World Ends Tomorrow, May 21, 2011

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By Daniel Rigney
I had to hear about it last night from David Letterman.  The end of the world is coming tomorrow, Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.  That’s 9 Central, Dave added helpfully, and 7 Pacific.
I had heard vague stories about endtimes prophesied in the Mayan calendar, but I had no idea they were coming so soon.
This won't be the first time the world has ended.  The biblical book of Revelation has been forecasting a final event for nearly 2000 years now. In American history alone we have enjoyed several such cataclysms. There was the apocalypse foreseen by the Millerites (antecedents of modern day 7^th Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses), culminating in the Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844. Then there were the followers of Sister Thedra, an early disciple of Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard. Thedra predicted the landing of flying saucers in the 1950s. I hear from unreliable sources that her memory is still celebrated with an annual feast day in Roswell, New Mexico.
And who can forget Heaven’s Gate , acolytes of an odd blend of Christian and New Age thought that foretold the arrival of aliens accompanying the Comet Hale-Bopp as it shot past Earth in 1997? As Sarah Palin might say, "How did that work out for ya'?"
Books could be written about such failed prophesies. And indeed, many books have been. In the best-known of these, When Prophecy Fails (1956), social psychologists Festinger, Ricken and Schacter invoke the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain why millenarian groups, even in the face of disconfirming evidence, find ways to interpret the disconfirming event itself in a way that paradoxically confirms it. Such groups then typically redouble their efforts to convince others of their rightness, with little apparent loss of faith. In fact, the authors find that the faith of the faithful may even be fortified by the failure of prophesy. Such is the magic of magical thinking.
But I don’t have to tell you this. You’ve heard Glenn Beck and his various end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it visions of the future. The man is never wrong, even when he is.
After hearing about Saturday’s end of the world event from David Letterman last night, I went immediately to the Internet to consult witn.com, East Carolina’s Breaking News and Weather Authority, to see what was up.  Witn.com informed me that the source of the May 21 prophecy was not the Mayan calendar, as I had thought, but instead a California-based conservative Christian media outlet, Family Radio.  As a rule of thumb, never trust any organization with the word  “Family” in its name.  If this word doesn’t put your critical thinking neurons on high alert, nothing will.
Witn.com (East Carolina’s Breaking News and Weather Authority) jumped me over to CNN’s website, which deepened my understanding. CNN reports that Family Radio has been posting billboards and sending RV’s across the land like motorized Paul Reveres to warn every middle-sized village and farm that the long-awaited Rapture is not just coming, but is attacking our front door with an axe. It may even be inside the house already.  And this time it’s for real.
I hope for the sake of you and your family that you’re reading this before Saturday morning.  If not, it’s too late.  If so, it’s still too late. Sorry.
Naturally, the reaction to the Family Radio news among what the right calls "Secular Humanists"  has been swift, smirking and satirical.  The  American Atheists organization is planning a festive Rapture event in Fort Lauderdale, while a group on Facebook is organizing an after-the-end looting spree.  I’m not making this up. Go read the CNN article for yourself if you don’t believe me.
Actually, Family Radio is not saying that May 21 is the end of the world.  May 21 is just the beginning of a five-month-long Day of Judgment. The end-of-the end won’t come until October 21.
I was relieved that there is no schedule conflict between the end of the world according to Family Radio and the end of the world as prophesied in the Mayan calendar.  I did further research and learned that the Mayan end doesn’t come until the winter solstice of 2012. Thank Quetzalcoatl.

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open+call, gossip, fiction, family, belief/religion, danagram, daniel rigney, family radio, american atheists, rapture, heaven's gate, mayan calendar, when prophecy fails, great disappointment, sister thedra, millerites, revelation, prophesy, prophecy, humor, comedy, satire, end of the world

Wacky or Zany? It's Your Call.

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By Daniel Rigney Anyone who thinks “wacky” and “zany” mean the same thing has obviously never read the Oxford English Dictionary.
According to OED, wacky (also “whacky”) is a bit of U.S. slang that made its first known appearance in 1935 in the pages of the learned  Jrnl. Abnormal Psychol  XXX, 365.  Wacky suggests crazy, mad [in a British sense], odd or peculiar.
In subtle contrast to “wacky,” zany, appearing in print as early as 1596, describes the behavior of one who mimics others in a ludicrously awkward way, as a jester or buffoon does.
Not to put too fine a point on it quite yet, wacky is weirdly eccentric, while zany is more at clownish.  A few carefully chosen illustrations will help you draw the distinction more finely for yourself so that you can apply it creatively in the interpretation of your own comic experience.  
The late Andy Kaufmann is and will forever be wacky. Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor is clearly zany -- except in France, where some may insist, deep into the night, that his tropes, understood in a complexly nuanced and contextualized frame, disclose themselves furtively as post-ironically wacky, if not brazenly meta-zany.*
Stephen Colbert, or rather the conservative character he performs on Comedy Central, is delightfully wacky as the narcissistic gasbag. Donald Trump, in a similar persona as a right-wing asshat, rises only to the level of zany. The clownish orange hair is the giveaway.
Am I privileging wacky over zany?  Then so be it. We cannot live without our commitments, as Sartre wishes he had said.
Test your understanding of the distinction between “wacky” and “zany” with a few more puzzlers.  Lady Gaga?  Wacky or zany?  Madonna before her? Wacky or zany? And what about the storied comic actor Charles Sheen (nee Carlos Estevez)?  Can a person be both wacky and zany at the same time? You make the call.
Or take the slapstick nuttiness of the Three Stooges. Please.
Or that wrestling guy and former Governor of Minnesota who now hosts a conspiracy theory show on an obscure cable network? Or the celebrated political philosopher and historian Michele Bachmann? Or [your most challenging  puzzler here].
In future columns we will consider other possible candidates for wackiness or zaniness, including Lady Madonna , art cars, NPR, and MAD Magazine, both then and now.
Until then let me leave you with a tough one to chew on: Conan O’Brien. Wacky or zany?  How do you call this one?  Especially now that his new show features more gawky physical humor than the old one did, as he tries to lure the lucrative younger demographic that so many corporate advertisers  want to reach out and touch in the  late-night comedy market?
_____________________________
*Younger people in the audience, on whom old cultural references are sometimes lost, may not know that this gag is yet another mutation of a tired old American joke about Jerry Lewis and the French. The joke’s punchline is always some variant of “The joke is on the French for thinking Jerry Lewis is a comedic genius.”  Jerry Lewis was a famous host of a fund-raising telethon on TV.  TV was an early medium of visual communication.
--  Danagram, curating our precious comedy heritage since 2011

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business, gossip, news, movies, danagram, daniel rigney, television, comedy, humor, satire, open call, houston art car parade, art cars, michele bachmann, donald trump, lady gaga, madonna, lady madonna, npr, oed, mad magazine

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Teachers Who Change Lives

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by Daniel Rigney  (open.salon.com/blog/danagram)
A favorite book in our house is Loren Pope’s Colleges That Change Lives, an acknowledged classic among college guidebooks. Pope identifies a handful of small, smart liberal arts colleges around the United States which, while not as well known as some other schools, have earned reputations as places where good students receive the challenge and collegial community they need to thrive both intellectually and personally. 
Pope’s book reminds me that I, and most of us, have encountered people in our lives, beyond our own  families and friends, who have  left valuable but invisible impressions on who we’ve become and are still becoming.  I am calling these people Teachers in the widest sense. Teachers who change lives.
If books can have acknowledgements, then why can’t blogs? I would like here and now to acknowledge a small group of people – and I could have made a much longer list – who have  been my Teachers through the years. Some of these may no longer be alive, and others still alive may never know this list exists.  But in every case their names will be written in the book of life as people who will always have lived, and who have made impressions for which I am grateful.
My hunch is that each of us keeps an unpublished and sometimes unconscious list like this in the recesses of our  minds, and that the list grows and changes with time. 
A Teacher list is not a ranking. Teachers may be on your list for many different and incomparable reasons. My own list below is more or less chronological.
Most of my Teachers have been small-t teachers, whether on high school or university faculties. One named below is a church minister from my youth, and two are psychologists who helped members of our family through difficult times -- and we all have them.  I am not including my old friends and colleagues through the years in this list.  As we say in Texas, that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.
Thank you, then, to …
Herbert Sprouls, who first made me aware of the power and beauty of metaphors
Anne Griffin, English teacher and lit mag editor, who helped me learn to write
Judy Allen, another English teacher, who set the bar high with brassy intelligence and wit
Tom Hall, a geometry teacher who was way nerdy before nerdy was way cool
Ambrose Gordon, English professor, gentleman scholar in a remarkable program called Plan II (Plan to? Plan to what?)
Dale McLemore, my first sociology professor, who gave us the classics of the discipline from day one
Gideon Sjoberg, citizen-intellectual and creative social theorist
Sharon McMahon, who understands teenagers better than I did, or do
Nancy Baker-Brown, from whom I learned that Pandora’s music box contains mostly good things
Stephen Klineberg, whose Owl’s eye view of the history and sociology of Houston was the best newcomer’s gift I could have asked for
Nancy Geyer, novelist and playwright, whose creative writing course led me to start this blog in February. Hope to see you again next fall in your scriptwriting course.
And thank you, finally, to Loren Pope, for  Colleges That Change Lives, and to colleges, both literal and metaphorical, that change lives everywhere, and every day.
Life is, after all, a Continuing Studies program.

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teachers who change lives, teachers, lifelong learning, high school english, university english professors, plan ii, sociology, social theory, metaphor, life is a continuing studies curriculum, danagram, daniel rigney, open call, acknowledgements, loren pope, herbert sprouls, anne griffin, judy allen, ambrose gordon, dale mclemore, gideon sjoberg, sharon mcmahon, nancy baker-brown, nancy geyer, stephen klineberg, tom hall, college guidebooks, colleges that change lives, glasscock+rice university, power of metaphor, life is a continuing studies curriculum, continuing studies, belief/religion, music, family, books, nerdy is way cool

Ghostwriting: A Ghost Interview With the Author

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By Daniel Rigney, as Told to Daniel Rigney
Interviewer: Thank you for joining us  here at Open Salon to talk informally about the  process of ghostwriting.  Rookie ghostwriters and those who can only dream of ghostwriting professionally will be interested to hear your own experiences and your tips for successful ghosting.
Author: I’m happy to be here, as Garrison Keillor used to say.
Interviewer: How did you break into the ghostwriting game originally?
Author: Years ago I worked in a small liberal arts college, and I had the misfortune to be tapped for an administrative position as a presidential assistant. I started by ghostwriting a fund-raising prospectus for potential donors in a multi-million-dollar capital campaign. The president of the university claimed to have written it. He may have written one sentence.  I don’t really care. I guess they were paying me for my ghostwriting work as one of my unspoken duties.  I often hid in the library to get much of my work done because I knew the president never went there.
Later I wrote a speech for him, so I guess I’ve been a speechwriter or a ghost speechwriter as well, but flying in a much lower circle than the writers who put words in the mouths of U.S. presidents and corporate heads. The fictionalizing of authorship reminds me of a line from the Beatles: “Nothing is real” in strawberry fields.  And in today’s corporatized culture, it’s strawberries all the way down. Or so it seems sometimes. I don’t want to be too cynical. I really don’t.
Interview:  Neither do I.  Please go on.
My capital campaign experience got me interested in public relations or “institutional advancement” writing generally.  I love these euphemisms. Capital campaign literature of the sort I wrote, for instance, usually bears phony, self-caricaturing corporate titles like Dedication to Excellence or Quest for Distinction.  You never see Quest for Adequacy or Up From Obscurity. A really honest prospectus title would usually be something like We’re Better Than You Might Think, and We Could Be Even Better If You’d Help Us Out. We’ll probably be seeing that one soon, I’m sure.
The real life and truth of an institution is usually somewhere between the poles of heaven and hell.  It’s not the Chamber of Commerce version of reality, but it’s not a chamber of horrors either.  Catholics used to have a name for this middle ground. I think it's still on the books. They called it Purgatory.  Come to think of it, that would be a pretty honest name for a campaign to promote Houston. Not “Purgatory.”  I mean “We’re better than you think.”*
Interviewer:  Have you done any other ghostwriting?
Author: A little. I was the unacknowledged author of a research report I wrote as a consultant to a social service agency at a local military base. I was compensated. I guess I can live with that. I just wish they had told me ahead of time that I wouldn’t be the author. Otherwise I might never have authored it.
Then there was the time I wrote a fake interview with myself for a university press blog. I was the actual author of a book called The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage, and  I was later asked to be the fake interviewer who interviewed myself for publicity purposes. I have no problem with this at all. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I got to ask myself what I thought were good questions, and I got to answer them satisfactorily in a short space.  I was, in effect, a ghost interviewer, or Geistfrager as the Germans might call it if they had a word for it. The only problem with self-interviewing is that you have to write something in your own name before you can do a fake author’s interview with yourself.
Interviewer:  Doesn’t this whole thread of conversation raise complex and vexing  questions about postmodern identity? About the nuances of self-interviewing in social and historical context?  Aren’t there richly-layered questions here, crying to be heard over the monological din of  corporate inscription, about interrogation in general, and about the otherness of the self and the selfness of the other?
Author:  I don't know. I guess so, now that you mention it.
Interviewer: What tips would you give to writers or aspiring writers just starting out in the ghostwriting business?
Author:  Read your contract several times. Know it. Live it. And  keep your head down.
Interviewer:  You’re semi-retired now.  Is there life after ghostwriting?
Author:  That is a very funny question.  It works on several levels. You have a real gift for interviewing.
Interviewer:   Thank you. So do you.
__________________________________
For more on ghostwriting from this author, see Danagram’s “Tips for Ghostwriters” in Open Salon, May 27, 2011 at open.salon.com/blog/danagram.
*Dr. Stephen Klineberg of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University has good data to show that people who live in Houston like the city much better than one might expect judging from its external image as a mosquito-ridden mudhole and Confederate enclave.  Yes, it’s those things too. But it’s so much more.  We were pleasantly surprised when we moved here recently. More later as we continue to develop “Houston: A Newcomer’s Guide for Newcomers.”

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fiction, books, human comedy, satire, humor, comedy, danagram, daniel rigney, author, terrogation, postmodern identity, open call, ghostwriting business, richly layered, monological, ghostwriting game, open salon, tips for ghostwriters, catholic, purgatory, up from obscurity, quest for excellency, dedication to adequacy, dedication to excellence, better than you think it is, houston, euphemism, institutional advancement, public relations, capital campaign publicity, garrison keillor, ghosting, interview, ghost interview, ghost writing, ghostwriting

Rent-a-Grandma: Discuss.

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By Daniel Rigney
A new company calling itself "Rent-a-Grandma" and describing itself as a "revolutionary concept for domestic staffing needs” announced  last Friday that it has begun a nationwide rollout. The California-based company has already begun selling franchises in Texas and other states. 
I had never heard of Rent-a-Grandma until last night, when I noticed it was trending  as a topic on Yahoo. Ever the cultural radar scanner, I decided to check it out. Here’s what I found. What do you think?
We Report. You Decide.
Rent-a-Grandma, a domestic employment agency engaging older women to perform various domestic  services for hire, is already up and running in Los Angeles, with about 50 “grandmas” on active duty as child care providers and, in special instances,  eldercare providers and companions, pet-sitters, and cooks. Prospective customers are assured that employees are well vetted, speak English, are loyal, and meet several other desiderata.  I am still not clear whether applicants are required to be grandmothers in the technical biological sense, or merely matronly grandmother-equivalents in appearance and demeanor. I’m also not sure about age limits, lower and higher.
Be assured that I’m not here to push this product.  I have some qualms about it personally.  A recent Fox News story about Rent-A-Grandma, narrated by Casey Stegall  of Fox Business and viewable on You Tube, raised some vexing questions for me.
Stegall opened his report with a question of his own: “Why not?” He urged  viewers not to “rush to judgment,” noting that  for some parents the service  may meet an important need, and that (verbatim) “it’s tough finding good help these days.” 
Talking Points
Fox  Business and other sources have provided us with several talking points and catch phrases to help us make up our own minds about Rent-a-Grandma.  For your consideration:
As a caregiver, a mature, experienced granny may be preferable to a teen nanny in many respects, assuming the older woman has no relevant health limitations. [One cranky observer notes that experienced grandmas don’t spend all day phoning or texting when they’re supposed to be working.  And grandmas know how to cook and clean up a room.]
At $16-23 an hour, the service’s cost is affordable to most of those who watch Fox News and especially Fox Business.
The service is entrepreneurial.  It’s not a government program.  Rent-a-Grandma creates jobs for unemployed or underemployed seniors.  It shows we care.  
The tone of the Fox report is generally upbeat and uncritical. “Be open to this idea,” it seems to whisper reassuringly.
Also findable on You Tube is a mean-spirited video of two young male pranksters harassing an elderly Rent-a-Grandma. The men in the video ask her questions like “Can I rent four or five of you to remodel my house?”  “Can you do roofing and unload my truck?” and “Can you bring your own lunch?” The hapless victim of this call is not the agency itself but, apparently, an older woman who works through the agency and  seeks legitimate work as a caregiver.
The concept of Rent-a-Grandma, and even the name itself, are not brand new. I found evidence that in San Francisco several years ago, older women of varied ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Vietnamese), who were identified as rent-a-grandmas, were offering to teach their their native cuisines to interested clients.  And of course, grandmas have been providing domestic care for centuries, long before they were a part of the paid labor force. 
Interestingly, I could find almost no entries on the web for “Rent-a-Grandpas.”  One of the few such businesses was a pet-sitting service in Virginia.
Several questions came up for me after I’d had a chance to mull the idea of Rent-a-Grandma for awhile:
Economic Questions: Is the grandma-rental  business entirely  a win-win arrangement for all concerned parties (owner, employee, client, others)?  Would our answer depend partly on the level of wages and benefits (if any) its employees received?  
Would Rent-a-Grandmas have the right to organize Sisterhoods to negotiate better pay and working conditions, or would their compensation be determined solely by the market, company management, and minimum wage laws? Would those currently employed as nannies and babysitters be nudged into unemployment by this new labor arrangement?
Legal Questions: Is there a case for external regulation of such agencies beyond rules that currently pertain to babysitting and domestic cooking? Does Rent-a–Grandma pose any special hazards to caregiver or children beyond the routine hazards of childcare?
Is there potential for abuse of the elderly on the part of the children, parents or the company, or potential bases for discrimination (too old, too young, not a “real” grandmother, etc.) by the company, clients or others, beyond  traditional bases of discrimination such as sex, race or ethnicity, religion and the like?  Can a prospective employee be rejected, for instance, for being “too Muslim” or “too gay”?
Sociological Questions: How will the children’s real grandparents feel about having some aspects of their customary family roles assumed by someone who could potentially become a rival for the family’s affections, or has a different approach to childcare than they or the parents have? Should rent-a-grandmas be permitted to spank?
Where are the grandpas in this picture?  
We almost forgot to ask:  How, if at all, will this arrangement affect the children themselves, compared  with  the care they currently receive or would have received under existing social practices?
Is there anything disconcerting about turning the traditional family role of the grandmother into a commodity or a “brand” and selling it on the marketplace?  Can markets ever be bad for people?
The agency website announces that “ Rent-a-Grandma sets a standard unequaled in the industry.”  Is there, or will there be, a grandma-rental  industry? Will it rival the babysitting industry?
Whose core values, if anyone’s, would the existence of a grandma-rental  industry offend?  How many would even notice its existence in the cultural cacophony of our frenetic attention economy?
Does the rise of a business like Rent-A-Grandma say anything surprising or unexpected about the kind of society we are, or the kind of society we’re becoming?
Discuss.

http://open.salon.danagram/blog/danagram

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traditional family roles, gerontology, cultural radar scanning, attention economy, cultural trends, cultural cacophony, cultural radar, age discrimination, can markets be bad? family values, danagram, daniel rigney, pet-sitting, rent-a-grandpa, prank call, casey stegall, fox business, fox news, eldercare, child care, childcare, domestic services, entrepreneurial, franchising+childcare, good help is so hard to find, domestic help, domestic staffing needs, rollout, grandma industry, rent-a-grandma, too gay?, too muslim?, rent-a-grandma, open+call, feminism, economy, business, news, health, gay/lesbian, books, clean room

Why Does Everyone Always Overgeneralize?

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 Semi-Fiction By Daniel Rigney
Here’s what I wanted to know: Why does everybody always overgeneralize all the time? 
I was curious, so naturally I turned to Wikipedia.  I found several good leads in an article there about “cognitive distortion.” 
It turns out that overgeneralization, or “generalizing from isolated cases,” is a logical fallacy related to a number of other common cognitive habits, including “all-or-nothing thinking (or splitting),”  “hasty generalization,” and labeling (or “nouning,” as I call it). 
When I looked up “hasty generalization,” I found a few more leads to my question.  “Hasty generalization” pointed me toward articles on topics like “fallacy of insufficient sample,“  “fallacy of proof by example,” and “slothful  induction.”
Where does this subject end? One article led me to several others, which led me to several others. Some articles even led me back to where I started.  All I wanted in the first place was a simple answer to my question “Why does everybody always overgeneralize?”
It began to seem as though everything was related to everything else in all directions  as far as the eye could see. My brain was getting tired of thinking, and things were getting way too complicated.
That's the moment I realized that we all have our own mental Wikipedia, and that the mind itself is a kind of encyclopedia. For example, I have mental articles (or more often, article stubs) on terms I’ve heard somewhere before, maybe in a philosophy class or just reading around, that seem related to overgeneralization: “light-switch thinking (vs. rheostat thinking),” “categorical thinking (vs. statistical or probabilistic thinking),” "dichotemous thinking," “premature induction,” and plain old sloppy and  lazy thinking.  I had lots of related terms and concepts in my head, but I still didn’t have an answer to my question.
After going  in circles on Wikipedia, I decided to go to Google for some more specific, less abstract information. I decided to try to find out what people overgeneralize about.  I went to the search box and asked  for exact matches for “everybody always.”
 Here are the things that everybody is always doing, according to the list of top responses in Google today:

Everybody is always picking on me [from two different popular songs by two different artists – Bloodhound Gang and the Coasters -- from  two different eras.]
Everybody always leaves.
Everybody always thinks they are right.
Everybody always loved Raymond.
Everybody always got dat friend who fake as hell.
Everybody is always against Germany  [or “so the Germans would have us believe,” as Norm Macdonald used to say with a knowing leer on SNL].
Everybody is always treating me like a glorified meter maid.
Everybody always loved Dixie [from a motel sign in Las Vegas  --  reaching out, perhaps, to those of the Southern persuasion].
Everybody is always hatin’ on Glee.

The question “What does everybody always do” is not quite the same as the question “What does everyone always do.” The latter has an entirely different set of top responses according to Google.  If you search exact matches for “everyone always” today, here’s what comes up:

Everyone is always writing  off Netflix.
Everyone always moves [advice to ice skaters].
Everyone always says that [a certain rock musician’s wife] isn’t pretty.
Everyone is always killing sharks
Everyone is always scratching West Virginia off. [Your tasteless joke here. I’m not even going to swing at this beachball.]
Everyone always remembers the first, not the second [Guess what this refers to?  If you said “an early webcam,” you’d be right.  One commenter confesses that Jennicam once fascinated “then-me.”]
Everyone always talks about backlinks in SEO [search engine optimization].
Everyone is always playing games on forums (online multiplayer game sites).
Everyone is always stealing your stuff.

It was starting to look as though people overgeneralize about absolutely anything and everything.

Then  I had my second realization of the day. I realized that the mind is not just like Wikipedia. It’s also something  like Google, cataloguing millions and millions of experiences.  The human mind is a Googlepedia?

Too much information! I need a simpler answer to the question “Why do we overgeneralize?” than either Google or Wikipedia is giving me. I need a theory that will pull all this together.
Let me try this: The world is too complicated.  We need it to be simpler. Otherwise it seems too scary and overwhelming to handle. We pretend the world is simpler by overgeneralizing. Everybody’s mind works like this all the time. It’s how we get through life.
We can call it complexiphobia theory. Or Googlepedia theory.
Or we can just not think about it.

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Republican Anagrams

By Daniel Rigney
originally posted in Danagram on Open Salon, 2011

I’m a Wordie.  I enjoy a breakfast of scrambled words almost every morning when I play the Jumble pun and puzzle game in our local newspaper. This morning I was having more trouble than usual  solving the day’s puzzle, so finally in desperation I visited an old friend, the Internet Anagram Server (itself an anagram of “I, Rearrangement Servant”) to get some research assistance.
As I goofed online, I began to play with anagrams for the names of leading Republicans being discussed as potential presidential contenders in 2012. I typed the name of Sarah Palin into the search box. Here’s what I learned  about her name and the names of several of her frenemies in the presidential primary.
Sarah Palin and her followers, I soon discovered, are known in Anagramistan as La Piranhas. I did not know until just now that she has a Sharia Plan spelled out and lying hidden in her name.  Her name also encrypts her association with a parish in Louisiana whose name I can’t print here for reasons of good taste.
As I explored  the anagram website further, I discovered that almost everyone’s name, including my own, contains  words that would offend  delicate sensibilities. I’ll omit these from today’s column, but you could easily find them for yourself if you really wanted to. That’s all I’m going to say.
Poor Mitt Romney. When I typed his name, the first two anagrams to come up were Metro Minty and Memory Tint. I don’t know about the mint, but I think he may have begun showing signs of political amnesia soon after he left the governorship of Massachusetts. Moving to the national stage seems to have colored his perspective on some issues.
Michele Bachmann. Michele, my belle. Why were you too modest to tell us you have the gift to soothe and tame the most extreme elements in your party – the reddest of the red meat Republicans? Why didn’t you just say “I becalm henchman”?
And you, Herman Cain. You could have told us that when you were CEO of Godfather’s Pizza you ran machine. Was that a pizza-making machine or a corporate syndicate?  But on the positive side, I’m glad to see you have inane charm. I gather that brand of charm is a big seller in your party. Keep working on your brand.
Ron Paul, I didn’t need an anagram generator to know that you’re an ideological anagram of Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, and Ayn Rand. Are you all from the same pod? And do you all have your earth certificates?  I’m just asking. The best real anagrams I could find for you are interesting, though: oral pun and a pol run  -- both worthy candidates for your campaign bumper stickers.
Jon Huntsman? Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here. For reasons of taste I can’t use anagrams that contain the words “nut man” and “man nuts.” It wouldn’t be right. Maybe David Letterman can do something with these in his regular “squirrels in Central Park” bit.
Rick Santorum? Tell me more about these Catkin rumours. Aren’t catkins a unisexual plant according to biologists? What’s up with that? We’ll skip the “trick” jokes and go right to foreign policy. Do you really want to start a war in Iran? What does Iran Must Rock mean?
Rick Perry, the only thing you need in your name is the letter “a.” Then you’d be Rick Prayer, and you’d have one.
Oh, Donald. Where have you gone as a nation turns its lonely eyes to you?  Bad people are saying that you’re a Damn Turd Pol and an Old Rant Dump. Why do they hate your success? Why do they hate America?
Newt Gingrich is out of it now, as you know, having resigned from his staff last week. He must have had a good time in the Greek Islands. His name spells Crew Night Gin and (later that same night?) Retching Wing. You can look it up.  
And we haven’t even begun to explore the implications of  2012 for the U.S. Congress. While the Republican side of its chambers  scores guns, the Democrats stay home and sing curse songs. No wonder nothing constructive gets done up there on the hill.
Finally we come to the Supreme Court, caught between Prohibition’s past (Prosecute Rum) and the digital future (Computer User). [Text  to self: delete anagram “up sore rectum” before publishing. Imprudent.]
We’ll anagram the Democrats next time. We’re nothing if not fair and balanced here. But remember: We don’t make up these 'grams. We just report them. You decide whether to pass them on to friends and loved ones, and to the gag and headline writers at MSNBC, Comedy Central, Letterman, O'Brien,  Poundstone, Fallon, The Onion, and MAD Magazine. Use without my permission. Attribution appreciated.
Wordplay wants to be free. Word nerds of the world unite.
Until next time, thank you Republicans for providing so many high Caliber Puns.  Too bad the Republican presidential hopefuls are such a Crab Lineup.
By the way, my name is Delay Reign (no plans to run this year), Inlaid Energy (fired up and ready to go), Realigned Yin, and Endearingly I. What’s your name in Anagramistan?

http://open.salon.com/blog/danagram 
Daniel Rigney, a.k.a. Rimshot the Sitdown Comic

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