title: storing closest and parents in variable is not working in internet explorer
body: <p>so I have</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;table class="the-table"&gt;
  &lt;tr&gt;
  &lt;td&gt;
  &lt;a class="clickthis"&gt;YO!&lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then </p>
  
  <pre><code>$('.clickthis').click(function(){
      alert($(this).closest('.the-table').html()); 
      parent = $(this).closest('.the-table');
      alert(parent.html());
      alert($(parent).html());
   });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But then in internet explorer the first alert would alert the table properly, the second alert would return an error that html() is not supported and the third alert would alert null...</p>
  
  <p>on the other hand in Firefox, everything alerts the html properly</p>
  
  <p>how do you go about storing jquery objects in a variable in IE such that you can do the stuff above?</p>
  
  <p>I also tried using parents() instead of closest() but it still didn't work </p>