Tuesday, May 8, 2012

What's In A Name?

Many years ago a story went around about one of my all-time favorite rado comedians. His name was Henry Morgan. His humor was droll and he got himself in trouble with his sponser, Murine eye drops.He said on the air that if you take away the first letter it spelled the contents of the product, Urine.

Much as I love words, their elasticity, itinerary and longevity, I’ve never had a fondness for anagrams. However with MITT ROMNEY and BARACK OBAMA, I make an exception.

Consider Romney’s letters as if you were stuck with them in a game of Scrabble. Right away MONEY jumps out and MORE and ME…….and TRIM, as in services and TINY as in taxes. Then there is ENMITY, REMIT and ROTTEN. Let’s not forget those two Is which might also signify the 1%. All very telling, I submit. I’m sure there are many others which I bequeath to the puzzlers.

Our POTUS, on the other hand, has embedded within, MBA (higher education), and ROCK ((as in He Rocks), If you throw in his middle name, Hussein, I see that BOHEMIAN lies within. If we add the word President, an anagram is COME PLAN BETTER IDEAS or BEST MAN POETIC LEADER. The last two come from a website submitted by folks who must labor over these things while waiting for the bus or hanging on trying to reach customer service as the company is experiencing heavy call volume…which is always.

Maybe he should have changed his name to ROCKY ALABAMA long ago to pick up a few votes from behind the enemy lines.

There is no need to rearrange the letters in anagrams, only to listen to their programs. If the ex-Governor who enjoys firing people (in order to create jobs) and hides his money abroad (It's the American way?) and whose answer to college loan debt is to borrow the money from your family… is elected it will be because the cynics stayed home and students didn’t show up; a victory for the disgraced Supreme Court having released gazillons of dollars in ads and a doleful note that the apparatus of our government is in grave disrepair. It will also be an indicator that people pay no attention to anagrams.

Why scramble the letters when they spell what is obvious? This is a contest between fairness and opportunity versus the aspiration to privilege. If Romney wins it will be from the vote of millions of mini-Mitts who think they, too, will someday own seven houses.

If he loses it will not be from the letters of his name but the hyphen between the letters of what he represents: flip-flop, off-shore and out-source.

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