That's a bunch of malarkey

Technical Sergeant Donald G. Malarkey, a highly decorated WWII hero, was born on July 31, 1921. He served in the 101st Airborne while in the service, and was later portrayed in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers” by Scott Grimes.

He is still living today, in comfortable retirement, in Astoria, Oregon.

Very few people have ever heard of him, but by now, most of the people on the planet have a rough idea what “malarkey” means, thanks to this recent video:

2012 Vice Presidential debate

Like many words, the origin of the word “malarkey” is a little murky, but its first known use was in 1929, 8 years after Sergeant Malarkey came into the world. I actually remember my parents using the word occasionally when I was growing up, since their “Minnesota Nice” background would have made it difficult for them to use anything stronger than that.

Surprisingly, there are NUMEROUS synonyms for the word, which you can find in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Applesauce

Balderdash

Baloney

Beans

Bilge

Blah

Blarney

Blather

Blatherskite

Blither

Bosh

Bull

Bunk

Bunkum

Claptrap

Codswallop

Crapola

Crock

Drivel

Drool

Fiddle

Fiddle-faddle

Fiddlesticks

Flannel

Flapdoodle

Folderol

Folly

Foolishness

Fudge

Garbage

Guff

Hogwash

Hokey pokey

Hokkum

Hoodoo

Hooey

Horse feathers

Humbug

Humbuggery

Jazz

Nonsense

Moonshine

Muck

Nerts

Nuts

Piffle

Poppycock

Punk

Rot

Rubbish

Senselessness

Silliness

Slush

Stupidity

Taradiddle

Tommyrot

Tosh

Trash

Trumpery

Twaddle

There are those who feel that the Vice President should have been more respectful to the young whipper-snapper from Wisconsin, and I’ve even seen some Biblical references (Proverbs 29:9) to the debate, but here’s my opinion:

Politics has long been considered to be a nasty sport in this country, all the way back to its early days. In the 1796 campaign between Adams and Jefferson, Adams’ backers called Jefferson a “howling atheist”, and Jefferson’s people charged that Adams was going to rip up the Constitution and make himself king, and his sons princes.

In view of the mean-spirited commentary coming from people like Sean Hannitty and Rush Limbaugh, I found that Joe Biden’s gentle poke at Paul Ryan simply made for good theater, and that’s all that I got to say.

Dadgummit

If you want more wisdom than that, it would be like looking for a needle in a Haystak.