Democrat Party II

Have you ever seen an atheist write the word “Christian” as “Xtian”? When called on this, he will usually feign innocence and explain that he meant no disrespect—that “X” as an abbreviation for “Christ” is a centuries-old tradition, blah, blah, blah. In reality, everyone knows that he uses this convention to express his contempt for and make a subtle dig at a religion in which he finds disfavor. I find expressions of “It’s just a minor grammar error” in reference to the construction “Democrat Party” to be similarly disingenuous.

There is, in fact, a long history of using this term as a little insult. GOP wordsmiths Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich have urged their fellow partisans to put this mean little term into general usage. There is much to document this phenomenon:

“There’s no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. ‘Democrat Party’ is a slur, or intended to be—a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but ‘Democrat Party’ is jarring verging on ugly.”
Hendrik Hertzberg
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg

“[I]t's rude to call people by a term that makes them bristle, even a seemingly innocuous one. There's also something grating and coarse-sounding about this abbreviated appellation, like saying ‘Jew’ instead of ‘Jewish’ It is, conservative wordsmith William F. Buckley wrote in National Review in 2002, ‘offensive to the ear.’”
Ruth Marcus
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101223.html

“I go back and forth sometimes on usage, try to stick with Democratic Party, but I’ll shorten it to Democrat if it helps me make a stinging point.”
Philip Bryan, Communications Director, Alabama Republican Party
http://www2.oanow.com/oan/OAN_Political_Blog/comments/the_problem_of_ic/29484/

“[T]he adjective Democratic is used in its official name, the Democratic Party. Democrat as an adjective is still sometimes used by some twentieth-century Republicans as a campaign tool but was used with particular virulence by the late senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican who sought by repeatedly calling it the Democrat party to deny it any possible benefit of the suggestion that it might also be democratic.”
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
http://books.google.com/books?id=L2ChiO2yEZ0C&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=%22Columbia+Guide+to+Standard+American+English%22+%22Democrat+as+an+adjective%22&source=bl&ots=hxxsW7dAa9&sig=71GZnCUmyH_MPW-KTvtegbp8Jps&hl=en&ei=LfeES8vGHZGENvzMqDU&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

You can embrace or eschew snide, snarky language as you choose. You can label my earlier 284-word post as a “dissertation” and an example of “over-the-top outrage” (I maintain that they are neither). But please do not indulge in the fake-innocent “who me?” pretense that it was just an innocent little slip. We both know better.