February 24, 2005

Political Vocabulary

The blogosphere has developed its own lingo, which has dialects, too.

This glossary is reasonably complete, and has stuff from both ends of the specttrum. I don't think the middle generates terms as colofrul as these. Some examples:

Freep
1. Verb: To flood a forum, electronic or real, with a large number of aggressive right wingers.
2. To tell right wingers to go to an online survey and push it in their favored direction (See DU). This is often generalized to include all poll-swamping, so that any group may "freep" a poll, regardless of their politics.
3. Noun: Collective noun for kool-aid drinking (see below) right wingers as a whole. Also Freeple. (Stirling Newberry)

Freeper

A right winger who repeats or reprocesses with limited changes the current talking points or message, often making vociferous personal attacks on all lefties. The name comes from the self chosen nickname of the members of the right wing political site Free Republic (http://www.freerepublic.com) (sic). See Freep above.

-gate

Hackneyed suffix indicative of a political scandal. Stems from the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon. Examples include Nannygate, Plamegate, Falafelgate, Cigargate.

Google Bomb
An exploitation of the algorithm which drives the Google search engine. Large numbers of people post links to a certain page with the same link text (such as "Bush's White House bio" and the phrase "Miserable Failure") which causes Google to artificially boost the site's rank in the results returned for searches on the Google-bombed phrase. (daria g) Examples:

* Miserable Failure (http://www.google.com/search?q=Miserable+Failure) - GWB's Bio + Jimmy Carter's bio in 2nd

* Weapons of Mass Destruction (http://www.google.com/search?q=Weapons+of+Mass+Destruction) - Weapons cannot be displayed joke page

* Waffles (http://www.google.com/search?q=Waffles) - John Kerry for President
Gore
Verb, media assault using unfiltered talking points, generally from the Republican National Committee, to destroy the credibility of an individual based on assorted distortions, lies and irrelevant details. From the process by which the Establishment Media turned Al Gore into a "Pathological Liar" during the 2000 election.

Grownups
The George W. Bush (http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/George_W._Bush) Administration according to the George W. Bush Administration's cheerleaders. From the chest-thumping proclamation, "The grownups are back in charge" made by conservative columnist George F. Will after the 2000 election. A comment on the youthfulness and alleged callowness of the Clinton White House.

Hate America, Why Does X?
From the conservative mantra "Why do liberals hate America" which is used to question the patriotism of any liberal who dares to criticize the policies of the Gerge W. Bush (http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/George_W._Bush) administration. Now a liberal snark (see below) applied to any source of bad news for Bush. (For example, after the Bush bike spill, "Why do bicycles hate America?")

HT: Blogizdat.

No comments: