Sarah Palin--if past is truly prologue--will quickly claim this error as a good thing, another Palinism. After all, she has claimed in the past that Shakespere coined words, so why not ShakesPalin? And I'm sure people will lobby for it to be included in the Random House Dictionary.
[Excerpt]
Sarah Palin questions whether military attack was a “squirmish”
Here’s how the ultraconservative news site NewsMax.com described Sarah Palin’s Monday night criticism of President Obama’s address to the nation:
“Are we at war? I haven’t heard the president say that we are at war. And that’s why I too [don’t know] do we use the term intervention, do we use war, do we use skirmish?. . .”
[UPDATED to add a picture of Charlie Sheen, because (duh) that should have occurred to me before.]
I don't curse much on the blog. Not because I don't swear in real life, that's not even close to true. But when a person is writing, they should usually be able to express themselves more artfully than they do in extemporaneous speech. And because, let's face it, I don't want people sending complaints to Blogger! But there are exceptions. And there are off-color descriptions that are so perfect, I simply can't resist using them. Case in point: batshit crazy.
Exhibit A. Image from Alan Colmes' LiberaLand
I use this term mostly for specific actions, or overall political behavior, and rarely use it to describe a person in specific. For example, a person may do something batshit crazy, and may or may not necessarily be batshit crazy. In fact, "crazy" is very often just a colloquialism, and I very rarely allege that a person is literally crazy. Except in the case of Michele Bachmann. She's nuts. "Batshit crazy" could have been invented just for her. If you Google search the term and her name, you get over 5,000 matches, and more than double that if you spell her name like it sounds, rather than the crazy way she spells it.
And as perfect a fit as the term and Bachmann are, the definition given at Urban Dictionary is so perfect, I felt I had to share it. I don't even care if this is a case of Urban Dictionary cross pollinating with Urban Legends.
1. batshit crazy
Exhibit B.
A person who is batshit crazy is certifiably nuts. The phrase has origins in the old fashioned term "bats in the belfry." Old churches had a structure at the top called a belfry, which housed the bells. Bats are extremely sensitive to sound and would never inhabit a belfry of an active church where the bell was rung frequently. Occasionally, when a church was abandoned and many years passed without the bell being rung, bats would eventually come and inhabit the belfry. So, when somebody said that an individual had "bats in the belfry" it meant that there was "nothing going on upstairs" (as in that person's brain). To be BATSHIT CRAZY is to take this even a step further. A person who is batshit crazy is so nuts that not only is their belfry full of bats, but so many bats have been there for so long that the belfry is coated in batshit. Hence, the craziest of crazy people are BATSHIT CRAZY.
Dude that guy on the corner wears a tinfoil hat and ripped all the wires out of his house so the government couldn't listen to his thoughts.
Back during the Bush era, one of the political tactics used in campaigns was for Republicans to use their opponents' strengths against them. John Kerry was a war hero, so they "swift boated" him, trying to paint his military past as a weakness. This continues today of course, but there's a weirder new element at play. Now, they're remaking a candidates weaknesses into strengths. Remember when Sarah Palin wrote on her hand? It would have been embarrassing for most candidates, but Palin now regularly--and proudly--sports cutesy things on her hand at events.
Palin is also known for her. . .let's say rambling. . .speaking style. Even in prepared comments, she can wander from topic to topic, speaking sentences dozens of words long. She uses commas and semi-colons but few periods. And she also coins new words. Her latest, "refudiate" instead of "repudiate" has appeared in her speech and her writing, so it isn't just an articulation problem. She wore the gaffe as a badge of honor. I wouldn't be surprised if there were an effort afoot to have refudiate added to dictionaries as an alternate spelling or pronunciation. Remember George W. Bush's awkward mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "new-kyoo-ler?" There was at least a minor effort to have that one added to dictionaries.
Meanwhile, high-level Republican operatives can help Palin out by using her newly-coined word themselves. Pretty soon, everybody will be doing it, just like they say Democrat Party, death tax, cap-and-tax or call Karl Rove The Architect rather than Turd Blossom.
[Excerpt]
Gillespie Claims NY Times And Wash. Post Have ‘Refudiated’ ThinkProgress On Secret Corporate Spending
On Face the Nation this morning, host Bob Schieffer grilled both White House advisor David Axelrod and GOP strategist Ed Gillespie on the millions of dollars being secretly funneled by Wall Street and the oil industry to defeat Democratic candidates this November, and particularly the role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gillespie, along with Karl Rove, is the mastermind behind American Crossroads, a group tied to the Chamber which also funnels corporate money into attack ads. As first revealed by a ThinkProgress report, the Chamber solicits funds from foreign corporations — including state-owned oil companies — that go into the same general account that funds their $75 million electioneering campaign. Using a neologism coined by Sarah Palin, Gillespie argued that the Washington Post and the New York Times had “completely refudiated” the report. . .
M-E-H, meh. It's a word that kinda means, blah. And it was popularized by The Simpsons several seasons ago. It's been an official word in our household ever since, along with D'oh!, Jeebus, embiggen, saxamaphone, and unpossible! Of course, The Other Half and I probably have The Simpsons to credit for our early "clickitude" than anything else. Without it, our relationship may have never gotten past meh!
[Excerpt]
Nothing to get excited about: The indifferent 'meh' gains place in English dictionary
At least someone is excited about "meh."
The expression of indifference or boredom has gained a place in the Collins English Dictionary after generating a surprising amount of enthusiasm among lexicographers.Publisher HarperCollins announced Monday the word had been chosen from terms suggested by the public for inclusion in the dictionary's 30th anniversary edition, to be published next year. . .
