Earlier in my voyage in Blogland, I pointed out the language-based sins of Frank Luntz, "Republican pollster" and bald-faced manipulator of public discourse. He’s one of those guys who’s long been in the inner circle of stratospheric, amoral liars. He even thinks "Orwellian" is a positive adjective.
Anyhow. He didn’t apparently coin the "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" usage as I suspected– it turns out McCarthy is probably your man. But this time, I wasn’t the only one fuming at the silliness of our Dear Leader talking about bipartisanship and then dropping the "-ic" in his State of the Union speech. The Washington Post did a whole story on this phenomenon. It’s the little things that count, as people like Luntz know full well.
The full article has a great deal in it worth reading, but here’s what I found most intriguing:
It’s a little thing, a means of needling the opposition by purposefully mispronouncing its name, and of suggesting that the party on the left is not truly small-"d" democratic. The president’s pronunciation was all the more striking because it was apparently not what Bush was supposed to say. The prepared speech that the White House distributed beforehand retained that precious "-ic."
This narrows down our choices about how to think of this strange, childish man who holds our highest office. Is his beady-eyed countenance a mere cover for a calculating mind? You’d almost think so if you look back at the remarkably cogent and well-spoken debate Bush was capable of when running for governor long ago.
I think that, no matter what became of Bush’s speaking abilities, no matter what ticks or doesn’t tick in that brain, another possibility is more likely. He’s believed his own glowing press reports (though they’ve grown harder and harder to find, even on FOX) and had his worldview filtered by his handlers for so long now that he probably has developed a full-blown reflex to always drop that particular suffix. I bet Karl Rove is proud of that.
I think I’ll just drop their "ic" and throw out the "an" for good measure. GOP=the Republ Party. Or more satisfying yet, the Republ minority. It’s so noticeably stupid even the stupidest among us might notice.
