Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Semantics For Fruitcakes

After reading CalPundit's post about the ridiculous GOP allegation (that I have seen bandied about a bit on a few Rightie blogs, but now made official by Rep. Mark "I'm not Gay Because While Republicans Have Nothing Against Gays My Constituents Would Throw Me Out On My Ass If I Was" Foley) that Pete Stark's use of the terms "fruitcake" and "cocksucker" in the House dustup the other day was homophobic*, I started wondering about the term "bumfuckery", which has been a favorite of mine recently (in real life). As in:

Bumfuckery - n. 1. craziness, lunacy 2. Foolish, stupid. usage: This situation is utter bumfuckery.

As this isn't a term one would use in reference to a specific person, context usually renders a homophobic connection tenuous at best, and I know that an anti-gay connotation is not my intent, I'm inclined to think that it's fine - but I'm biased, as I've grown somewhat attached to the word recently, and plan on remaining so until I get a new favorite curse word.

Thoughts, anyone?

* A charge that is, of course, ridiculous. Any male over the age of sixteen knows that "cocksucker" is merely a synonym for asshole; it's roughly equivelent to "motherfucker", only slightly more extreme given "motherfucker"'s overuse. "Fruitcake", in ye olde days, was a common synonym for "nutcase." Given modern connotations of the word "fruit", a (very weak) case could be made that fruitcake is a homophobic slur now (although, given this dustup, I have a feeling it's going to be making a grand re-entrance into bloggers' lexicon - in fact, it already has, and it is now most definitely a term for "stupid"), one can hardly blame an old man for the shift in (possible) connotation of an innocuous word.

Also, given the number of times the word "cocksucker" has now been used in the comments section of that post, CalPundit should expect a bit of an increase in traffic over the next few days. Someone should start a contest to guess the first search term involving "cocksucker" that some search engine is going to direct his way. My money is on "Mickey Kaus is a cocksucker."

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