| The reason the word Nobama exists then is the old caveat emptor at play. It seems to have appeared about one year ago. In a Huffington Post article (June 2007) Glynnis MacNicol uses Generation Nobama to denote rejection of a BHO fund raising event called Generation Obama, Is she the mind behind the word?
Coining a nickname or petname is the public's way of connecting with celebrities. Writers and cartoonists do their fair share of this. Mob figures and football players are just characters in search of a nickname.
Of course, all of our presidents have had nicknames, some had five or six. Some have had their own name used in a nickname as a phrase, such as Grover the Good, Honest Abe, Useless Grant, Haberdasher Harry and so on.
Some presidents had earned a reputation by identifying with a certain value system, ideology, or a rhetorical style so that their names merged with a way of life or thought. Examples include Jeffersonian Democracy, Monroe Doctrine, Reaganomics, or Kennedyisms (symmetry in syntax, and structured eloquence).
Since the sixth president Andrew was tagged by a cartoonist Jack-Ass very few have suffered the ignominy of their actual name mutilated or mongrified. Nor so graphically rendered to such devastating effect. A few that pop into mind rightaway include: Ruther-fraud (Rutherford Hayes), Tricky Dicky (Richard Nixon), Ronnie Ray-Gun, and Slick Willie. Incidentally, across the ocean, the liberals assailed their prime minister as Snatcher Thacher when she cut social programs. She hit back as Middleclass Maggie.
As to having one's own name negatively modified, Nobama has no equal. Short and straightforward, involving no parsing or deep reflection, the word Nobama is a simple stand, bluntly stated. It invokes no grand imagery, needs no leap of meaning. It's as plain as a working class person. With an equal matter of fact style.
A casual Google search showed nearly a million hits for the word Nobama, there are some 15,000 images, 350 videos tagged thus.
This is hardly surprising, considering that we now have Nobama Network, with it's own hub site, linking to nearly 500 separate websites. Almost all these sites wear the New Badge of Outrage (posted elsewhere). Nobama Network itself yields about 75,000 hits on a basic Google search.
A sizeable chunk of the voting population is now firmly committed to Nobama, the idea.
We would be remiss in this discussion if we do not reflect on the current president, GWB. He owns a richly textured set of nicknames, eponyms and such. Bush43, Baby Bush, Shrub, Uncurious George, Decider, Bushisms, Bushie are all sobriquets used in connection to our 43rd president.
On top of it all, George Bush has the distinction of being distinguished by one single, solitary letter that connotes his middle name. He used it effectively with slogans such as W Stands for Women .
But just think, that one simple, uncurved, straightforward letter made of four short strokes of ink, even that letter is only expressed in the worst possible mangled pronunciation of it. That letter itself would have been undistinguished had it not been celebrated in that unique spelling. Double You has nothing on Dubya. Indeed W, the word, is a great contribution to our rhetoric precisely because it is such an apt metaphor. Reducing a family legacy to a name, further reducing that name to a word, and further belittle that word with a letter, and pronounce it, well uniquely.
It symbolizes bowdlerization - the sum and substance of a presidency itself!
Will the voters, as an organic mass respond to the current election fever with a collective, cohesive, language of dissidence?
Will Nobama become an equally representative rhetorical symbol come this Fall? |
