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Saturday Morning Diversion: Right Wing Clichés
If you perused our Ricochet House Style guide, you may have noticed this item:
- Terminate all clichés with extreme prejudice. The previous sentence, for example, should be terminated. “Social justice warrior” and other right-wing clichés should be replaced. TK: LIST OF RIGHT-WING CLICHÉS ALWAYS TO BE REPLACED
TK is a traditional editorial place-marker for “missing information to come,” by the way. It’s short for the intentional misspelling of “to come.” (Tokum, get it?) The origin of the symbol is shrouded in lore, but when pressed, editors will say that TK never comes up in everyday English, so it stands out; TC might be confused with Table of Contents; and besides, that’s just how we’ve always done it.
That section will probably forever be TK. I put it there because I’d been mentally compiling a list of soul-numbing right-wing clichés that make me itch to whip out the red pen. Yes, yes, I know: Left-wing clichés are worse. But we can only control our own clichés.
And we should, for as Comrade Stalin reminds us,
Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
What clichés do you think we ought to put on that list, if ever we get around to it? I suggested “social justice warrior,” as you saw. Whenever someone uses that one, I want to throw him under a bus.
— Squealing brakes! Shriek! Whooooosh, SPLAT! … 10-4. Area of Social Justice Park, 8th Avenue, 17th Street; stand-by for the other units. Attempt to serve. 10-4, I’ll come up 19th Street onto 8th. 11-41 Ambulance needed, I repeat, 11 41 —
As I do anyone who uses the phrase “throwing someone under a bus” to mean anything but throwing someone under a bus.
— 10-53 road blocked at Social Junction, BOLO Ricochet Copy Editor … Whoa, gonna need a mop out here. Officer Justice, are those … are those … are those Human Social Warrior entrails? I mean, in the tailpipe? —
There are a million yet-unwritten ways to express conservative ideas, ways that might be inventive enough to grab someone’s attention. But every time we use a drab, overused phrase that’s lost its power to change minds, shock, compel a new thought, or even properly to give insult, a fairy dies; a terrorist wins; Orwell’s dust spins below a weathering headstone streaked with lichen, mingling companionably with the dust of Asquith under a rolled lawn of repose at the north end of the Village Green.
He is strewn, from time to time, with a few wilted red carnations.
Published in Culture, General
“Giddily offended, offense-seeking, earnest leftists” packs more punch, if only because it’s a phrase that hasn’t been written and read n-million times already.
Claire,
“Social Justice Warriors waged an online campaign of harassment and intimidation against a rural Indiana pizzeria, after its owner voiced opposition to marriage equality”
“The killing of Cecil the lion by a Minnesota dentist has provoked outrage among animal rights activists and Social Justice Warriors.”
So what should replace SJW in the above two sentences?
“Establishment” — or the 2015 version, the “GOPe.” This one is extremely frustrating in discussion because it means too many things to different people. I think everyone using the term includes Boehner, McConnell, and Bush. Beyond that it gets fuzzy. Some people would include Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz as Establishment. Some would say they’re all conservatives. Some would say Ryan and Rubio are Establishment, but not Walker or Cruz.
I think, as a pejorative, the term is missing the point, too. The existence of a political “establishment” of the Republican variety is an inevitable part of democratic/republican government. Perhaps not a good inevitability, but democracy is, after all, the worst form of government except all the others. (Wait. That’s a cliche. Sorry.) Being “establishment” is not bad. George Washington became an “establishment” figure. Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate Virginia “establishment” figure.
Better to be specific and say who we’re talking about and what we’re objecting to. Hopefully nobody actually dislikes Bush simply because he has a large number of financial backers and political connections. We object to his policies and the reasons we suspect those particular donors support his candidacy.
Neocon.
(On the flipside, I do not consider “The Professional Left” to be a cliché.)
Take the sanctimony of “social justice” out of SJW and you just aren’t describing the same beast.
The term or the media?
Very nice, Claire. I love cliches, though! At the end of the day, they are our stock-in-trade, yes? Pots will go on calling kettles black until the skies fall, but when all is said and done, is any cliché too tired to be repurposed?
“Lamestream media,” even more so.
Oh, and RINO.
Clichés help us keep all our ducks in a row, letting us concentrate on what we are trying to say rather than on how we will say it. One man’s cliché is another man’s shorthand.
The problem is that “neocon” is overwhelmingly misused; not that it’s a cliche.
Another one in that vein in “Mount Fujiyama.”
Using the suffix “gate” for every scandal.
Since online harassment is their primary weapon, instead of SJW, how about Keyboard Kops.
It is pithy, and it evokes the Keystone Kops.
I like Politically Correct USA as more descriptive than Presbyterian Church USA ( PCUSA ).
So of course you ask, and I cannot remember it or find a recent example -but there is some phrase that it seems every journalist must have a macro for that basically translates to “of course there is an obvious exception which I feel the need to spell out as a defense against angry commenters” that drives me up the wall. Something in the neighborhood of “it goes without saying” but that isn’t it. I’d like to see that one erased from the memory of man.
The “cliches” above seem less like cliches than just common nouns we use around here. The SJWs are what they are -certainly, if we wish to insult them we should get creative. “Jacobins? Good sir, could you at least update your invective.” Same with “Establishment.” The meaning of “Establishment” is somewhat unclear, but the concept is commonly understood. Yes calling anyone except Rob Long an Establishment RINO Squish is cliched, but if you wish to talk about the “Establishment” and the “base,” or even argue against the existence of this divide, I see no reason to invent replacements for these words. And again with MSM. Especially under a word-limit where spelling out ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS… is rapidly going to run you out of words. And also possibly get called for excessive capitalization.
The only noun-cliche I can think of immediately is “statist” which is cliche approximately the same way “fascist” is. Whatever it’s meaning, it merely denotes dislike.
Speaking of which… unless I’ve missed it we actually haven’t heard this one in reference to Clinton’s email, have we? Let’s keep it that way.
Servergate.
When I first became politically active RINO meant Arlen Spector and Lincoln Chafee; now it apparently means Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.
I would also add “tyranny” to the list. I’m sure most people who use the term are trying to invoke George III, but to most listeners/readers it invokes Benito Mussolini at best.
I kind of like the recent practice of using -ghazi insteadn of -gate.
We should avoid idiot drift, if possible. As we have discussed on Ricochet before, a dozen words essentially meaning “moron” or “retard” exist because people with bleeding hearts keep thinking they can eliminate the derision by inventing new words.
The other Quranic jihadist–the one who’s solely introspective.
As with SJW, that’s how the Appropriate Ones describe themselves.
TK. Yes, yes, it began life as an editorial shorthand, but like most (all?) cliches, it’s become overused and hackneyed. Not all of us live in the cloistered world of editorial cubicles. [g]
Right/Left-Wing.
Democrats.
Eric Hines
RINO is definitely a cliche (yes I know there’s an accent, no it’s not my keyboard so I’m not bothering to go find it to paste in). RINO went from describing a specific kind of pol who voted with the other party on a regular basis but still called themselves Republican to meaning anyone who disagrees with me (usually who is less conservative than me).
Okay, tangential side note: Your opening reminded me of the night I temped for an attorney who frequently used “TK” in his markups – – his regular secretary knew that it meant she should actually insert “TO COME:” before whatever language followed.
Unfortunately, “TK” happens to be my initials, and thus my nickname, among many friends and co-workers – – so, aside from briefly musing on the guy’s oddly personal manner with markups, I disregarded every single “TK” and typed only what followed.
Can’t remember the cover story I came up with for my selective style of word processing. The truth would have been too embarrassing.
I don’t think this is actually true, though, because I find in actual discussion with people that they use it in different ways, and one doesn’t know what one is dealing with. If you mean congressional leadership, say congressional leadership. If you mean Bush donors, say that. If you mean every Republican not named Donald Trump, say that. The conversation would be better served by more specificity.
Moreover, so much talk of the “establishment” and “base” muddies the ideological waters as both sides focus on whether one is an “outsider” or “insider” rather than on convictions and character. It can become almost a variety of identity politics, and I don’t consider that healthy: politicians are branded as either out-of-touch Establishment elitists or as crazy flame-throwing Tea Party “wacko birds” on very shallow evidence.
But I object far less to the term “establishment” than to the shorthand “GOPe.” This is truly painful insider jargon of the most atrocious kind. If it is too much effort to type the word “elite,” I will personally undertake the development of a macro to spell it out.
Jeb and Marco are full throttle republicans. Not just in name only. They are card carrying, government growing, border opening republicans to the bone.
Witch Hunt.
It’s an equal-opportunity cliche, but it needs to die.
Claire may be pleased to know I just put a map of Europe up where I can glance up and see it when I’m sitting at my computer.
Mainly to help me visualize the events of World War I (yes, I know things have changed often, and a lot since then).
But it helps me visualize current events as well. For example, didn’t know North Africa was that close to Southern Europe.
How about Kool Aid Drinker? Oh yeah!