An Introductory Conservative Internet Lexicon

Exclusive commentary by Greg Lewis / WashingtonDispatch.com
December 10, 2003

It's getting so, these days, you can't tell the players without a scorecard, especially if you're surfing conservative websites and blogs. And so, in the interest of furthering your understanding of what's going on on the web, where free speech is actually honored (as opposed to the big three nightly newscasts, which still operate under rules adapted from the Kremlin during the Cold War — that is, before Ronald Reagan almost single-handedly and over the babble of liberal naysayers saw to the overthrow of the Soviet communist government) here is a brief lexicon of terms and acronyms you're likely to encounter when, to quote the late newscaster John Cameron Swayze, you're "hopscotching the world for headlines." This list doesn't pretend to be complete, but it may help you get your bearings.

Angry Left: Name applied to Democrats and other left/liberal Bush-hating types by several commentators, including James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" and yours truly in commentaries on this website. Others, expanding on the "anger" idea but with just a shade less civility of tone, have described this same group as Pissed-Off Pedophiles, Cranky Commies, and Irate Idiots, presumably in deference to the values and behavior they condone and the intelligence level they exhibit.

Bent Willie: Nickname for former President William Jefferson Clinton.

DisneyPervLand, DisneyPervWorld: The theme parks formerly known as Disneyland and DisneyWorld respectively. These new names have been applied by those contributing commentary to blogs in response to Disney's continuing support of homosexuality, wholesale violence, murder, rape, and immorality, based on a review of the company's 2003 productions, including this holiday season's "Bad Santa," featuring bad apples Billy Bob Thornton and Bernie Mac. The recent resignation of Roy Disney, possibly the last bastion of morality in the company, and his call to Michael Eisner to resign, underscore the degree to which Disney has strayed from its roots, which, under its founder, were decidedly more conservative and moral than they are today.

Dog and Phony Show: The Clinton Administration. Hillary's tenure as U.S. Senator certainly is an extension of this phenomenon, which is characterized by the Clintons' (and liberals' in general) inability to correctly suss out the American political climate — which is decidedly more conservative than they can realize — and their trying instead to foist a leftist agenda on American citizens. From her recent highly politicized visit to Afghanistan (she used the occasion to denigrate the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror and thus to implicitly undermine the mission of the very troops she was visiting) to her alleged refusal to be photographed with truly sick children when she staged a hospital visit last January, Hillary has kept up not only the "dog" part of the equation but has taken over her husband's primary role as the "phony," too. Bottom line, with apologies to Paul "Bear" Bryant: This dog can't hunt.

Fisk: A transitive verb formed from Robert Fisk's name which means to indulge in critical, guilt-ridden self-examination; often generalized to refer to over-critical or over-analytical commentary of any kind. Robert Fisk is a journalist, and the use of his name in this way derives from his pathetically whining description of his own beating at the hands of Afghanis (he incorrectly refers to them as Afghans, a "mistake" frequently made by media types, although they excoriated President Bush when he made the same "mistake"), some of which I quote here: "[T]he first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find." It was Fisk, also, who perpetrated the lie that "thousands" of Afghanis had died at the hands of U.S. forces during the liberation of Afghanistan. Many conservatives agree that, in fact, Fisk got what he deserved, though not for the reasons he cites.

Judeophobia: A "shape-shifting virus" which often takes the form of anti-Semitism in the name of anti-Zionism (thanks to writer Julie Burchill of the Guardian). You see, those on the left, in their hatred of the state of Israel, try to couch their intolerance under the umbrella of "anti-Zionism," of which they approve, since "Zionism" is presented as the radical and unapologetic pursuit of the right of Israel to exist, which the Left certainly denies, though they publicly declare otherwise. Judeophobia is the reverse side of the pro-Palestine coin, which asserts, with some variation, that we should support a terrorist nation-wannabee led by one of the world's most odious terrorists, Yasser Arafat, as it perpetrates acts of terror on Israel in the attempt to drive that nation "into the sea."

Nine Dwarves, The: One of the more polite names for the current group of Democratic Presidential "hopefuls."

PIAPS: This acronym stands for "Pig In a Pants Suit," and it is a code name for Hillary Clinton. It's the invention of Don and Chris MacAskill, a father and son team who started the website Smugmug about a year ago partly in order to inform and entertain web-surfers looking for graphic insights into world issues. Their gloss on Hillary — "I can't stand this woman. Enough said." — proves that conservatives are human after all and not afraid to get angry where the anger is truly justifiable, as is most decidedly the case with Hillary Clinton.

ROP (Religion of Peace) and ROPMA (Religion of Peace, My Ass): Acronyms, the first ironic, the second a bit more direct, for Islam. Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs often puts the TradeMark (™) symbol at the end of these acronyms in order, I'm guessing, to emphasize the fact that they're part of the current iteration of The Big Lie, in this case the utter untruths perpetuated about Islam's being the aforementioned religion of peace. Kenneth R. Timmerman's book, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, lays out in very clear terms exactly why Islam is anything but a religion of peace and why America is fighting an enemy that is waging religious war against us, though it is impolitic to admit it. Continuing to publicly identify Islam as the ROP is one instance of conservatives', following the lead of the Bush administration, allowing political correctness to cloud our vision of international terrorism and the threat it poses for America.

Wad, The: Another of the descriptive names for the Democratic Presidential hopefuls, this one based on Norman Mailer's use of the term to describe the "masses" in one of his early unreadable tomes.

Happy surfing!