| Searching for Buzz Words To Describe Republicans
by Rob Kall
www.opednews.com
(in the spirit of right wing political pundit William
Safire, who's also a word pundit, this is the fourth op-ed in a series on
words and language.)
SFgate.com columnist Jon Carroll says, "The cacophonous right
wants to use buzzwords and flash phrases to obscure the nature of the
debate. It wants us to be ashamed of the word "liberal." Not me,
baby."
While we're working on taking back America, and putting the Bush
administration into the unemployed filthy rich category, we need to take
back the language, and the word liberal. And while we're at it, we can
take over some words that will nail the right wingers' hides to the dung
heap wall where they belong (or post office wanted posters.).
The far right republicans have put together a batch of buzzwords
to dismiss derisively dismiss democrats and left-leaning progressives.
These include, to be followed by a hallelujah or Hozannah:
big government, Tax and spend
They use these terms over and over. Google finds 23,000 pages with Tax
and Spend and 125,000 for Big government.
There are other terms, by the most reptilian of the far right, like
Anne Coulter, Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, but they're not worth
bothering with. Consider them fodder for future punditry.
Let's start with "big government." The truth is, George
Bush-- take your pick, either the semen supplier or the spawn (Daddy or
Junior W.,) made government bigger, sloppier, less accountable, more
secretive, more corrupted by big business.
But the trick in these political mantras is to keep them short,
especially if you're trying to grab people who do not intend to be fooled
by Bush in the next election. So we can't say "humungous, corrupt,
sloppy, less accountable, more secretive government." That's too
long. We need to shorten it, and we don't necessarily want to just react
to their language. That's a fair criticism they often levy against us,
that we just complain about them. Let's allow the ideas to percolate while
we look at the next phrase.
Tax and Spend is a term the right wing uses to disparage
"liberals" who put money into social programs, and who attempt
to equalize the tax and income playing fields. The truth here has been
made crystal clear-- the far right-- they used to call them royalty, the
moneyed class, the aristocracy, and now we call this greedy group of
fat-cats the top 5% or 1% of the income bracket-- wants to live off the
rest of the people. They want to get disgustingly high salaries and they
don't want to pay any taxes. They want to be unrestrained in their efforts
to make money, regardless of what it costs environmentally, socially,
diplomatically, even in terms of lives lost to war, pollution, accidents
caused by poor product design or low, un-regulated industry standards.
Ironically, this joke, this fraud, that democrats or liberals spend
more, has also been laid bare. Here's what one right wing, townhall.com (a
right wing web site forum) regular Jonah
Goldberg says,
"In general, Bush has been spending money like a man
with a week to live. The GOP-led Congress deserves some blame, too. But
even when they overspend above his overspending, Bush refuses to use his
veto power."
So, let's review.
For government, we have : "humungous, corrupt, sloppy, less
accountable, more secretive
For Tax and Spend we have "Spending like a man with a week to
live"
Then, of course, there are areas that do not symmetrically match the
labels the Republicans give the Democrats--
- anti worker
- Raping the commons
- fundamentalist
- corrupted by big money and big corporations--
- big debt, huge, unbalanced budgets
- willingness to restrict constitutional rights
- fundamentalist
- extremist
- Greedy
- they declared class war on us.
- Deregulation of industry
- Privatization
- vote stealing
Clinton screwed an intern. Republicans Screw the bottom 95 percent,
screw the worker, screw the people, screw America in the name of
globalization, rape America's resources, make huge deficits and bigger
government, and when you watch their lips you see lies, secrets,
deceptions...
Okay that's still to long. After all, tax and spend, big government
is only seven syllables.
How about, spend and screw America, big deficit corporatist traitors
?
Nah. That's too intense, sounds a bit too much like radical socialist,
or at least, easily framed that way. The idea is to use terms that the
middle can embrace.
Screw-the-bottom-95%, big-deficit, big-business-sellouts.
This is even longer, and it fails the syllable count, but it does
consist of three simple phrases
Hey. It's a first try. We desperately need to have a one liner that
sums up the minuses of the the right wing.
Me, personally, I'd go a step further and say
Rape and Screw-the-bottom-95%, big-deficit, big-business whores.
Ever since the Supreme Whores sold out the country by handing Bush the
presidency, the word WHORE has seemed a natural one to describe the party
of Nixon, Agnew, Bush, Cheney, Oliver North, Trent Lott, Phil Graham,
Enron, MCI, Halliburton, Karl Rove, Katherine Harris, Grover Norquist,
Richard Mellon Scaife, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Tom DeLay...
I guess my version may not grab the 27 percent of the population who
are fundamentalist religious zealots who put papal decree and trumped up
moral fantasies over the constitution and democracy.
But that still leaves the un-hypnotized middle. What the heck, even the
fundamentalists understand fornication. And after all, fornication of and
defecation on the bottom 95% is what the republicans are all about.
Maybe that's the big syllable answer:
Big deficit, big business whores, Fornicating and defecating on the
bottom 95%
I know. It's not there yet. But it does get to the point. Any
suggestions? America is waiting for the magic phrase that turns the right
wing's faces purple with apoplectic annoyance.
The previous articles in this series on words and language to fight the
right include:
Rob Kall rob@opednews.com
is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com and
organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such
as the Winter Brain Meeting and
the StoryCon
Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story. This article is copyright by Rob Kall, but
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