July 18, 2010: Sarah Palin, addressing supporters of the proposed Ground Zero mosque, either accidentally or on purpose, coins the word "refudiate", blending the sense of "refute" (show to be erroneous) with "repudiate" (disown, reject).
Result: within 24 hours, Google registers 54,000 hits with that neologism, and some 218 news articles -- the great majority of them super-critical, and claiming to show Palin's ignorance of the English language.
January 5, 2011: Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of at Princeton University, is featured in an audio excerpt on the Rush Limbaugh program as coining the word "surcame", thereby combining the sense of "succumb" (modified in urban slang to "surcome") with the past tense of "overcome" -- i.e., "overcame". Result: within 24 hours, Google News registers only 2 (non-duplicated) hits -- while in the same 24-hour period, Google registers 29,000 more hits for "refudiate", still mostly critical of Palin.
January 6, 2011: Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, deplores the bi-partisan reading of the United States Constitution which took place earlier in the day, on the ground that there was no reading of the parts of the Constitution that had been amended since its original passage -- for example, the clause equating blacks with only three-fifths of the same number of white citizens for purposes of voting and taxation. (That clause had been superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 -- more than 142 years ago.)
In addressing the House, Rep. Jackson coins the word "didacted" in referring to such no-longer-operative clauses, based on a mixing of "redacted" (edited, blacked out) with who knows what. (A "didact" is a person who is "didactic", i.e., designed or intended to teach or moralize, and so "didacted" would literally mean "taught or preached for instruction or entertainment".) Result: Google registers only four hits with that word in the 24 hours following its coinage -- the majority of which uncritically repeat it, with no discussion of the neologism it represents.
And in the same 24-hour period, Google logs yet another 13,200 hits on "refudiate".
Objectivity, thy name is not the current media. I rest my case.
I agree, Curmudgeon, but the surprising level of PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome) in my community causes me to hesitate before making such an argument. Our mainstream media have done their job well.
ReplyDeleteEver since Dan Quayle added the "e" in "potato" the left-wing MSM meme has been all about how stupid Republicans are (unless they go along with the liberal program - demonstrating that stupidity for me).
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing new.
Veriword: lauthrod
Sounds like a lispers missing engine part!
Could it just be that the critical people who analyze Palin are better vocabularized than those who listen to Jesse Jackson and Rush Limbaugh?
ReplyDeleteNice try, Peter -- but the "critical" and "better vocabularized" [??!] people whom you assume make up the vast difference in comments recorded by Google are scarcely evident from what gets written. (Example: check out all the lame and self-conscious attempts to bend Shakespeare at #shakespalin).
ReplyDeleteWhat I see in what I have checked out is logorrhea on an unprecedented scale, given the triviality of the offense to begin with -- about on a par, by the way, with equating "well-read" or "erudite" with "better vocabularized."