Why are the conservatives so blissfully ignorant of the story behind it. If something comparable had been done to Obama ("Kenyan dick sucker’ was mentioned) I believe the media wold be outraged and everyone in the world would know about it.
How does Google work? Could they do something about it if they wanted to? Haven’t they been known to influence search results. I seem to recall that during the Obamacare debates they steered searches toward the Obama position.
Obama is a more prominent figure then Santorum, so I’m sure googlebombing him would get more media attention. But it also probably makes it impossible to do, since the bigger someones web presence is, the harder it is to googlebomb them. Obama probably has more websites talking about him then any living human being on the planet (well, he’s probably outmatched by some Chinese pop-star that I’ve never heard of, but more then any American human being on the planet, anyways), so he’s well protected from the technique (Google has also spent a lot of time in the last few years making their search results harder to manipulate, so I’m not sure it would work even on Santorum if it were tried today).
I’m well aware of the story. What exactly do you expect me to do about it? Whine here on the Dope? if anything, it makes me more likely to support Santorum, since if you can’t argue except with nonsense like that, you’re clearly losing.
The Dan Savage thing was in 2004. In 2006, Rick Santorum lost his purple state senate seat by the largest margin ever for an incumbent Republican Senator.
I’m not sure his opponents were quite as clearly losing as you seem to think.
Uh, you think the Santorum Google problem is the only thing against him? He’s a creationist that wants to outlaw birth control. Dude’s as big a crank as Ron Paul, only from a different direction.
Wait a tic. If people make stupid remarks about a shit-for-brains reactionary knucklehead, then he becomes less of a shit-for-brains reactionary knucklehead?
I don’t know that they’re ignorant of the story. If they are, it’s probably because it happened seven years ago. It was a fairly big deal at the time, but he’s been out of office for a while and that’s a lot of time for people to forget. For whatever it’s worth I think Santorum got what he deserved, and it was funny.
I honestly didn’t know the source of the “other meaning” and that’s why I asked about it in GQ. I had seen the posts snickering about it, and just assumed that it had some sort of double entendre in the Greek language, or was mistranslated, or something (similar to an English surname like Glasscock). I had no idea that it was a political enemy just making something up and that’s why I agree with the OP in that it has no legitimacy at all.
Let’s take Biden. Imagine Rush Limbaugh decides on his radio show that a “biden” is something obscene, has it google bombed, and every time someone here posts about the VP, conservatives follow up with snicker posts about it.
My point is that the insult, taunt, or whatever, is illegitimate. You can’t make up the insult and then use it. I hereby declare that the name Der Tris means “Christian Missionary” and in every thread that he rails against religion, I am going to follow each of his posts with, “That’s pretty ridiculous coming from a der tris! Yuk, yuk!”
What do you mean by “legitimacy?” Santorum said something disgusting and horrible, and people who were offended by his statement made a joke out of it.
I mean the word “santorum” does NOT mean a frothy mixture of feces and lube. I don’t care if Dan Savage, Rush Limbaugh, or Alan Colmes all say it does. It’s not a proper way to insult someone.
But the point of the exercise was to draw attention to what Santorum said, and to demonstrate the fact that enough people were upset about it to put a decent amount of work into insulting Santroum back in a creative and (IMHO anyways) pretty amusing way. This seems to have been successful.
So it succeded in what it was supposed to do. I’m not sure “legitimacy” really enters into the equation anywhere.
Its not exactly without precedent either. Allied newspapers during WWII started using “Quisling” as a word for a traitor or collaborator while Vidkun Quisling was still alive and active. I’d imagine Dopers can think of other examples.
Obviously they had to make do without Google-bombs in those days, but the word is still in active use as an insult. I don’t think anyone questions its “legitimacy”