When J Street cries “McCarthyism”

Dear Dr. Bones,

Paddy and I would be happy enough not to see McC*rthyism get the neo- treatment. ’Tis a word that always leaps off the page at us for, I presume, the same reason a certain distinguished Hyperzionist (whose name and other more detailed distinctions I have long since misfiled) complained of continually gettin’ distracted by irrelevent rubbish about jewelry.[0]

From the broader Mac-and-O perspective, ‘McCarthyism’ is a pretty stiff test of the theory that any publicity is good publicity. Imagine how the present resplendently freemighty lord, Jasnie Wolnomocny Pan, would feel if resurrected in a century or two an’ brought back to find "radoshchina" in the latest OED defined as ... lemme see ... ah, here it is: "words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim, or even a refutation has been communicated." [1]

Happy days. (¡Only two more shopping days!)
--McC


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[0] Paddy is not troubled so much by the Jay Street homophony, though he says he *does* sometimes feels about rice the way thin-skinned Greatest Demographics™ feel about diamonds an’ rubies an’ zirconia &c. &c.


[1] I suspect Big LEW’s Anglophone scribbler learned about ‘self-referentiality’ in an Eng. Lit. course and is still working the bugs out of his hang of it.