Pages/ duilleagan

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Neologism of the month: santorum


The race to become the US Republican presidential nominee has reminded me of a recent addition to the corpus of the English language. Hearing that Rick Santorum came close to Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus reminded of the noun santorum which entered our pure Anglo-Saxon tongue some years ago.

As Tocasaid is a family orientated blog, it would be irresponsible of me to highlight the exact meaning of santorum. Suffice to say, it was coined to describe the liquid by-product of anal congress between two consenting adult males. The story of how Catholic crusader Santorum's surname became common parlance for this can be found here.

More on Santorum and his homophobic statements can be found here on Wayne Besen's blog. Apparently, Santorum believes that 'abolishing' sodomy laws will lead to 'man on dog' sex. Interestingly enough, this is also the opinion of the Wee Frees in Scotland. However, Scotland's own Protestant Taliban maintain that anyone wishing to descend into a life of zoophilia needs only to journey on a Sunday ferry. I find it fascinating that two apparently opposing sects on the Christian spectrum can have the same idea. Could it be that both sects are equally insane?

Lastly, it reminds me of the late Christopher Hitchens' quote on the nature of fascist regimes in 1930s Europe. Here's part of his last interview with Richard Dawkins from the New Statesman:

Fascism and the Catholic Church

RD The people who did Hitler's dirty work were almost all religious.
CH I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.
RD Can you talk a bit about that - the relationship of Nazism with the Catholic Church?
CH The way I put it is this: if you're writing about the history of the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism, you can take out the word "fascist", if you want, for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Austria and replace it with "extreme-right Catholic party".
Almost all of those regimes were in place with the help of the Vatican and with understandings from the Holy See. It's not denied. These understandings quite often persisted after the Second World War was over and extended to comparable regimes in Argentina and elsewhere.
Warning! Clicking on the following disgusting links may lead to you sharing your bed with a pet.
Spreading Santorum blog
The neologism campaign
Rick Santorum's Anal Sex Problem

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK - that made me laugh out loud.
Cheers.
But as an adjunct to the 51st State of Englandshire - perhaps I shouldn't laugh too much in Alba.
Now... How was I going to vote in that matter of self-determination....to distance ourselves from these spangles...
Taing
M