Its been a weird year for words that's for sure. It seems we have gone beyond the Orwellian/Bushian trends of the last six years (making words mean their opposite, the art of sinister euphemism etc.). We have also seen a whole new set of words enter our common vocabularies that most of us wish hadn't.

Merriam Webster's top ten list of 2006 words reads like my nightmares. The things that keep me up at night and wiggling like a social climbing fashion model under a rich fat man.

They neatly summarize our long national nightmare. And of course Colbert's "truthiness" tops the list.

1. truthiness (noun)
1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

The rest:

google
decider
war
insurgent
terrorism
vendetta
sectarian
quagmire
corruption

But there is one final gasp at wordplay from the White House this year and it comes from Tony Snow(job), White House Press Secretary. Yesterday he was being questioned by the press (actually those who were once known as the press who have abdicated in place of self created journalists and content creators) about whether the President was going to admit we were "losing in Iraq."

This may have started a new war.

WHITE HOUSE DECLARES WAR...AGAIN!

This time the stakes are high, the future of the English Language is at stake.

Its a new war on..."single words, gerunds, and even participles." Oh and no more games.



12/18/2006, 1:04 p.m. CT
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House took a step back Monday from President Bush's confident assertion two months ago that "absolutely, we're winning" the war in Iraq.

"I'm not playing the game any more," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. "It's one of those things where you end up ... trying to summarize a complex situation with a single word or gerund, and — or even a participle."

Snow was questioned repeatedly on the point because former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating, and we're not winning, we are losing. We haven't lost."

What the hell is a gerund I said?

ger·und (jěr'ənd) Pronunciation Key
n.
In Latin, a noun derived from a verb and having all case forms except the nominative.
In other languages, a verbal noun analogous to the Latin gerund, such as the English form ending in -ing when used as a noun, as in singing in We admired the choir's singing.

HIDE THE CHILDREN MARTHA! THE WHITE HOUSE IS OPENING A CAN OF WHOOP ASS ON THE PARTCIPLES. JOHNNY, DON'T LET THEM HANG, SON!!

WE ARE LOSING THE WAR BECAUSE OF THE DAMN CUT AND RUN GERUNDS, PARTICPLES AND WORDS

Tony, its not that complex. Let me, with some help from Merriam-Webster, lay it out for you.

Your TRUTHINESS abounds and we are sick of it. The American people have used GOOGLE and found that we are losing (GERUND) the WAR. The INSURGENTS are using TERRORISM in Iraq to ruin the country and kill our troops and they are succeeding.

If it were not for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's VENDETTA, we could have actually been fighting the real war on terrorism.

Now, due to mismanagement of the war, SECTARIAN violence has left us in QUAGMIRE we can't get out of. That and your party's CORRUPTION are why Democrats are in power in the House and Senate. So please, forget your single words, gerunds and particples and give up TRUTHINESS for the TRUTH.

ADDENDUM: It appears that the only thing in the world that can unite Christians, Jews, Muslims, Martians and others is TEH GAY. Virgina Episcopals Abandon American Flock for Big Tent of Nigerian Gay Basher

All men are created equal, some more equal than others. Indeed.