Friday, September 14, 2012

Quickie: "Double Down" No Longer Quite Enough For Washington Post

After all the goodwill generated by my exposé on the overuse of variations of the phrase double down by hacky political bloggers and journalists, Jason Horowitz at the Washington Post decided the phrase just didn't quite provide enough emphasis. "Romney and his advisers," he writes, "are tripling down on the clear contrasts offered by neoconservatism's trumpeting of values." Now that's some awesome writing!

12 comments:

Fran said...

Me? I'm zeroing up at this point. After all, I always was a bit oppositional

Jim said...

Man, ever since you pointed out the doubling down thing I have been seeing it literally* everywhere. It is maddening.

* in the biden sense

LIBear said...

I think that it's time to google down on our use of alliterative idioms, even if they are no longer alliterative.

Matthew Hubbard said...

"Tripling down" is not allowed in blackjack.

On a slightly positive note, the Dreaded Phrase has vanished from the front pages of both Talking Points Memo and The Huffington Thing over the past few days. Hard to say if it's a blip or a trend.

The Cat's Meow said...

I must be reading the wrong things. I'm still seeing it.

Peteykins said...

I did email TPM to point out their overuse of the phrase, and I've had very agreeable emails back and forth with Josh Marshall before, but they didn't answer this complaint. We'll see. I really do think TPM initiated the overuse of "double down."

Huffington Thing? They would never notice somebody like me. Ever.

Jim said...

Are you sure it wasn't Clinton's speech that initiated all this ("double down on trickle down")? Seems like a whole lot of sightings after Sept. 5. Or did he pick it up from somewhere else?

Peteykins said...

No, TPM has been relentlessly overusing the phrase for well over a year.

Matthew Hubbard said...

Yes, now it's escalated to "tripling down", completely meaningless as this ex-gambler will tell you.

And in unrelated but equally depressing news, Huffington Thing was NOT shamed out of the use of the word "sideboob" by Jon Stewart's brilliant nickname "Sideboob Gazette".

If someone with as much clout as Stewart has can't stop allegedly left-wing sites from jackassery, I have little hope for even The Paragon Of Bloggers™ to effect meaningful and necessary change.

p.s. I came up with the trademark, but I am obviously not speaking about myself. D'uh!

Anonymous said...

Time to cut to the chase and Infinity Down®.

Anonymous said...

That's because news organizations like Washington Post can't write "ramming it up everyone's ass" so they resort to "tripling down."

Karen Zipdrive said...

I think his campaign staff are doubling down on their Kinko's expenditures for copies of new resumes.
If I was his staff spin doctor, I believe my head would explode, then I'd go into some witness protection program before the Feds bust in.