By
Mark HemingwayEveryone scoffed at the idea that a man named Hussein was running for president. While Barack Obama has an unusual name by any historical or conventionally American aesthetic standards, it has turned out to be an asset. By the time his successful campaign had ended, his supporters in the media and elsewhere had embraced its distinctiveness and lexical malleability fully and completely.
First there was Obamamania. And the media declared it good. Now that the senator from Illinois is our president-elect, we have to ask the question: What comes after Obamamania? And we don?t mean what does he stand for. That would require responsible, objective journalism.
No, the real question is: What other neologisms await the American public in the upcoming Obama administration?
The Associated Press has already
produced a helpful glossary of terms including Obamaphoria, Obamalujah, Obamalicious, Barackstar and Bamelot. No doubt Ambrose Bierce is doing about 75 rpms in his grave. Your humble correspondent?s favorite selection from the Associated Press was the following:
OBAMASCOPE: Media scrutiny of the new leader. (Example: ?One hundred days after Barack Obama took office, newspaper editors put the president?s economic plan under the Obamascope.?)This is coming from the same news organization that
wrote two days after Obama was elected, ?Even after nearly two years in the spotlight, little is understood about the 47-year-old first-term senator?s approach to leadership. His resume: community organizer, eight years as state legislator, and less than four as U.S. senator. . . . Personally, he?s a bit of an enigma, too.?
It?s a tough business climate for news organizations, and so when the AP ? which has always been a wire service ? wrote of media scrutiny of Obama, we were pleased to discover that they had diversified into the realm of joke writing:
Q: What do you see when you look through the Obamascope?
A: Whatever you want to see!Still, even though the media is cranking out Obama-related neologisms at roughly the same rate their industry is shedding jobs, there?s still something undeniably awkward about the practice.
For instance, what is an Obama follower? (We need something broader than the current ?producer for MSNBC.?) So, in the interests of helping you, dear reader, we are going to offer the best terms for those swept up by Obamamania.
Obama-philes? Too dirty.
Obamanauts? They?re spacey.
Obama-ists? Sounds like something from PCU.
All too awkward. Let?s move on. What are we going to call a President Obama?s opponents?
Anti-Obama-ite - Not bad. No doubt, these beknighted individuals will be the source for the unfortunate ?Yo?, Obama? jokes that will hammer the Administration for all four years.
What about adjectives?
Obamean? Messes up the spelling.
Barackean? Cumbersome.
Barackite? Weren?t they smote in the Old Testament with the jawbone of an ass or something?
The media persists in contorting the president-elect?s name to suit their purposes, so it should come as no surprise that Obama?s opponents have begun to develop a lexicon of their own. Here are a few entries:
Obamedia - Interchangeable with MSM.
O-basm - The climactic paragraph or statement in the standard media coverage. (Some might vote for The Big O.)
Obasequious - The standard journalistic position when covering Obama.
Obama Sesame - The gaping yaw of discretion shown by Obama after high-level meetings with sitting presidents.
Obamaganda - Styrofoam columns, fake presidential seal, even placards of imaginary ?Offices? of the President Elect and the other narcissistic accoutrements that seem to pop up around Obama wherever he goes.
Obamomatopoeia - The sound of mindlessly repeating phrases such as ?Yes We Can? and words like ?hope? and ?change? until they are sounds that bear no relation to the words they approximate.
O-blah-ma - The white noise of rhetorical overkill that accompanies one of his speeches. He?s promising to make the oceans recede, and yet all anyone can hear is a voice not unlike the adults in
Peanuts holiday specials saying
?O-blah-ma, O-blah-ma.?Finally, we seem to be forgetting to ask what Barack Obama really stands for. What are the policies behind his slogans and speechifying? The media has seized on
Obamanomics.That?s one term we definitely can?t use. Simply too unwieldy. Obamanomics doesn?t work for the hippest, youngest, freshest candidate and his economic theories. We suggest sticking with ?socialist.? Other appropriate policy terms may include:
Between Barack and a hard place - the precise location of America?s foreign policy interests for the next four to eight years.
Obamahol - The candidate?s proposed alternative energy source. It has enough energy density to replace hydrocarbons, deliver 5 million green-collar jobs and save the U.S. auto industry. The exact formula is a closely guarded secret, but it?s believed to be comprised primarily of tofu, recycled ?Jimmy Carter in ?80? bumper stickers and unicorn flatulence.
Barackalypse - The state of the world if his policies are enacted.
Now to put these terms to use. We recommend trying your hand at the following lesson.
Exercise: Use at least eight of these new terms in a well-formed paragraph.
Sample solution: ?His inauguration speech was vintage o-blah-ma, and that ginormous statue behind him on the podium as he was being sworn in ? the one of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. holding hands ? was the most egregious piece of obamaganda we?ve seen yet. However, the obamedia is so obasequious I?m sure Olbermann?s ?special? comment on MSNBC this evening will be a hellbroth of obasms and obamomatopoeia. I can?t wait to see what these jokers have to say when he follows through on his new plan to pull us out of Iraq in three months and Al-Qaeda has us between Barack and a hard place. In the meantime, I?m hoarding all the dried meat and canned food I can get my hands on so I can ride out the coming Barackalypse.?
