Every few years a catchphrase enters the public consciousness and erupts into a fad, then it fades away, leaving behind only an empty husk, no longer useable in any sense but the sardonic. Perhaps we can offer those sad, abused, beat-up words our compassion, fluff their pillows, bring them chicken soup. Maybe they’ll recover and regain their rightful place in the dictionary. For now they’re too sick to get up.
Dude
I’d throw away my sweater, and dress up like a dude, In a dicky and a collar and a tie.
There was a time when “dude” referred to a he-man or country boy who went for the city slicker look, thus Billy Bigelow imagining his lovesick self in Carousel. An expansion followed: dude ranch, a retreat for city folks to play cowboy. Where would George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy be without its dude ranch setting? Ira Gershwin never wrote funnier lyrics than the glorious put-down of a city-boy swain by a bonafide ranch girl:
There’s a chap I know in Mexico,
Who’s as strong as he can be.
Eating nails and drinking Texaco,
He is the type for me.
Then she moves in for the kill:
No night life for you;
The birds would bore you;
The cows won’t know you;
A horse would throw you;
You silly man, you,
To ask me, “Can you use me?”
Poor dude. Now it’s just a comic word, a meaningless burble uttered by morons who have nothing better to do with their lives but glide around suburban parking lots on their skateboards.
Fail
We are in the midst of a heartbreaking tragedy in which an innocent English word has been morphologically castrated by careless fad usage. A not-so-friendly reminder: “fail” is a verb, dammit. The noun is “failure.” And I’m particularly sick and tired of hearing incoherence coupled to meaningless hyperbole in the silly phrase “epic fail.” Please. Stop whacking. It’s dead.
Whatever
I’m relieved that this particular nonce epithet has faded away. As an expression of adolescent silliness, it had its place and time. “Oh, whatever,” she bleated, as usual mistaking petulance for sophistication.
I did hear “whatever” used to marvelous effect once, in its after-the-fall comic sense. In the Disney movie “Aladdin”, the evil Jaffar keeps referring to the disguised Aladdin as Prince Alibooboo. Aladdin chirps up with a correction: “that’s AliBabWAH” and Jaffar waves him away with an impatient “Whatever.” But that was clearly whatever‘s swan song. Anything familiar enough for a Disney joke is long past its expiration date.
Read My Lips, KISS
How amusing that a fundamentally gentle man was the source of two in-your-face, downright mouthy catchphrases. I seriously doubt that George H. W. Bush would have used them on his own volition, but his political handlers were making a game attempt to toughen him up. So he started making like John Wayne crossed with a Bronx stand-up comedian. Keep It Simple, Stupid, Read My Lips!
Both of those little phrases were doomed to a short lifespan; they were just too snarky to last long. And coming out of Bush Senior they sounded like Mr. Peepers on a rampage.
Have a Nice Day
This one started out sincere, at least for a cynical, blatant, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing marketing slogan. But it became an expression of contempt awfully quickly. I wonder if anybody has written a study on “day” phrases: That’ll be the day, Make my day, Have a nice day, Bad hair day.
Hey, dude. I better sign off before this article turns into an epic fail. Have a nice day!
Whatever.