In the two weeks since Chatterbox posted his item touting the Sopranos-begotten phrase "disrespect the Bing" as a promising new meme, its progress has not been as swift as Chatterbox hoped. Previously, Chatterbox was able to find it used only in an April 25 San Francisco Chronicle piece by sportswriter Ray Ratto. (Though reader Frankie Petrosino alerted Chatterbox immediately that the phrase had also formed the basis of a pun in an April 25 BaltimoreCity Paper piece about Sean "Puffy" Combs headlined "Disrespecting the Bling.") Chatterbox himself nudged the catch phrase along by incorporating the concept of "disrespecting the Bing" into several Slate Chatterbox and Dialogue entries about Bob Kerrey's "awful night in Thanh Phong." In one of these, Primary Colors author Joe Klein, in the course of quarrelling with Chatterbox's view of the Kerrey story, affirmed that he, too, had been using the phrase "constantly." Chatterbox's friend Bill Barol was kind enough to provide a link to the earlier item in an April 25 entry for his Weblog, "Blather," and added some interesting refinements to Chatterbox's definition. "Disrespecting the Bing" was also, of course, used in some discussions of the Sopranos episode that coined it (including some weird banter on April 19 between Bryant Gumbel and Julie Chen on CBS' The Early Show), but Chatterbox does not regard these as indicative of any broader cultural trend.

When Chatterbox ventures beyond his immediate circle of friends and colleagues, creative use of the phrase suffers a steep drop-off. Clearly, "disrespecting the Bing" has not reached the Gladwellian tipping point. A search of news databases turned up the following:

1)    On April 29, "Disrespecting the Bing" was a subhead in a story posted on TheStreet.com about a modest rally in the stock market. Chatterbox could not divine its meaning in this context.

2)    On April 30, Dallas Morning News sportswriter Tim Cowlishaw used the phrase to describe a visiting hockey team's insolent victory over the hometown team in a soon-to-be shuttered arena.

3)    On May 10, San Francisco Chronicle TV writer Tim Goodman suggested that West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin beat his current drug-possession rap by telling the judge, "I'm sorry I disrespected the Bing."

Chatterbox also tried the Web, but this only turned up a couple of false positives. One was a Village Voice story from last December about Riker's Island. The women's jail cell block there for unruly prisoners is called the "Bing," and apparently one of the offenses that get you put there is showing disrespect to the guards. The other bum lead was to a Web obit site about the crooner Bing Crosby that mentioned his son Gary's disrespectful memoir, Going My Own Way. (If you wish to respect Der Bingle, click here.)

These findings lead Chatterbox to the following preliminary conclusions:

1)    For the few who have used the phrase "disrespecting the Bing" thus far, its appeal seems mainly that it shows you watch The Sopranos and that you appreciate the phrase's comic absurdism: In reality, you can't "disrespect" a strip club, which is what the Bing, or "Bada Bing," happens to be.

2)    Thus far, nobody except Chatterbox is using the phrase to mean "plead guilty to a lesser offense in order to dodge responsibility for a bigger one."

3)    The phrase, "disrespecting the Bing" has particular appeal to sportswriters, San Francisco Chronicle writers, and writers named "Tim."