Aphorism Agenda

Dog Whistle

The Obama administration has the enviable knack for establishing imaginative vernaculars for their chief executive as a way of pushing his agenda. These bon mots are sometimes insults cloaked in a velvet glove. Here are a few examples with translations:

Degrade ISIS -- we will not send them any more Ramadan good-wishes cards.

Settled science -- Al Gore says it is so.

Bitter clingers -- a way of dissing "white folks" to non-whites and getting away with it.

Dog whistle -- white folks' way of referring to blacks in a oblique way so as not being called racists ... for examples "inner city" or "Detroit" ... i.e., a silent sound that only other whites can hear.

New car smell -- a suggestion that tired, old politicians (such as Hillary and Mitt) are not what America wants in the next election ... rather we need a fresh face like Elizabeth Warren.

Hope and change -- an oblique way of suggesting that President George W. Bush took this country in the wrong direction without saying exactly where we need to go. (We have unfortunately found out.)

You folks -- a way of seeming to belong to a group liking hamburgers while consuming copious quantities of waygu beef.

Dreamers -- the wrapping of illegal immigrants in a term that presupposes they are all young, ambitious and benign.

Let me be clear -- this may be a lie but I am saying it forcefully.

I won --- shut up you losers and let me do my silly stuff.

Islam is a religion of peace -- except for that scallywag, Osama ben Laden,