Political Phrases I'm Ready to Hear Retired

So I don't want to talk (much) about Palin, mostly because she seems placed as just about the worst part of every form of conservatism that's out there, wrapped up in a neat package. It seems to me, honestly, that there's not much she could have done wrong tonight - it was an introductory speech and as long as she didn't say anything openly inflammatory, spit on anyone, or have her pants come down, it would be viewed as a success.

But I would like to call time-out on a few phrases that have been overused in the recent political memory, the first one having just crossed the threshold for me tonight:

• "hockey moms"
• "NASCAR dads"
• "red meat"

And while we're at it, let's stop mentioning the importance of the women vote. If people can't figure out that 50 percent of the population is an important group to appeal to, nothing a commentator can say is going to make them realize it. That was, as I understand it, one of the outcomes of that whole suffrage thing.

Okay? Okay.

Scabs

No, this isn't a post about the John Stewart/Steven Colbert/Jay Leno Working While There's a Writer's Strike kind, but the sort you find yourself picking at.

I was wondering, earlier today, about whether there was a cyclical nature to the blogging world: the circle of blogging complaint, if you will. Or maybe some sort of bizarre social convention I don't get, like not wearing white after Labor Day, that tells us secretly not to complain about job-market stuff during certain times of the year. Shouldn't there be an academic version of a groundhog, after all, that tells us it's six more months of the winter of our discontent? I'm temporarily passing on the joke about it being a grad student seeing their advisor's shadow, but it's only because I don't want any grad students reading this to feel compared to a rodent.

I just recently received the rejection letter from the job I knew (but didn't KNOW) I'd been rejected for. It arrived months after I'd been told I'd hear, and I'm sitting here tonight reading it over and over again while looking outside at the icy streets outside. And I'm attaching the phrase "long distance" to all sorts of atypical things to see if the taste of it ruins: "long distance Christmas," "long distance great uncle," "long distance debt consolidation." So far, I haven't found a phrase that is made truly better by its addition.

We're in the beginning stages of our candidate searches here, and after having only read some letters and seen a teaching demonstration, I think I may be at odds with my department. Maybe it's because I hate the touchy-feely (and have ever since 9th grade when my English teacher thought making us sit on the floor Indian-style would make us more responsive to each other's writing (it didn't - 9th grade poetry is bad no matter where you sit). And I hate teaching by buzz-word as much as I hated making policy by buzz-word in the corporate world. So a teaching demonstration where I'm fairly certain I didn't see the person teaching actually do anything but put the students into groups and let them argue over whose clumsy use of a concept was the least offensive leaves me a little cold. Yes, yes, "active integrative" blah blah.

I'd be completely growly but "Sad Professor" by R.E.M. just came on the MP3 player, and you can only laugh at that kind of musical irony.