I mostly hate writing about news like this (anything related to reactionary or so-called populist conservatism), but I think it's interesting how the "Let's Go Brandon" phrase has caused such a stir. It's a misheard line that then became the joke and a not-so-secret "code" phrase for what the chanters really meant (something vulgar and not very deep or informational). It seems to me that the code phrase, at least, evolved from humor and then caught on as a kind of euphemism so people could say one thing while meaning another. And then others decided that a code phrase is just as bad as the real thing. I disagree, in the sense that at least for most children not following the news, you'd still have to explain it. During the Obama years, there were "F*3k Obama" bumper stickers and t-shirts all over the place, and it was all not very clever and just a bit too angry.
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| Winner, winner chicken dinner. |
It is interesting how euphemisms will evolve like that. When a was a youth leader many years ago -- a very young man in charge of younger boys -- I tried to stop the boys from cursing all the time. I told them to substitute the word "chicken" any time they wanted to cuss. I thought it was the equivalent of encouraging people to say "gosh darn." But "chicken" being the word it is -- and 12-year-old boys being who they are -- the boys thought it was hilarious and began using it all the time. "Chicken you," they'd say, or "chicken that." The cursing via euphemism probably increased our overall cursing problem by 10 fold. It was fun, but eventually we had to curb that habit also. This is what you get for trying to make boys behave.
