Summary – an evolving list, because sometimes there are not enough words
A lawrencefox – any man who uses the occasion of a toxic divorce to show the whole world how lucky his ex-wife was to flee. Usage: “Afterwards Anne reflected that she had a narrow escape from Henry, who, it turned out, was something of a pox-ridden laurencefox.”
A mcgregor – an idiom similar to a “paper tiger”, derived from the idea of a braggadocio individual who finds it more difficult to fight trained men than to rape the defenceless. Usage: “Contemplating the impasse at the Strait of Hormuz, Netanyahu realised that Israel was now exposed as a mcgregor amongst the nations of the world.”
Musky – a quality that means, no matter how much money, a person will always be too weird and repulsive. Usage: “After everything about him came out in public, Jeffrey was just too musky even for the DUP.”
Ambrose Bierce defined politics in his Devil’s Dictionary as “The conduct of public affairs for private advantage”.
As Trump, Netanyahu and Putin continue to use this as their platonic ideal, here are a few more commonly used terms to better understand this brand of politics in the 21st Century.
Accountability — A principle once thought central to democracy, now regarded as the bad manners of social inferiors.
Betrayal — The dispatch of Caesar by his own signature methods.
Consolation — The knowledge that nits become lice.
Context — The reason a “tragic mistake” was all the enemy’s fault.
Decency — An elusive quality discovered in Caesar only after the knives have safely done their work.
Empathy — An existential threat arising from the dastardly impulses of fellow feeling and compassion.
Gullibility — A touching belief in the stories told by plutocrats.
Hypocrisy — The art of applying opposite principles with identical conviction.
Human moment — A politician’s self-pity.
Human rights — Rights universally acknowledged until someone inconvenient claims them.
Investigation — A process for discovering that a “tragic mistake” was unavoidable.
Realpolitik — A posh name for complicity in atrocities
Responsibility — An elusive quality, once thought central to professionalism, now applied only to those without sufficient privilege.
Rule of Law — An antiquated idea, dating back to Aristotle and Sophocles’ play about that loser Oedipus, that even important people should be accountable.
Self-defence — Violence committed by ourselves.
Special relationship — How vassals describe their vassalage.
Terrorism — Violence committed by the enemy.
Tragic mistake — Violence committed by ourselves against civilians after we got caught.
Wealth — The safest substitute for wisdom and expertise in policy discussions.
Wisdom — The consolation losers derive from losing. Of obsolete utility because of wealth.
Emery gets a job with an exciting new tech-condiment-start-up, Yes We Mustard, a company whose business model and CEO bear ABSOLUTELY NO RESEMBLENCE to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. Soon, her desire to be loved for saving the world and become an inspirational GIRL BOSS, leads her to investigate the mysterious “addictive fructose powder” that is being put into the company’s exciting condiment products.
Ginny Hogan’s satire is a glorious affair. With a joke rate comparable to a great Marx Brothers’ movie, she lampoons everything that crosses her path, from corporate culture (“now you can listen to your great and heroic CEO”), to faux-feminism (“when a man fires someone it’s mean, but when a woman fires someone it’s empowering”), to the eternal shallowness of men (“men don’t like her because she’s a good person. Men like her because she’s insanely hot”). Her real targets though are ignorance and selfishness – things that the ENLIGHTENED leaders of Facebook and their ilk are in no way responsible for just because their entire business models are based on their promotion.
Ginny Hogan has been an impressive stand-up for a number of years now. Based on Yes We Mustard she is also a gifted playwright. I look forward to more of both from her in the years to come.
aidanjmcquade 