word of the year

Everybody knows that Merriam-Webster does NOT have any sway when it comes to picking the word of the year. That honor belongs to The American Dialect Society (whose choice I am eagerly awaiting).

But M-W picks a word, anyway, and as far as I can tell, they pretty much just randomize these. The winner this year is "w00t." Apparently it has zeroes instead of o's.

From Boing Boing.

w00t is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007

Voters at Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 poll have chosen "w00t" as 2007's most iconic word. M-W says that the word is a gamer's acronym for "we own the other team," but I'm inclined to think that that's a backronym, a back-formed acronym created to explain a word already in use.

1. w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"

w00t! I won the contest!

Among the other words in the top ten were such lame-ohs as "facebook," "conundrum," "apathetic," "hypocrite," and "charlatan." Though this list may reflect a certain cultural and ideological moment in America, the words are hardly interesting--certainly not worth of attention. The only word that I think even deserves mention is "Pecksniffian." My dad uses this word a lot, which leads me to believe that Bill O'Reilly uses it. Which makes sense, because Bill O'Reilly's a Pecksniffian bastard.

Lesbians are sooo dangerous

I sometime thing that if you took the right's paranoid delusions and filmed them, you'd get some seriously great sci-fi. I like to think of this one as a kind of Godzilla-type film, where lesbians are loosed on the city, where they wreak seriously awesome havoc and generally terrorize the city's good people and fine architecture. Booya, Bill.

This comes from feministe, and they call it, "Best. O’Reilly. Ever." Enjoy!

Watch out Islam: Pat Robertson's got your number

So I just began reading Media Matters a few weeks ago, mostly because I got curious after Bill O'Reilly criticized it again and again. And it's pretty good. They keep a close eye on what's happening on the television that I don't watch. It's a fabulous place for bitter laughter.

Here, for example, is Pat Robertson speaking on The 700 Club, indicting himself as the bigot he is.

Pat Robertson says, "Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination." Fascinating. It's especially fascinating since he can at the same time indict Islam as being incapable of understanding "reasoned dialogue." Here's the link to the Media Matters video and article.

How religious are we?

There's a spate of new books out about the new (?) American dispensation for religion and its ever-growing, ever-nefarious influence on our lives. Sam Harris's The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great.

Over at The Nation, Ronald Aronson is thinking about what these books mean in the grand scheme of the American political and religious landscape. What these books signify, among other things, is that Americans are not happy with the new political and cultural paradigm that is being foisted on it from above. But if Americans are not happy with it, then why is it happening? I can count on a single hand the number of truly pious religious zealots that I know, and yet it seems as if their influence is huge, and getting bigger. Is it simply that I, in my ivory tower, don't interact with the pious masses? Or is, perhaps, that the entire face of the Christian Right is exaggerated?

That is, essentially, what I have always believed. Aronson makes a good point here. He argues that surveys how religious Americans are are tainted by the "'social desirability effect,' in which respondents are reluctant to give an unpopular answer in a society in which being religious is the norm." It's a good point, and one that I think really ought to be taken seriously. After all, how religious are Bill O'Reily and Sean Hannity? Or, for that matter, the contenders for the presidency? Are they not all pandering--performing their religiosity? Who among the talking heads and arbiters of culture has not suddenly found Jesus in the last couple of years?

Aronson musters some really compelling stats by looking both at surveys and analyzing the (bad) ways in which they are conducted. According to him, as many as 1 in 4 Americans does not believe in God.

Consider the following:

- a recent Harris American poll shows that 31 percent of those with postgraduate education do not avow belief in God. (<-- booya!)

- Twenty-four percent say that President Bush talks too much about his religious faith and prayer

- 28 percent deny that the United States is a Christian nation.

- 49 percent believe that Christian conservatives have gone too far "in trying to impose their religious values on the country."

Say what you will about the quality, tone, and efficacy of the new group of anti-religious books on the market, they mean something, and we do well to weigh that.

Fundies and Feminists

So, let's just admit it: the Right hates women almost as much as it hates people who have 'uncomplimentary' sex. So there's nothing really too alarming about the definition of feminism offered by righty Mike Adams, apart from its forthrightness:

"Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification."

A great blog, Feministe, has a link to the original article, as well as some colorful commentary on the candor of this and other comments made this week by the likes of Bill O'Reilly.