Bush/Cheney ‘08
Today is Thursday, and on Thursdays I have no class. So, I was sitting here at the computer and I thought, “Huh, I should get some Bush/Cheney ‘08 bumper stickers. You know, as a joke.” As I was Googling, I found the following on Robert Maldon’s blog:
Laughter followed shortly thereafter. If you don’t get it, let me try to explain why I think it’s funny. Essentially, it has the tone (as is common of a broad genre of bumper stickers) of “Hey X, if you don’t like Y, go fuck yourself!” Perhaps less aggressively, the second part is expected at least to be an antagonistic phrase.
In this exhibit, we have the compound subject “BUSH CHENEY ‘08″ being used as the antagonizing exclamation. Where normally we would expect to find a progressive participle used as the subject, we have here, instead, a political regime being used as though it should be a progressive participle. That is, we would expect to see bumper stickers of the following type:
- “Hey hippies, how about a little working?”
- “Hey fatty, how about a little dieting?”
- And so forth, ad infinitum.
But here, the sticker makes a compound verb out of the phrase “Bush Cheney ‘08,” like:
“Dude, you better watch your mouth about my mother, or I’m going to Bush Cheney ‘08 your ass.”
The Bush Cheney regime of course being one characterized by brutish aggression, pig-headed narcissism, and an utter lack of diplomatic eloquence.