Cohen seems like he is completely immune to embarrassment. Frank is smart, witty, and quick with a quip, but he is also deadly sincere. It's not like he's some lightweight like Anderson Cooper who will come on and makes some jokes about Kim's wig and then go back to work. Frank only wants to talk about very serious subjects. Indulge him a bit, Andy. It might be the most enriching 3 minutes to air on your network all year.

While chatting with burgeoning gay icon Levi Johnston, on his show Cohen asked the kid if he would pose nude. He said he would "for the right money." Now Cohen said on the air that Johnston shouldn't do it, and he's young and he'll have the chance to make "more than $25,000 in his life." Don't be so sure.

Hey, Andy, don't get in between us and what's in Levi's Levis. The future of our happiness depends depends on us seeing the Alaskan hunk working his hockey stick on camera.

The $25,000 figure didn't come out of the blue. Last week not only did Unzipped magazine (the gay playboy) offer to pay Jonhston (an undisclosed amount) for a naked cover, but also Bait & Tackle, a media company that owns the website Straight College Men [NSFW, unless you work in a gay bordello] offered Johnston 25 large if he would come to Las Vegas and jerk off on camera for the site.

We called both companies to see if they have had any luck getting this hot commodity, and neither immediately responded to phone calls. Levi, listen to us. Don't listen to Cohen. This is the best thing you can do for your future. Do the porn, Levi. Walk into the light.

And that wasn't the only surprise on the show. Anderson Cooper, the straightest man in the universe also called in to talk about wigs, the Real Housewives of Atlanta, and his penchant for Latin boys. Actually it was only the first two. At one point, Cohen said, "Anderson, you've come out publicly..." and we thought for a second "Wait, Andy Cohen is going to fucking out Anderson Cooper on basic cable!" Then he continued, "come out publicly in your support of NeNe." Oh, damn. No out. But yet again, we didn't hear a gayer thing all day yesterday, and we watched three and a half hours of Project Runway.

As details of the accident have emerged, it's been reported that all parties involved are okay physically and that there were no drugs or alcohol involved (Phelps is on probation for a previous DUI), thankfully. Now a tipster with knowledge of the local geography wrote in to shine some UV light on the intersection where Phelps crashed his car:

The site of the accident is two blocks north of where I used to live, in the heart of the tranny hooker district in lovely downtown baltimore where the girls with something extra work the corner in cheap lingerie like extras from a vanity six video, and calvert only runs north - therefore, if phelps was traveling on calvert at the time of the accident, he may have been leaving the tranny hooker district !!!

The other possible explanation is that the 83 was so backed up with traffic (The Ravens and Redskins played a preseason football game in Baltimore tonight) that Phelps was traveling the "back roads" to avoid traffic.

calvert is just one of the few good ways out of the harbor area going back towards the burbs if the 83 is backed up, so he could have been coming from anywhere downtown really - but, hell, if he was going north on calvert then heck yeah, he went right thru the trannie hooker district - about two blocks long, centered at calvert and eager.

So was Michael Phelps trolling for a tranny tonight? It's highly doubtful, but it sure as hell makes for some fun reckless speculation, doesn't it? Also, this information should give Anderson Cooper something to be hopeful about, and everyone needs a little hope in their life.

Pic via

Last year Cooper came out of the closet about his obsession with NeNe and Real Housewives, which then led NeNe to reciprocate the love in no uncertain terms.

I'm obsessed with him, honey. I would ask him out even while I'm married! I've already told my husband, if I see Anderson, honey, it's over! You know, he's real good lookin'! There's something about the way he looks when he's reporting the news. He reports the news with a twinkle in his eyes. Something about it him is just like, ‘Stop it, Anderson! Whatever it is your doin', Stop!' I like him a lot!

So now here we are well into 2009 and NeNe still won't let it go. She's either a completely delusional or a woman in possession of an over-the-top level of self-confidence who genuinely thinks she can make a 40-ish gay man (Allegedly!) come over to play for the other team. Regardless, you have to admire her persistence, not to mention her ability to make Coop blush on the air.

The interview in question took place yesterday on Live With Regis and Kelly while Cooper was filling in for Regis Philbin. You have to kind of admire him for cutting to the chase and asking the question that so many wonder but dare never to ask, and then turning around and defending himself with such animated vigor. Then again, he is the son of an octogenarian smut-peddler, so it kind of figures that he'd dive right in and ask about the boning that went on behind the scenes on the show.

But the highlight of the clip may actually be when Harris replies that she kissed ten guys on the show, provoking Cooper to say, "You know what...I just threw up in my mouth a little." Oh come on Andy—really?!

The passage she's chosen [very NSFW] is about a slave girl or something in a gold chain performing fellatio and waiting for milk and ohhhh God it's really wonderful/terribly disturbing. Perfect Friday fare.

Enjoy!

Cooper said that he went to Studio 54 with Jackson and a "bunch of people" when he was a 10 year-old child. He made no mention of whether or not his mother, octogenarian smut-peddler Gloria Vanderbilt, was one of those "bunch of people," so it's possible that Vanderbilt allowed Michael Jackson to take her 10 year-old son to what was New York City's most notorious den of drugs and sexual promiscuity without her.

I don't know whether I should feel jealous or outraged.

We got a tip from an insider that Unvogue spent weeks trying to persuade AC to be the host of tonight's party at the Sapphire Go-Go Lounge—which coincides with the start of Gay Pride week. GET IT?

A staffer on Anderson Cooper's CNN show took a message and promised to get back to us, but hasn't. Unvogue editor K. Tyson Perez demurred, saying "we are slightly annoyed that our big secret is getting out before we have had a chance to 'officially' announce it ourselves." But Unvogue's PR person confirms to us that they have "confirmed Mr. Cooper's attendance."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.But this isn't just any crappy party! According to our tipster:

Anderson was absolutely amused by the name of the online magazine and said his mother [Gloria Vanderbilt, eroticist] would love the boldness of it. Undeterred by not having Mr. Cooper as an official host, it didn't take long before the entire Unvogue staff began rebranding the event as, "Anderson Cooper's Big Fat Coming Out Party!' LOL!!! They are now hard at work concocting some fancy new sponsored Macari wine spritzers (how deliciously gay) and instructing their go-go boys to rehearse a special lap dance appropriately dubbed the A.C. 360. LOL! We couldn't help but wonder if the A.C. 360 concludes with an explosive happy ending as we all know Anderson loves the sounds of bombs…

We also hear a certain American Idol contestant may make an appearance along with AC. It all sounds quite juvenile and we have a hard time believing Anderson Cooper would be interested in such things, but in any case, don't let us stop the fun, guys. Proceeds "go to benefit HIV Arts Network, Inc," for the record. Send pics!
[Although: AC was reporting live from Paris last night. Is this party awesome enough for him to fly back for? Pics or it didn't happen.]

UPDATE: I just spoke with Shimrit Sheetrit, Anderson Cooper's personal rep, who said "I can guarantee you Anderson is not attending" this party tonight. Sheetrit said Cooper is back in New York and doing his show as usual tonight.

Vanderbilt is a famous romancer of famous men and generally could be described as "Fabbbbbbulous"—fabbbbbulous enough to write Obsession: An Erotic Tale at age 85, and make the New York Times blush:

But it nevertheless uses vocabulary and describes activities of a sort that readers of The New York Times are usually shielded from. There are scenes involving dildos, whips, silken cords and golden nipple clamps, not to mention an ebony, smooth-backed Mason Pearson hairbrush purchased at Harrods. As the book explains, spanking with a Mason-Pearson is a "serious matter," not the kind of thing that is rewarded with the "luscious afterglow of warm cocoa butter." Mint, cayenne pepper and a fresh garden carrot are deployed in the book in ways never envisioned by "The Joy of Cooking." And there is also a unicorn, though, blessedly, it remains a bystander.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Did you understand the implications of that, New York Times readers? They're saying that the unicorn's horn is not used as a dildo in this Glorida Vanderbilt book. AC seems a little sheepish but supportive, and Vanderbilt herself is incredibly blasé about the whole thing, so we must give her our hearty support and admiration for doing her thing as she wants in the face of the prim opposition of New York Times standards editors. If you know any such editors, be sure to buy them a smooth-backed hairbrush.
[NYT. Pic via]

The ad—it's new to us, though we're not sure how long it's been in circulation—is awash in blue tones and features assorted lost souls struggling with an "unexplainable emptiness that can only be filled by one thing—the truth." It looks exactly like an ad for one of the anti-depressants that Scientologists regard as tools of a fascist psychiatric regime. Except at the end, you don't get a pitch for Paxil, you get a glowing Scientology logo directing you to the group's web site. (For comparison, see this old Effexor ad.)

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And it's been working: According to the rough stat guide of Alexa.com, the reach of Scientology.org has seen a bump in the past month.

Traffic aside, the ad's real purpose is clearly branding: It's a slick, well-produced effort designed to position the church as a mainstream provider of spiritual answers and not a cult that relies on the slave labor of children. It's certainly miles ahead in that regard from Scientology's earlier efforts:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

They're learning.

As we've noted, CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC's David Shuster and Rachel Maddow have been having been saying "teabagging" a lot—over and over and over again!—in reference to yesterday's attempt by Fox News and its slackjawed audience to re-enact Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy at festivals nationwide (think of it as their Rocky Horror Picture Show).

"What's with all this 'teabagging' business?" Fox News wondered. "They're saying that word an awful lot." After some investigating, Fox came to understand that CNN and MSNBC haven't been shooting straight—the word "teabag" carries with it subtle mockery when used by pointy-headed liberals conversant in the coded language of sexual perversity!

Teabagging, for those who don't live in a frat house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person's face or mouth.

WHAT PART!?!?!?

"I've never seen anything like it," Bozell said. "The oral sex jokes on (CNN) and particularly MSNBC on teabagging ... they had them by the dozens. That's how insulting they were toward people who believe they're being taxed too highly."

Yes, a bunch of anchors employed a double entrende to mock a mindless farce. (Why not watch the video compilation we posted yesterday, at right, one more time?) But let's remember why it's funny. Simply picking a sexually suggestive phrase and using it to describe the tea parties is not, in and of itself, funny. What makes it funny is this: The reason people call it "teabagging" is that the idiots at Fox News started calling it "teabagging" themselves without understanding that they were using a word that, in another context, means gently sucking on somebody's testicles. Now that is funny, and Maddow pointed it out in her April 9 broadcast, with video of a Fox Newser saying, "teabag the fools in D.C.!"

But Fox does get one thing kind of right, in reference to Maddow's buddy act with Gawker Media alumna Ana Marie Cox:

If anyone thinks the orally charged remarks on mainstream cable were just a coincidence, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's segments over the past week with guest, Air America's Ana Marie Cox, would dissolve all doubt. Their on-air gymnastics, dancing around the double entendre of the week, looked like live-action Beavis and Butthead.

They're both very pretty ladies! But Maddow does kind of have a Beavis Butthead thing going on, doesn't she?