...in the future, when this becomes another Phrase of the Year or somesuch, and Merriam-Webster won't return my emails when they claim no one knows where it came from, I want this here as Exhibit A.
I've learned my lesson.
After all, if I'm going to be blamed for the End of Civilization, I might as well enjoy some of the perks of extreme micro-celebrity before they gibbet me.
As some few of you know, almost 20 years ago I coined into our political lexicon one of the most widely used and abused phrases in the media's political vocabulary. A phrase that not only made it all the way into the dictionary, but was 2016's "Word of the Year".
I have since learned that the juxtaposition of these two words also occurred in a review of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" a few years earlier. I never read it or heard it, so I still feel confident about independently conjuring that phrase into a political context and adding it to the lexicon of driftglass-isms that I regularly used on this blog.
From HuffPo:
Where does dumpster-fire-as-insult really come from? Even when we can’t isolate an inventor (as we can with the use of "Santorum" for ... just Google it), it’s often possible to narrow the field to a culture or subculture. Mainstream white culture notoriously appropriates lots of slang from African American Vernacular English (see: yasss queen, throwing shade, ratchet, basic), thereby immediately stripping said slang of its cool factor.
Dumpster fire’s origins remain rather nebulous. The article Sherwood found seems fairly representative of many early uses: It’s about pop culture. One of the earliest Urban Dictionary definitions of the phrase, from 2008, specifies: "In entertainment or sports, a laughably poor performance." Other early examples show up in voicey political blogs, like this 2006 screed about the Republican Party’s ethical scandals.
The most likely subcultural culprit, though, is the sports world. Linguist Mark Liberman, who works at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent blog post, "A few years ago, I noticed hosts and callers on sports talk radio using the phrase 'dumpster fire' as a metaphor for chaotically bad situations." He noted that the term had "spread to other domains," but he fingers sports as the origin point.
That "2006 screed"?
That's me.
Actually,
I've coined a lot of words and phrases and metaphors over the
years, like "Republicans stand on the Overpass of History lobbing cinder blocks into
traffic."
I even wrote a post about it once upon a time :-)
Coinage
The 10th blogiversary fundraiser continues with the Town Hall Year of 2010.
As it turned out, over the last 10 years, I not only had fun with music and poems and writing and graphics and podcasting, but I also coined a lot of terms, most of which didn't stick.
Still, as long as I'm amused :-)
There was Christopath.
David Brooks: The Plutocrat's Beat Poet
Rovine spongiform encephalopathy ™ (Wherein the Rove mindset continues to eat the brain right out of Conservatism's collective skull, while everyone agrees that Karl Rove specifically and Conservatives generally will never be asked any hard questions about anything because the past is stinky and dark and nobody really knows what happened anyway.)
Burning Man for Birchers.
Half Fox and Half Free.
And Strategic Forgettery among many others.
I mentioned in an entirely different post back in the Before Time that...
Some people might say that in a world overflowing with really shitty and wildly overcompensated writers, it's kinda odd that in all the years I have been at this I have never been so much as offered any kind of paid writing gig anywhere.Yes, some people might indeed say that :-)
But, OK. I get it. These are tough times for writers, especially political and media writers. Journalists are being laid off by the job lot. Local newspapers are being stripped for parts by ruthless hedge fund plunderers. In this world of media austerity and belt-tightening there just aren't any nickels left over for hiring new writers to say new things.
Except, of course, for the dozens and dozens of recently-former Republicans who have completely colonized cable teevee.
And except for recently-former RNC chairs and coup-plotters.
But other than that, there is just no slack in the budget.
OK. I get it.
But if no coin or plaudits are coming my way for conjuring the phrase, I'm sure as hell not going to take the brickbats and the heat for triggering the End Times.
Fuck that.
Like Einstein, I gave y'all a lockpick to open a doorway into a greater understanding of the universe.
Not my fault if irresponsible parties use it to terminate civilization.
You're welcome.