Language watch: “terrorist”
"Terrorist" is the new "Nazi."
I'm sure y'all already know that Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives have skipped town to prevent a quorum and thereby obstruct a Republican bill. But the reason I'm mentioning it is a quote from an A.P. article:
"They're legislative terrorists and their leaving today is a weapon of mass obstruction, blocking hundreds of pieces of legislation," Republican Rep. Dan Branch said Monday.
I'm tickled by "weapon of mass obstruction"; that's kinda clever. But the use of "legislative terrorists" suggests to me that the term "terrorist" has already become a generic extreme insult, much as "Nazi" is used to refer to anyone who advocates stronger control over anything.
Does the gentleman from Texas actually mean to suggest that the Democrats are, say, slaughtering civilians? Why not just call them "babykillers" and have done with it?
Speaking of babykillers (sorry, this is totally unrelated, but I couldn't resist the segue), here's a cute example of geek humor: a bug filed against the Mozilla browser about XBL support. "XBL is causing numerous problems including the death of babies. I ask you, how many more babies need to die before this bug is fixed?" And so on.