Well, I Missed Talk Like a Pirate Day...

...but it looks like I could still make Talk Like a Republican Day:

Now, for Pirates, the "talk" has pretty much crystalized around outdated nautical terms (eg: "hoist the gibbards and flagrums! Unmarnish the pocks and lee or it's the squibbens for ye!!") followed by liberal use of the word "Avast" and total overapplication of the syllable "Arrr".

But, in my Utopian future, when contemporary republican mores have long-since been rejected for the medieval throwback that they are, what will it mean to "talk like a Republican"? Well, for that answer, we need to turn to the time-honored pseudoscience of linguistics (with apologies to Lakoff & Chomsky, it's only "pseudo" the way I'm about to do it). Linguistic theory would start us out with three major dialect groups of fake republicanese:

1. Flagrant stereotyping: pretty much as in the example above. Just take all the stuff we hate about republicans and talk about it as if you had a thong wrapped around your brain real tight:

Gurgh! Bring me some Jesus car oil beer! Urgh! Macaca!

I don't actually approve of this dialect, since it involves stereotyping, which offends my delicate liberal sensibilities on principle.

2. Excessive Malapropisms: Pretty much the way I imagine Rick Davis talking. This is by fair the most straightfrontward way of going about it. Irregardless of how well you know your republican talking points, it's easy to sound republican these days if you just talk a little ineducated. In lieu of what a total ignoramis our president has been, one can see how the republicans earned that imprimotter. Still, I'm not as inflatulated with this dialect, as it seems kind of pubile.

3. Framing Diarrhea: This is my favorite dialect, and the one I encourage all of you to slip into your comments for the rest of the day (oh and don't worry about explaining it, just put a link back to this diary...). Not to legislate from the diary or anything, but we're in a war on fundamentalist extremism. We need to serve a cause greater than our own self-interest, and get the republicans off our backs. We need to reduce the size of sentences, and strengthen subordinate clauses. After all, conjugation should be between a subject and a verb. We need to restore participle values and leave no preposition behind. This is no time to cut and run - We are all republicans now.

The rest of that diary had me howling, despite the fact I can't breathe, and the only part of my face I can really feel after so much cold medicine is the region where my sinuses are threatening to explode. "Arr, *hack cough hack*" rather kills the mystique of talking like a pirate, but "hack" is dead-on for talking like a Republicon. I think I can attempt this:

"My friends, the fundamentals of our health are strong. I said 'Thanks but no thanks' to that healthcare to nowhere - if we wanted health insurance that wouldn't do us a darned bit of good, we'd pay for it ourselves. The solution to intolerable sinus pressure is to 'drill baby drill!' And that's the kind of change I will bring to this cold and flu season."

Well, that was easy. I just feel this bizarre urge to take a shower now...