Back in college/HS we used to note that you could tell the intellectual/druggie/monthy python/lefty (bohemian) crowd from the jocks (future republicans and car dealers) by the adjective they used to describe an out of ordinary experience.

For the stoners it was 'intense', as in "Man, that was intense!"

For the jocks it was 'awesome', (ditto)

These adjectives nicely capture the differences in how these 2 groups experienced life. The word intense invokes interiority: the experience was noteworthy because of the range and complexity of emotions and thoughts experienced.

The term 'awesome' emphasizes exteriority: the experience was exceptional because of the amount of space or material mobilized (muscles thrown around, cars and planes zooming, bombs exploding, etc...)

I always felt (though narcissistically since I was a member of the intense crowd) that the awesomeness of the jock reflect a lack of interiority, an internal hollowness which limited the range and complexity of their emotional and intellectual life, and which also required them to experience large external disturbances (action movies, wars, heavy metal) to excite their dullard natures.

Dubya's current attachment to the word does nothing but reinforce this perception.

The author and the people she quotes seem pretty clueless about the common use of "awesome" in its original sense in the modern US evangelical movement. One of the most popular evangelical songs is about "our awesome God." Bush can make any word sound inappropriate, but at base this is evangelical code language.

January 20, 2009.

"Obama has a much better command of the language than Bush," says Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yes, undoubtedly. Just as, for example, the typical doctoral candidate in particle physics at MIT has a better grasp of sophisticated mathematical concepts than a grunting baboon at the Bronx Zoo.

"Waterboard!" As in, "That's waterboard, dude!" Waterboarding is the currently trendy next-closest-thing-to-death. It's the penultimate! It's awesome!

Why go any further?

he wasn't choosen based on his education. Naturally he would have a dumbed down vocabulary. In a just world, he would be living ina double wide right now, but because he's not, "awesome" has become a presidential phrase. And the collapse of western civilization continues uninterrupted.

...which means, of course, that no matter how fast you move towards it, it always stays the same distance away. That's brilliant - no - awesome!

Just because Bush uses the word doesn't mean the word has 'trickled up' The man has a sophomoric mentality.

And yet, with all this exposure, some professionals still can't spell it: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/22/awsome-tattoo-man/

Just last night I was having a little language exchange with my Chinese roommates (they're learning English, I'm learning Chinese). One of them said "You have a word for someone who knocks things over, right?" I thought for a while... someone who knocks things over... Clumsy? "No, it's about fingers." "Oh, you mean "all thumbs?" "Yes, that's it!" My other Chinese roommate chimed in and said "Yes, they say that all the time at my yoga class." Hmm... What an odd thing to say all the time at a yoga class, I thought, but I don't do yoga so I didn't argue. But then she kept on, saying that she heard that this thing and that thing too was also "all thumbs." I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally "No! not awesome! All thumbs!" True story. Awesome, all thumbs. It seems fitting.

Please don't use the expression "trickle up" when discussing Bush.

Nothing trickles up into a pit, hole, ditch or gully.

I read an online essay not too long ago that pointed to W's fondness for calling stuff "fabulous" as evidence of his secret homosexuality. Works for me. There's got to be a logical explanation for Jeff Gannon, after all. (Or should I say, Johnny Gosch?)

Well, at least it's not 'rad'. Actually, I could see Bush and Cheney cribbing from the Dead Milkmen.

Cheney: Well, what kind of car ya got, George?

Bush: I'm glad you asked, Dick. I've got a bitchin' camaro!

The article looks at just one word, but it's merely a symptom of the general inarticulateness of the Shrub, who speaks almost entirely in cliches and always has. "Awesome" is one of them, but so is "folks that would like to kill innocent life to achieve political objectives," and "doing a heck of a job," and "I understand ... I understand ... And that's what we're doing."

More broadly, he is radically, globally tone-deaf to nuance, context, and connotation; for example, he doesn't seem to realize that to most Americans, "folks" has a friendly, positive connotation, so referring to "folks that would like to kill innocent life to achieve political objectives" produces a major, ongoing dissonance. Similarly, he uses "moms," a casual, relaxed, usage normally associated with mothers of young children on the suburban playground, to refer to parents of dead soldiers, or mothers in disaster areas in cultures totally different from our suburbia. Calling out "Yo, Blair!" and "Awesome, your Holiness," is just more of the same -- an incapacity to adjust himself to social contexts out of his own comfort zone, even an invincible refusal to acknowledge that such contexts exist at all.

I don't doubt that some of this is connected with the Texas-evangelical culture. It's part of that culture to be tone-deaf to solemnity -- to be on a casual, relaxed, even back-slapping basis with Jesus Christ, because one knows beyond a doubt that one is saved. The irony of the use of "awesome" in this subculture is that in fact it excludes all possibility of genuine awe.

Even more awesome, or should I say AWFUL, has been the fact that US citizens have not yet thrown this war criminal out of power and into jail where he properly belongs for the rest of his miserable life.

-- GSC

At least it's a word he can pronounce.

It is awesome!

What would be even more awesome than that would be to know what it's like to put George Bush in the dock at the Hague.