Just to raise things to a new level… Savage recently said that “rick” should mean “remove with one’s tongue”. “Rick” is constructed from “remove” and “lick”.
This gives a whole new meaning to “Rick Santorum”.
Hey, all that effort is necessary if you want to craft an insult that will thoroughly zing your opponent and be the stuff of legend.
One does not simply walk into score lore.
This is an enormous Chrysoberyl insult. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is studded with Adamantine, decorated with Adamantine and Chrysoberyl and encircled with bands of elephant bones. This object menaces with spikes of hoary marmot bones.
On the item is an image of a man in basalt. The man is felching a goat. The artwork relates to the coining of the word “Santorum” by Dan Savage in mid spring 2003.
On the item is an image of a frothy mixture of semen and sexual lubricant.
The only party that I think should have done something about this is Google. I’ve read comments from Google executives stating that the goal of the site is to understand exactly what the user wants and provide the most relevant results. Google bombs are counter to that goal and I think Google should attempt to bypass them when it becomes aware of them. I don’t like the idea that my search results are being intentionally influenced by someone else for political reasons.
Of course, at this point the google bomb has nearly the prominence of the candidate so it shouldn’t be removed now.
Referring back to page one:
Google does take some steps to prevent people from manipulating its search results. I don’t know if Santorum has appealed to Google directly, but I know he’s whined that the mean old internet wouldn’t allow people to do something like this to a Democrat. His evidence for this, of course, is nil.
There is a difference between manipulating search results by posting links such that googling “Santorum” brings up the Savage meaning, and actually deciding that you are going to give the word “santorum” the meaning that Savage ascribes to it, and creating links accordingly.
I think that plenty of people who have anal sex also read Savage’s column. I suspect many of those actually do now use “santorum” to mean the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.
The solution, of course, is not to use lube.
…what?
It’s already been pointed out, but let’s repeat for emphasis: The “santorum” thing was not a Google bomb. It was a culture bomb. Google’s just doing the appropriate thing by noting how people actually use the term (which isn’t to deny that some might take glee in trying to maintain “santorum”'s Google results as they now are, but that particular effect wasn’t the original goal, as such, and there’s little reason to believe such manipulation actually plays a dominant (or even, I think, significant) role in the Google results).
Could someone please provide a link to the Miss Manners guide to insults? I’ve apparently lost my hard copy.
jtgain,honestly think you are misunderstanding the joke here. You think it’s something recursive: That people are making fun of Santorum for having a dirty word as a name, but the word is only dirty because they decided it is. You’re right. That would be stupid. This was, at least to begin with, about punishing the man for saying something cruel in a very public forum. Now, when people snigger at his name, they aren’t sniggering at the meaning of his name, they are sniggering at the thought of how much he, in particular, would hate the idea of someone sniggering at his name because of an association with anal sex. It’s not the meaning that’s funny, it’s the schadenfreude.
maybe so, but outside the US the only reason people have heard of Santorum is because of what his name now means. The mixture comes before the man… so to speak 
What? Cite?
If Santorum (the senator, not the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex) doesn’t like the google search results for his name, he’s perfectly able to purchase ads pointing to a website that doesn’t define “santorum” as the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.
“The scabby mix of blood and fecal matter (and tears) TISTBOAS” doesn’t quite scan as well.
And there’s the obvious counter-evidence of Google clobbering the Googlebomb that made a search for “Miserable Failure” link to GWB.
:::Hijack::: Today I thought of a pun in my half-sleep, which was weird because I usually need to be fully awake, or fully asleep and dreaming, to think of it.
For some reason I was thinking of the santorum definition, and was thinking that if anyone wanted to see a video explanation, they could just look it up on YouLube.
Another difference is that Obama closely manages his internet presence. Here is one article about the amount of time and effort (and money) involved. They take the on-line experience very seriously. http://www.aiim.org/Infonomics/Obama-How-Web2.0-Helped-Win-Whitehouse.aspx
(I somewhat recently read an article about how his team manages negative online presence, but can’t seem to locate it now. )
But Santorum does not. This article is about his buggy site and all its redirects, and twitter messages referring interested persons to other sites because the main site is down so often: Marketing Lessons from Rick Santorum’s Failed CandidacyBiz Coach | Proven Solutions for Maximum Profits Biz Coach
The point here is this: not all opinions deserve to be taken seriously. They all deserve a certain amount of protection, in as much as the person who has them has the right to have them. But certain opinions don’t deserve serious debate, they don’t deserve any time, they don’t deserve to be refuted, they only deserve to be ignored or ridiculed. They certainly don’t deserve respect.
Examples of such opinions: “Green Martians are murdering my cows”. A person with that opinion is clearly a nutter. You don’t spend time trying to convince this person he is wrong, do you? Or engage him in honest debate?
Other opinions in this category: “Black People are inferior”, “Women shouldn’t vote” and hopefully soon: “Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to Polygamy”.
Santorums opinions belong in the nutter category. He wants to forbid sex acts between consenting, straight adults in their own home. He compares sex between members of the same sex to child rape and dogfucking. He wants to forbid all birth control (heads up, straight people!).
These are not the opinions of a sane person. These are the opinions of a nutter. He does not the deserve the respect we give to sane politicians. He does not deserve to take part in an honest debate. He should be treated exactly as if his main campaign promise had been “If I am elected, I promise to defend all cows from green martians”. He deserves to be ignored, and, failing that, ridiculed. Which is what happened. And rightly so.
As I’ve said many times in the past, people are responsible for the ideas they accept. And people have to understand that if they believe in bigotry, intolerance and hatred, other people have the right to confront those ideas in whatever manner they can. There is no excuse for Santorum’s irrational beliefs, and anyone has the right to attack him for these beliefs, no holds barred. If Santorum doesn’t like the consequences of his prejudices, he shouldn’t have them.
offtopic:
AFAIK the santorum site only recently became #1, mainly because of people google bombing reddit.com I tried to find links but there were over 3000 created in the last few days so I gave up.
I remember randomly opening a thread about a week and a half ago and every single reply (there were thousands) was santorum linked to that site about 100 times. At that time it wasnt first on google.
/offtopic
extra alexa info
I’m nearly certain that it’s been the first real search result on Google for at least several years (not counting paid ads and news items).
I think if you Google for articles and blogs about it, you’ll find people discussing its number one position years ago.