Rhetorical choices. What was young Matt Taibbi thinking last week when he invoked imagery of conservative pundit Michelle Malkin trying to talk with a hairy scrotum stuffed in her mouth, all under the playful auspices of Anderson Cooper’s twist on Tax Day “tea parties”? Teabagging. That’s the term Cooper seemingly coined and perpetuated.

Call me prude if you like, but the flow of teabagging references proves to me once again the veracity of the adage, “You learn something new every day.”

The teabagging references remind me of a scene from a Ferrol Sams’ novel. No, not the scene where the kid lights a mule’s fart, but the one where the rooster wanders into the hole under the outhouse while the kid’s menacing uncle is conducting his morning constitutional. Unsure what he’s looking at, the rooster applies a sharp beak and a well-developed pecking ability to learn more…

But when did it become fashionable to turn your nose up at the excremental in favor of the pornographic?

Ironically, the other day I found young Taibbi’s analysis of the ontology of this economy thoughtful (see, The Big Takeover: The global economic crisis isn’t about money—it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution). To me what is noteworthy is that after reading his Rolling Stone article, I enjoyed a glimmering moment of hope that from the generations that follow, new, listenable voices are emerging, that perhaps I’d found a young person with potential to become a bellwether for the next generation.

You can’t imagine my disappointment when I read Matt’s blog. Not to be out-done by the convoy of “teabagging” allusions in the media this week, Taibbi had to pile on by creating a rich image—not of Demosthenes dropping pebbles in his mouth and holding forth against the crashing surf, but of Michelle Malkin trying to talk with a stone of another kind in her mouth. Woohaw. Just like Dewey Oxberger tearing the bikinis off mud-covered sluts in the mosh. All Taibbi lacked was a shot of Jagermeister and a three-stooges head-stroke.

Taibbi spends a good portion of his blog post railing against Anne Coulter, in addition to Michelle Malkin. I don’t have a strong opinion about Coulter or Malkin, but Taibbi clearly does. Based strictly on his rhetorical choices, the spot on which he stands is not exactly elevated. Sadly, I don’t think it has to be this way.