I'm guilty, too.
Last Spring, I had just hired Ashley Herzog (featured above) for her first round of being a Post columnist (I was the associate editor at the time). Columnists are supposed to have a name for their columns, but Herzog was having a hard time coming up with one. So, because I knew she was planning to write from a center-right position, I suggested Turn Right. I guess I thought it was pretty clever.
Hence, I too am guilty of perpetuating the most annoying double meaning in politics ' right and Right.
English is a funny language. It has millions of words, yet many of them can mean a great many things. Right doesn't just mean correct ' it is also a direction, a legal guarantee and a description of a political ideology. Conservatives love this handy coincidence and exploit it whenever they get the chance ' undoubtedly toasting to their own brilliance for discovering this life-affirming linguistic confirmation of belief.
Human Events, a conservative magazine that employs Ann Coulter as a legal affairs correspondent, features a blog called The Right Angle (clarified as a right-wing blog ' oh, now I understand) and Views From the Right on its Web site. Not only are Human Events writers Right, they are also right.
Books come out all the time using that play-on-words, often overemphasizing the word right on the cover to hammer home the difficult connection. There is one called The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America
written by Economist writers about the decades-long conservative electoral ascendancy. Another is called Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today written by the president of the Heritage Foundation, a paleo-conservative think tank, and the chairman of right-wing news dump Townhall.com. Clever, isn't it?
Perhaps the worst example of the Right's infatuation with being right is a band called The Right Brothers (Get it? They are both Right and G? never mind). In a song called Bush was Right (actually about how Bush was correct, not how he has lost his Conservative Values), the group belts out complex lyrics such as Ted Kennedy wrong! Cindy Sheehan wrong! FranceG? WRONG! Zell Miller ' right! while also claiming that the economy is kicking into overdrive thanks to Bush's tax cuts and that the president's unpredictable foreign policy has Middle Eastern leaders fearing a domino effect.
The song's assertions are all tied together by a guitar riff that sounds just like a nah-nah-nah-nah-naaaah-nah taunt. An ad from the Web site RightMarch.com (you see, what the site is trying to accomplish with the word right is twofold G?) is using the song to help Teach American Youth the TRUTH ' With Music!
Needless to say, The Right Brothers do little to dispel the stereotype that red-meat conservatives don't know a damn thing about art.
The true extent of the political conspiracy perpetuated by the word right only becomes evident when we look at the word left. While right is commonly used to indicate inclusiveness and correctness, left indicates abandonment ' one has to wonder if the president's No Child Left Behind program was a thinly veiled political attack on liberals (there had to be some reason for passing it).
Good people fight for their rights ' bad people have left for Canada. Before they were grossly overpaid to be ineffective major league relief pitchers, left-handers were ostracized as godless freaks ' just like left-wingers are today. Right-wingers only now control all three branches of government in Washington and Columbus, but they've owned the English language forever.
The only way for liberals to fight back is to do what they always do ' reclaim the word. Lefties can orchestrate linguistic attacks on Righties ' Washington: Where Right is wrong or the Right needs to be Left Behind. Conservative Liberals like former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner can appeal to white male NASCAR voters by claiming that Right has never been right ' a phrase that can probably be interpreted in at least four different ways, but at the very least indicates that the Right is incorrect and that the Right isn't as Right as it claims to be.
Right?
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Kyle Kondik
