When you google "Santorum"

[Guinastasia]

Another example: “Sadist” comes from the Marquis de Sade, does it not?

@jtgain

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.

When Biden starts comparing homosexuality to beastiality and pedophilia, then I would gladly support Limbaugh in doing this. But he hasn’t, so what’s your point? Savage didn’t start the “Santorum” thing just for the hell of it.

[Marley23]

I’d say Santorum is different from Quisling or sadist or chauvinist or Benedict Arnold in that it was created deliberately to insult someone rather than evolving as a comment on a person’s actions. But that doesn’t make it somehow “illegitimate.” I think we’ve all seen people insulted that way on the playground, and if you wanted to argue that Savage’s choice of tactics is immature, you’d be on pretty safe ground. To which I’d respond that what Santorum did was much worse.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Simplicio

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”

Well, after Santorum (capital letter) drops out of the primaries and loses national prominence, we’ll have to see if “santorum” (lower-case letter) has any staying power.

Or if it just, y’know, gets swept away.

[Lobohan]

@Bryan_Ekers

Well, after Santorum (capital letter) drops out of the primaries and loses national prominence, we’ll have to see if “santorum” (lower-case letter) has any staying power.

Or if it just, y’know, gets swept away.

Blotted away by the gym-sock of history.

[Simplicio]

@Guinastasia

Another example: “Sadist” comes from the Marquis de Sade, does it not?.

I think its use as an insult post-dates the death of the Marque.

@Marley

I’d say Santorum is different from Quisling or sadist or chauvinist or Benedict Arnold in that it was created deliberately to insult someone rather than evolving as a comment on a person’s actions.

My understanding is that Quisling was used by the British press in a conscious effort to insult the person with that surname. Agree regarding sadist, don’t know about the other two.

[Miller]

@jtgain

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.

The phrase “proper way to insult someone” makes no sense. Is Rick Santorum insulted by it? Then it’s a proper insult. What other criteria are there for determining the propriety of an insult?

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.

Okay, I’m imagining it.

Now what?

[fumster]

@Marley23

I’d say Santorum is different from Quisling or sadist or chauvinist or Benedict Arnold in that it was created deliberately to insult someone rather than evolving as a comment on a person’s actions. But that doesn’t make it somehow “illegitimate.” I think we’ve all seen people insulted that way on the playground, and if you wanted to argue that Savage’s choice of tactics is immature, you’d be on pretty safe ground. To which I’d respond that what Santorum did was much worse.

I’m bot sure the idea was to insult Santorum as much as hurt him by diverting Google hits to something that would be disturbing to the kind of people that would search for him in the first place.

[UltraVires]

REALLY? This is what passes for political discourse? You disagree with a politician so you pretend that their name means something obscene and then snicker about it? And on this “intellectual” board, the consensus is that is okay? And even funny?

If your 6 year old did that, you would tell him to argue the position, not make fun of the person.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@sh1bu1

I’m bot sure the idea was to insult Santorum as much as hurt him by diverting Google hits to something that would be disturbing to the kind of people that would search for him in the first place.

Well, it can have a convenient double purpose.

[Rhythmdvl]

@jtgain

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.

You’re right in some ways. Making something up and repeating it over and over again to try and get something to catch on is contrived and has meaning only to the few who keep at it in their minds and are trying to keep it alive. Some things, though, are wide enough to gain general acceptance/knowledge, even though there is a significant schism surrounding it. There’s no logic to it, it’s just human nature. This experiment is repeated in elementary and high schools across the country on a daily basis. Why does one kid’s new catch-phrase become an in thing while another’s doesn’t? Why do some spread from one school to across the country while another’s stays completely local in time and place?

Now, let’s go down to the quarry and throw santorum on Snowboarder Bo.

[Marley23]

@sh1bu1

I’m bot sure the idea was to insult Santorum as much as hurt him by diverting Google hits to something that would be disturbing to the kind of people that would search for him in the first place.

No, it was done to mock Santorum.

@Savage

Alas, the Santorum scandal didn’t have legs. In fact, most of us–myself included–had already moved on when a Savage Love reader wrote in to say that he didn’t want to see the Santorum scandal fade into political oblivion. SARS (Sex and Rick Santorum) suggested that we name a sex act for Santorum, “[so that] this episode will never be forgotten.”

In that column, Savage selects a couple of “nominations” and asks for readers to vote on them. The winner was this one:

@Savage

While I agree with the spirit of naming something objectionable (to him) after Rick Santorum, I think it should be a substance, not an act. I would never want to “santorum” anyone I liked. What a turnoff. Instead, I think it would be better to name some kind of sexual byproduct after him. After all, ending up with idiots like Santorum in elected office is a byproduct of the otherwise desirable practice of letting any old yokel vote. Specifically, I nominate the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. As in, “We had a great time, but we got santorum all over the sheets.” Or better yet, “Before I sodomize my gay, unmarried dog, I like to give him an enema so there won’t be any santorum.”

[Bryan_Ekers]

@jtgain

REALLY? This is what passes for political discourse? You disagree with a politician so you pretend that their name means something obscene and then snicker about it? And on this “intellectual” board, the consensus is that is okay? And even funny?

If your 6 year old did that, you would tell him to argue the position, not make fun of the person.

Geez, lighten up, Francis. If you want to discuss Santorum’s views, start a thread in Elections for that purpose and mention the alternate definition briefly and dismissively in the OP with a polite request that the respondents refrain. If you show anger about it at any point, you’re just encouraging ridicule for yourself.

For my part, if I posted to such a thread, it would probably be about Santorum’s views on abortion but I’ve found in and of itself, that can derail a thread.

[Lemur866]

If you make public comments that gay sex is as morally wrong as raping children or fucking dogs, is that insulting to people who practice gay sex?

Yes, it’s a childish ad hominem to create a campaign to manipulate google results such that some disgusting sex act is the first result when people google this person’s name. It sure is. OK, now what?

[Simplicio]

@jtgain

REALLY? This is what passes for political discourse? You disagree with a politician so you pretend that their name means something obscene and then snicker about it? And on this “intellectual” board, the consensus is that is okay? And even funny?

You know there’s, like, an entire forum on this board dedicated to making obscene insults to people Posters don’t like right? Given your joindate, I have a little trouble believing your quite so surprised that people on the SDMB sometimes write obscene things about politicians and then snicker about it as the ALL_CAPS in your post would appear to indicate.

If your 6 year old did that, you would tell him to argue the position, not make fun of the person.

Eh, its not like there isn’t any arguing against Santorum’s actual positions here. It turns out people can make fun of him and argue.

And honestly, as far as the specific “gay sex==beastiality” argument goes, I doubt there’s much point. Even the more conservative dopers aren’t going to argue in favor of that proposition. Everyones already convinced he’s wrong.

[voltaire]

Am I the only one who read “gargle” instead of “google” in the thread title? Yeah, probably, but just thought I’d share…

[UltraVires]

All right. Have your childish fun. I’ll bookmark this thread the next time a Dem politician gets hit with a label that posters here do not think is “fair”.

Like when someone calls Obama a Socialist or Kenyan. That is now fine because we can make up meanings as we go.

[I_Know_Nothing]

@Marley23

I think that’s a matter for lexicographers, but it looks like it does now.

HA!! As a dedicated descriptivist, I agree.

[UltraVires]

@Simplicio

You know there’s, like, an entire forum on this board dedicated to making obscene insults to people Posters don’t like right? Given your joindate, I have a little trouble believing your quite so surprised that people on the SDMB sometimes write obscene things about politicians and then snicker about it as the ALL_CAPS in your post would appear to indicate.

If people were saying obscene things ABOUT Santorum, then that is fine. It happens all of the time. What is happening here is that people are pretending that his name means something obscene when it does not. I can call Newt Gingrich a fucking douchebag and that would be an opinion. If I say that the word “gingrich” is defined as nasty old man, I am lying.

[Inner_Stickler]

You’ve clearly never read Frindle, have you.

[Marley23]

@jtgain

REALLY? This is what passes for political discourse?

Santorum’s comments weren’t “political discourse.” They were disgusting, bigoted, moralizing, ignorant, and idiotic. There’s a long and outstanding tradition of satire in American political discourse, and if you say something as stupid as what he said, you deserve what you get. In case people have forgotten the original, or only remember a little piece of it:

SANTORUM: You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it’s in the privacy of your own home, this “right to privacy,” then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it’s private, as long as it’s consensual, then don’t be surprised what you get. You’re going to get a lot of things that you’re sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don’t really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don’t be surprised that you get more of it.

AP: The right to privacy lifestyle?

SANTORUM: The right to privacy lifestyle.

AP: What’s the alternative?

SANTORUM: In this case, what we’re talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We’re not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We’re talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a a perfectly fine relationship as long as it’s consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say that’s fine, you would assume that you would see more of it.

[…] AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?

SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we’re just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it’s my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that’s antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, where it’s sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.

@jtgain

What is happening here is that people are pretending that his name means something obscene when it does not.

I guess it does now.

If I say that the word “gingrich” is defined as nasty old man, I am lying.

If your definition catches on and a lot of people start using his name that way, then that becomes an accepted definition of the word. The dictionary isn’t the arbiter of what is and isn’t a word, it’s a guide to how words are used. I don’t expect to see santorum in any mainstream dictionary, but I do hope to see an oblique reference to this controversy in Rick Santorum’s obituary some day. Maybe I’ll get the chance to read it out loud at someone’s same-sex wedding.