The Word on "Turd Blossom" - The Redolent Gaseous Effluvia of the "Boy Genius"
By Dr. Gerry Lower
Jul 20, 2005, 21:57

Do an innocent Google search for the term "Turd Blossom" and you will be treated to 61,500 results, literally page after page, with not a thing about "turd blossoms." No, its all about Karl Rove. The implications of this outcome are not good when America's favorite search engine can't come up with word definitions because it can't get around all the references to Karl Rove.

That term, "Turd Blossom," of course, is not some liberal putdown, but the "affectionate" nickname coined by George W. Bush in referring to his left brain and chief political strategist, his Karl. Helen Thomas traced the origins of the term to "several years ago when he [Rove] started getting accolades from political writers as the mastermind behind Bush ... the president is known to have bristled."

According to Thomas, Bush "once told a journalist that he did not like his aides getting 'star treatment.' So, he started calling Rove 'Turd Blossom.'" Thomas suggested that the term "refers to the so-called cowpie splat made by bovine waste when it hits the ground"

Those who lack honest and intelligent comprehension typically make their sales through glad-handing, with one hand over your shoulder and the other hand down in your pants, Bush's signature approach. Adding insult to injury, Bush tops that off by being jokingly self-deprecating. He doesn't mean it at all, of course. After all, he is the "war president." But, as a result, when being upstaged or criticized, Bush has no problems with deprecating others. It runs in the family.

The Bush administration's relationships with the English language and with empirical reality, however, are not only mindless but legendarily so. Cheney announces that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." Rove rewrites history by announcing that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." It makes one's head spin, but then that is what "spin" is designed to do, so that the people stick with the party line. It is the Rovian basis for government of, by and for the people.

In other words, one can never be sure just what the Bush administration means because it so seldom knows what it is talking about, because its outreach is so full of conjecture and concoction. As a direct result, the Bush administration seldom knows what it is doing (Eugene Robinson, Syntax, Disassembled, Washington Post, July 12, 2005) (2). Theses people are, after all, not experienced diplomats and learned statesmen, but more a conspiracy of businessmen trying to make a sale.

Bloggers and columnists alike have attempted to more precisely define Bush's oxymoronic term for Rove. One suggested that "the use of Mr. Rove's nickname is probably due to his [Rove's] ability to make something very unappetizing (cow patties) into something attractive (a flower)" (Dick Brandlon, Lotus Media, July 13, 2005) (3). Julian Borger, with the Guardian, suggested that a turd blossom is "a Texanism for a flower that blooms from cattle excrement"