I’m curious about the use of this word in The Wire to describe the actions of an elected politician in neighbouring Prince George’s. The actual sequence:
[ul]
[li]Dobie in PG is thinking of standing against Carcetti (Mayor of Baltimore) in the Democratic Primary for the upcoming State Governorship[/li][li]Congressman Upshaw (also of PG) is putting it around that he might support that candidate[/li][li]The response from Carcetti’s advisor is: “We might have a full blown PG insurrection down there”[/li][/ul]
Now, it suits my theory that this choice of word is a signal to something else so I’m keen to know if it sounds entirely appropriate, in the above context, to a mid-Atlantic ear? Maybe a little off key? Valid, colloquially?
I was born and raised in New York, now live in Virginia, so I guess that’s a mid-Atlantic ear. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything off. He’s saying that the PG party is possibly in revolt against the state party, which has picked Carcetti as their candidate.
I think that you’re overinterpreting what he has said. I think that he means no more than that the majority of the leaders in the Democratic party in Maryland support Carcetti as the Democratic nominee for governor. He claims that a sufficient amount of Democratic voters in Prince George’s County are unhappy enough with this that they will support Dobie instead so that the primary won’t be a shoe-in for Carcetti.
Wait, isn’t The Wire a fictional television show? So you’re considering the usage of a word in fiction and in speech, rather than its use in reality by a newspaper?
Speech usage almost always tends to be more dramatic than print usage and even supposedly realistic television shows will heighten word choices.
On top of all that, politics often uses war metaphors for the clash of the opposing sides. Almost as much as football.
Unless you have some other context to give us, the word choice is a big nothing.
Excuse me, but I didn’t realize that you were talking about a TV show. I wish you would have just said that it was only something on TV. I had assumed that you were talking about real politics and the Wire was some sort of political website. Now that I know that you’re talking about TV, my answer is that it’s just typical TV exaggeration of real situations.
I’m fully prepared to accept the local meaning is slightly different from elsewhere. Just for the record, one online dictionary has this:
Insurrection
A noun
1 rebellion, insurrection, revolt, rising, uprising
organized opposition to authority; a conflict in which one faction tries to wrest control from another
Now, if Carcetti was the incumbant I could see the dictionary version, but this is about one declared candidate in a Democratic Primary vs. someone who’s suggesting they might stand - hence me thinking there might be local variance in the meaning.
Again, PrettyVacant, you’re wildly overinterpreting what’s being said. The person who’s saying this is claiming nothing except that the Prince George’s Country Democratic politicians are unhappy with Carcetti, who most of the Democratic politicians in Maryland are supporting (in this episode of The Wire). He’s only saying that Carcetti’s win in the Democratic primary won’t be the cakewalk that most of the party had expected. And, please, from now on, tell us when you’re talking about a TV show instead of about reality.
I’m not interpreting, nor overinterpreting, nor wildly overinterpreting. To restate, I’m asking if the word is appropriate in the context, the context being an East Coast political setting (whether real or dramatic is not, as best I can see, relevant).
I’m reading the sentence over and over again, trying to find something even noteworthy in it. How, exactly, might it be inappropriate? I don’t see anything wrong with that sentence and I don’t see it as particularly remarkable either.
It’s not a word often used in a political context in the UK. Here media tend use something like ‘challenge’. You might more commonly use ‘insurrection’ in the context of an armed struggle.
It’s not used in the “media” of the TV program The Wire and it’s not used in American media in general. It’s used by a politician in an offhand comment in a fictional context. It’s deliberate exaggeration. It was never remotely supposed to be a piece of measured, reasonable comment on the political situation.