The word that won't die

There's that infernal word again:

Shellacking (shuh-lak-ing) noun [Slang] 1. an utter defeat. 2. a sound thrashing.

Having complained (tongue-in-cheek) about the media overuse of “shellacking” last winter, I picked up my marbles and moved on. The media, evidently, have not. I was minding my own business while perusing the New York Times yesterday when I spied an editorial headline about German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her political party just lost big-time in the Deutschland's version of our midterm elections. The headline read: “Chancellor Merkel’s Shellacking.”

Ay Caramba. The press just. won’t. let. go. You can blame Mr. Obama (sort of). On Nov. 6, 2010, the “morning after” the big GOP win in the midterm elections, the president said: “You know, this is something that I think every president needs to go through ... we lose track of the ways we connected with folks that got us here in the first place. ... I'm not recommending [that every] future president ... take a shellacking like I did last night. (LAUGHTER) I'm sure there are easier ways to learn these lessons. (LAUGHTER)"

Actually, Obama was being refreshingly honest, and funny. But he unwittingly handed the hype-happy media the perfect crayon to fill in their coloring book narrative: the vanquished president – now a one-termer for sure – is doomed and his “audacity of hope” has been consigned to history’s ash heap (as captured by the then popular photo – see above – of our “shellacked” commander in chief). The press narrative was utterly wrong, of course. (Two months later, Obama rose from the dead, Jesus-like, when he spearheaded the “most productive” lame duck congressional session since the Constitutional Convention. Overnight, the press was like all “Hail the Conquering Hero.” But never mind.) Anyway, we readers have been taking a shellacking by the word “shellacking” ever since, thanks to our lemming-like press.

It would be nice if “shellacking” was the sole cliché in vogue. But thanks to the "Thrilla from Wassila," we have multiple overused phrases to choose from. During her remarks at a Colorado airport hangar just prior to Election Day, Ms. Palin said, for the very first time, that Mr. Obama was “Palling Around With Terrorists.” It was the sound bite heard 'round the world – as the press keeps reminding us. And I'll just skip by the media's constant use of Charlie Sheen’s head-banging catchphrase: “winning.”

Though the great novelist Herman Melville once said that "it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation," the press manages to fall short in both.