I can’t stop playing with the New York Times’s interactive GOP convention word cloud. (It’s much better—and far more complete—than National Journal’s, which I mentioned in an earlier post.) The fun lies in entering a word or phrase that seems very pas devant les infants—i.e., an animating obsession of today’s GOP that the Romney folks didn’t want paraded in front of the general public in prime time during convention week—and finding out how seldom it came up in convention speeches. Please keep in mind that the Times widget’s search engine is quite literal, and that while several of the topics below were discussed, I can’t be expected to remember and input every last euphemism.
Abortion: 0.
Pro-choice: 0.
Pro-life: 0.
Homosexual: 0.
Gay: 0.
Marriage: 11.
Civil union: 0.
Values: 33.
Traditional values: 0.
Job creator: 2.
Incentive or incentivize: 0.
Legitimate rape, forcible rape, or rape: 0.
United Nations: 0.
Custer: 0.
Platform: 0. (!)
Federal Reserve or Fed: 2.
Bernanke: 0.
Free enterprise: 15.
Socialist or socialism: 0.
Strangle innovation: 0.
Suffocate: 0.
Central planners: 1.
Gun, rifle, weapon, or firearm: 3.
Second amendment: 0.
Rich: 7.
Poor: 12.
Poverty: 14.
Welfare: 13.
Dole: 1.
Dependency: 7.
Pathology: 0.
Class warfare: 1.
Voter ID or identification: 0.
Voter fraud: 0.
Sunday or weekend voting: 0.
Mainstream media: 1.
Media bias: 0.
Lamestream media: 0.
Cultural elite: 0.
Snob: 0.
Effete: 0.
Real America: 0.
Sarah Palin: 0.
There were also some words that have been in the news lately. I wondered about those, too.
Syria: 3.
Afghanistan: 4.
Iraq: 7.
European Union: 0.
Europe: 6.
Euro or Eurozone: 0.
Inequality: 1.
Global warming or climate change: 0.
Private equity: 3.
Wall Street: 2.
Bank or banks: 5.
On to Charlotte.