Friday, October 19, 2012
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.
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