Madden Mischief

Harriet, help!  We’re surrounded by them, sometimes honoring, uplifting and memorializing us, other times ridiculing and demeaning us, making slapstick fun or kicking us in the butt. 

Then we have those inciteful suggestions from on high, The Fight House, (used to be The White House) to keep Trump in your “crosshairs” and “bull’s-eyes,” rhetoric which now must cease after it inspired a creepy Crooks to leave a fearless leader nearly earless. Now with Biden dropping out, will epithets become better or worse.

Ebullient epithets range from the heights of Catherine the Great and Elvis the King to detestable depths of “Piggy,” which deprecating descriptive bullies gave to a short, stocky character in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

We use epithets to exalt homerun hitters like “Babe Ruth,” the “Bambino,” or to disparage those pitiful weaklings who stupidly strike out and make us lose bets. 

A couple centuries ago in the deep South, obsequious blacks serving high and mighty landowners inherited the epithet “Uncle Tom.”  The derogatory term describes a man overly subservient to his master.

This was before the civil war ended that ignominy known as slavery. But the pejorative still pops up or shoots out occasionally at us. 

I’m oddly sensitive to Uncle Tom. Though I’m a white guy who deplores bigotry and racism, it still hits too close to home as my first name is Tom and yes, I’m an uncle. 

Thankfully Tiya, my only niece, is tiyatactful. The daughter of my late brother Don, who was one of Hefner’s favorite Playboy cartoonists, brushes over the uncle part when she talks to me, so I hardly ever hear it hooked to my ubiquitous first name.

Then there are those noble and redeeming epithets, “The Great Emancipator” that helped elect Abraham Lincoln President.  And the book by Harriet Beecher Stowe (pictured above) “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that sold over a million copies, helping to fire up the civil war, catapulting Lincoln to one of our greatest leaders. 

It’s too bad today that disparaging and ridiculing epithets may be inciting impressionable citizens during this current, exceptionally vehement presidential election season that may have provoked the attempt on a former President’s life. 

Today we have the hard Right branding adversaries “sick, twisted, unhinged radicals,” while some on the Left dub the Right “fascists” not just seeking to win but conquer, meet out retribution and undemocratize America. 

Then in that raunchy first showdown debate Biden bashes Trump for having the “morals of an alley cat,” while Trump degrades Biden’s moniker from “sleepy Joe” down to “crooked Joe,” now “senile Joe.”  At this rate, to what epithetic depths can our country sink? 

Now one of the major targets exits the race, to many sadly.

Can we now have a moment of rhetorical peace that just concentrates on issues,
not personalities?

Fellow Americans let’s put epithets themselves into bullseyes, when they’ll only provoke more crazy Crooks to wicked attempts to assassinate.  Hopefully now both sides of the political spectrum will cool down the rhetoric. 

How about stuffing those derogative terms into the freezer at least until after this  election? 

Fat chance of that happening, I’m afraid, as we heard two climactic speeches the other night in Milwaukee, one from the unifying teleprompter, the other back to a feisty spirit reignited.

No, unfortunately epithets are here to stay.  They’ll be after us, chasing us, seeking to define us for better or worse, but I’ve had it.  I’m not running or hiding from them anymore. 

No sir! In fact, I’m even thinking of adopting one.  I’m considering changing the name of my weekly blog from MaddenMischief to the Insightful Impressions of    . . . Madden “the Great.”

Beside TransMedia Group, the PR firm he founded when he left NBC, and today runs with his resourceful daughter Adrienne Mazzone, Tom Madden is an author whose latest book is Planetary Lifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change. He’s also proud to be an American, for the one thing you can say about the United States of America, it’s never dull.