Just as a fact check, here is the definition from Merriam-Webster
Since no one has claimed that definition 1 applies, and certainly 2 does not, definition 3 seems to be implied. And seems appropriate.
The language has moved on. Wouldn’t want to risk confusion in a speech or published work, but here in the Pit? C’mon now.
Definitions are interlinked, and #3 comes about as a figurative usage of the first definition. The issue isn’t confusion; I laid out what the issues are earlier.
It’s not the language that’s moved on, though, it may as well be the thread. I believe septimus has apologized, and I’m good with that :).
Then he should have had the balls to tell Trump, who started the entire politicisation of sympathy calls by saying that Bush and Obama didn’t do them, that Trump was off-side and shouldn’t be trying to score political points off of this issue.
Kelly didn’t do that. Instead, he went out and contributed to the politicisation of the issue.
Oh and to participate in the hijack search for the insulting word to call a male, equivalent to “whore”, there’s always “catamite”.
Kelly is now Donald’s Catamite.
You got that straight.
It’s amazing how some of these people consider themselves the progressives.
Yeah, and we’ve spoken with such a unified voice in this thread about this, haven’t we?
You know what? We lefties aren’t perfect. We aren’t pure as the driven snow. But right here, you’re seeing what happens when we ACT less than perfect. We argue, we question each other, as a group we don’t double down on our bad behavior.
I’m probably good for another 30 years on this planet. I hope to see the right get to that point, but I don’t really have high hopes.
“Tut-tut,” said octopus.
“Tsk, tsk,” offered HeweyLogan. “Shame, shame?”
“After you,” octopus replied, girding his forefinger for a vigorous wag.
HeweyLogan and octopus, WTF?
Here’s the difference between you guys and normal people. One poster phrases something badly. He’s immediately jumped on. Others rationally delve into why that’s bad phrasing and when it might be acceptable. The poster researches his own usage to show that he really doesn’t use it in a sexist way, apologizes for it coming across that way, and looks to do better.
Here’s you guys: Hurr durr, liberals are sexist too. Derp.
Back to Kelly. Stringbean, he had many opportunities to take the higher ground, to de-escalate rather than making the phone call even more political, to tell Trump to go pound sand about getting out in front of people to defend Trump, not to do that bullshit speech about better times when women were sacred, etc. Instead, he sold out like the Catamite he is. I don’t know why he should get any further doubtal benefits.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some consideration given to the idea of mercenary, which doesn’t automatically connote a military context.
Hired gun works, for the same reason, and is a better metaphor, inasmuch as it’s trading fucking people over, not fucking people, for money.
‘Hired gun’ isn’t as strong, I think. Paladin in *Have Gun, Will Travel *was a hired gun. And even IRL the connotation isn’t entirely bad.
The connotation of mercenary, however, is pretty much universally negative. Mercenaries are generally reviled.
ETA: I don’t think the label really applies to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though. She’s a true believer, AFAICT. Trump can do no wrong in her eyes.
There’s Dashiell Hammett’s favorite, gunsel.
Most excellent pitting. Just the fact that Kelly defends the corrupt Trump administration is enough to make him deserve a pitting. That he lied about an event available for all to view on YouTube, proves him stupid and not worthy to be defending us from a nuclear war set off by the Great Orange Leader. He needs to leave public life. He’s a disgrace.
I suppose if he hadn’t aligned himself and now unscrupulously defended a president who attacked John McCain for being a captured “war hero” then we could proffer John Kelly more leeway. As I said, he was wrong but I won’t go so far as to say fuck him. This hits home far more for him than it does Trump or the cowboy Congresswoman from Florida.
I’m going to go with “toady.”
But “toady” emphasizes the obsequious-ness, and fails to highlight the corruption, the opportunism, and the lack of shame.
The fact is that we need a word that’s gender-neutral AND conveys “corrupt” and “without integrity” and “sycophantic” and, for good measure, “disgraceful defender of the disgustingly, appallingly indefensible.”
“Rent boy” also works.
It’s a fucked up world when being a hired gun is considered more honorable than being a sex worker. For me, “hired gun” has loathsome connotations, but I’ll trust that others don’t mind it.
All the other variants of “He’s like someone who trades sex for money, i.e., utterly without morals” are shitty metaphors IMO. Kelly’s problem is that he trades his integrity for power, is that he’s perfectly willing to engage in dishonest character assassination in order to please his boss. Whether that’s mercenary or hired gun or some other metaphor, the key point is, it’s despicable.
I dunno … I usually hear “hired gun” as a completely innocuous metaphor for a person outside of an organization hired for a specific task.
How about “lickspittle”?
The New Yorker nails it, as always:
John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump
The basic theme is summed up under a picture of John Kelly: “The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, is the latest example of how the President sullies the reputations of those who work with and for him.”
So true. It’s impossible to be part of that shit-show without turning into one of them, or else you don’t survive. On his very first day, Sean Spicer had to blatantly lie about the “record size” of the Inauguration crowd. There was another article on the extraordinary number of senior staffers who have since departed, voluntarily or involuntarily.
Spicer had already gone over to the Orange Side long before. He was the one that came up with the “My Little Pony” and “words in the dictionary” defense of Melania’s speech at the RNC.