Every year sees new words coined and old ones gaining new meaning. The Guardian’s Rafael Behr decodes some of the key terms of 2010 with a bit of tongue and cheek humor. Opinione has put an American spin on some of the buzz words for 2010.
Austerity – Sanctimonious meanness. Budget cuts for social security, education, and health care while the Pentagon gets yearly budget increases.
Blowout preventer – Device on deepwater oil rigs that, confusingly, doesn't prevent blowouts. Something the democratic party was not able to deploy in the 2010 mid term election.
Bondage – The sado-masochistic relationship between financial markets and European economies. The relationship between despotic Middle Eastern regimes, perpetual war and America’s love affair with gas guzzling cars.
Cable – Any communication that is supposed to be private but ends up embarrassingly public.
Debt – A curse and a blight, except when incurred by students to pay university tuition fees, in which context it is an opportunity and an engine of social mobility. Disastrous for any other country with a high public debt to GDP ratio except the United States.
Deficit – An excuse to do anything really out of order, eg: "Yes, I did spill red wine on your new white carpet, but what you must remember is that Labour left that carpet with a deficit of red wine; my spillage was the only responsible course of action." While the Bush administration and a GOP Congress increased the public debt by 6 trillion dollars between 2001 and 2008, Obama and the dems are given the blame by a media that favors the wealthy status quo.
Election – Reality show for unattractive people in which members of the audience only get one vote. Something that only a minority of Americans are distracted by every two years.
iPad – A very big phone that doesn't make phone calls.
Kindle – A device that enables you to not read books you have bought without feeling guilty, since you can't see them lying around unopened.
Obama – A unit of time defined by the period that elapses between first experiencing the hope that things will change and then realizing that they won't. An American politician no different than George W Bush.
Phone-tapping – A malicious practice employed by scurrilous journalists and wholly unknown to Andy Coulson, Downing Street head of communications, and formerly editor of the News of the World. Something the NSA and other American government agencies routinely do on unsuspecting Americans in violation of the US Constitution.
Pledge – A meaningless phrase, a chat-up line based on feigned sincerity; a vow that dissolves on entry into a "coalition". An empty phrase that the republican party has replaced with the word contract.
Progressive – A decorative word with no specific meaning, applied to government policies to make them sound nicer; artificial sweetener used to disguise the taste of disgusting medicine. A word that is used by Glen Beck and other agents of the status quo who equate it with socialism, Communism, and Hitler.
Protest – What angry lovers do when they realize they've been spun a "pledge". Something that Americans have no ability to do.
QE2 – quantitative easing: the sequel, starring US federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in which the heroes of QE1 get together for another rollercoaster adventure in monetary policy. A euphemism for the printing of money.
Royal Wedding – A ritual that can be used very occasionally to promote "middletons" to higher social status. An event held in Great Britain to remind Americans why they revolted against the British Empire.
Scrounger – Person whose lifestyle is supported by the state, with the exception of MPs and royalty. An American employee of a private security corporation like Blackwater, DynCorp, Vinnell, KBR, General Dynamics, CSC, SAIC, etc……
Tweet – Noise made by a bird; nice surprise for Jonathan Ross. A text version of Facebook that has not been used by disenfranchised American voters to social mobilize and overthrow an increasingly corrupt government.
Wiki – A prefix applied to mundane objects or actions to give them a veneer of hi-tech subversive credibility. A four letter word that US government employees are no longer allowed to say or think about.
Youth – An affliction that makes people strangely susceptible to "pledges" and "protest".
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