"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

June 22, 2011 9:04 PM

Wikipedia awash in 'frothy by-product' of Santorum. Previously 1,2,3.
posted by stbalbach (62 comments total)

Campaign for "santorum" neologism (Wikipedia)
posted by stbalbach at 9:06 PM on June 22, 2011

There's really no doubt that santorum is a common noun by this point. A large number of people know its definition, and they have no better word to use for the substance that it denotes. No-one can stop the English language.

More eponyms-by-association
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:19 PM on June 22, 2011 [9 favorites]

the simple fact is this - there wasn't a word that i'm aware of that described "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex" - now there is

tough luck for santorum
posted by pyramid termite at 9:20 PM on June 22, 2011 [18 favorites]

Not that the Urban Dictionary is any kind of authority, but my first guess yielded exactly the result I expected.
posted by ShutterBun at 9:25 PM on June 22, 2011

Please please please. Please run for President.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 9:28 PM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Anyone care to propose a "best" link for the good 'ol Santorum (sexual neologism) wikipedia page?
posted by jeffburdges at 9:33 PM on June 22, 2011

Just wait until everyone who voted for George Bush learns what his name REALLY means!
posted by ShutterBun at 9:33 PM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Please please please. Please run for President.

Oh, he's running. Officially and everything. His chances of taking the Republican nomination are small, but he's trying, gosh darn it!
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:38 PM on June 22, 2011

I'm worried that as dumb as Republican primary voters are, they might still be smart enough to eliminate their most outlandish candidates before their true comedic potential can be realized.
posted by andoatnp at 9:43 PM on June 22, 2011 [3 favorites]

(Be careful what you wish for....)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:45 PM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

As Cookie Monster would say, santorum is a sometimes fluid
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:55 PM on June 22, 2011 [22 favorites]

So, I guess the Republicans are cool with a candidate that plays with dead babies? Who knew?!
posted by Goofyy at 9:59 PM on June 22, 2011 [3 favorites]

but he's trying, gosh darn it!

Very trying.
posted by ShutterBun at 10:03 PM on June 22, 2011 [5 favorites]

As Cookie Monster would say, santorum is a sometimes fluid

If it's frothy and the color of rum, then you got yourself a santorum
But if it's a runny and white issue, then clean up that bachman with a tissue.
posted by 445supermag at 10:10 PM on June 22, 2011 [25 favorites]

His chances of taking the Republican nomination are small, but he's trying, gosh darn it!

You might say that he's working himself into a froth.
posted by Nomyte at 10:14 PM on June 22, 2011 [5 favorites]

The massive area in which Wikipedia absolutely trounces Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a significant reason why I no-longer bother with Britannica despite owning it in both dead-tree and digital formats, is that were I not aware of Dan Savage heard a strange-context word "Santorum", if I look it up on Wikipedia, I find the information I'm looking for,, while if I look it up on Britannica, I don't.

Wikipedia kills Britannica because Britannica is an encyclopaedia of established history, while Wikipedia does the same while also fully covering the modern - the technology, events, and culture of today, yesterday, and last year.

I guess what I'm saying is that people who think the Santorum campaign should not be covered by Wikipedia, are misguided. It sounds like most in the against camp agree that the information should be presented, just that care should be taken to avoid rewarding political use of Wikipedia.

But to my mind, one of the biggest guns that Wikipedia has as a vital source of information, is that it has entries on topics of the day. Trying to be more like Britannica in this context is an own-goal.
posted by -harlequin- at 10:20 PM on June 22, 2011 [7 favorites]

I edited that into a mess. My point was that I agree with the "for" camp and also with some of the more moderate view in the "against" camp, I strongly disagree with stronger "against" views. If you cared. :)
posted by -harlequin- at 10:23 PM on June 22, 2011

Imagine : Santorum steps off the plane in Paris for his first presidential visit with Sarkosy. As he waves to the cameras, a giant white dripping in a frothy brown substance cock inflates in the distance behind him. At his next stop in Berlin, the prostitutes union Verdi offers discounts on anal sex 'honoring' his visit and the Bundestag fountains are found spraying liquified fecal matter. In London, MPs compete to allude to "the frothy mixture" in their speeches. In Tokyo, all the rage is a Rick Santorum doll that sprays a brown substance out it's buttocks when it bows. And there are no presidential visits to Islamic nations for fear of what might lurk inside any thrown shoes.

We'll still get the bumper stickers and T-shirts in any case. And spreadingsantorum.com has started updating again! :)
posted by jeffburdges at 10:28 PM on June 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

ShutterBun: "Just wait until everyone who voted for George Bush learns what his name REALLY means!"

Just think if Weiner had run against Bush! OMG KOMEDY KAVALCADE!!!!!
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:33 PM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

wow, i didn't realise it was a person, I thought that was the medical term. TIL, TIL.
posted by the noob at 10:38 PM on June 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

I didn't vote for Bill Clinton since his first name means 'buttock' in Dutch.
posted by joost de vries at 10:38 PM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

The massive area in which Wikipedia absolutely trounces Encyclopaedia Britannica... is that were I not aware of Dan Savage heard a strange-context word "Santorum", if I look it up on Wikipedia, I find the information I'm looking for,, while if I look it up on Britannica, I don't.

Not only this, which is true, but if you look the human being named for the frothy mix of fecal matter and lube (or is it the other way around), which is by any account a subject of some notability (a 2-term Senator), you wind up with 503 words on Britannica, or 8,400 words on Wikipedia (not including the references, but including all of the inline stuff.)

Or to pick people of not dissimilar standing without the aura of online furor, the one-term Senator Santorum beat (Harris Wofford) and the one-term Senator that beat Santorum (Bob Casey, Jr. - who also spoke on the Tuesday of the 2008 Democratic Convention), Wikipedia has 1100 words on the former and 1900 on the latter. Britannica? Um, this Metafilter post now has exactly the same content that Britannica has on these two individuals. A huge win for Wikipedia.

I just wish the place wasn't run by rules lawyers, partisan hacks and assholes.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 11:22 PM on June 22, 2011

Bet this is all just lovely for everyone else who happens to share his surname.
posted by edd at 11:40 PM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Final sentence of the article:

And thanks to the site's haughty commitment to its new-age notion of democracy, this will never change.

But what does the author really think about Wikipedia?
posted by Edgewise at 12:03 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Bet this is all just lovely for everyone else who happens to share his surname.

I'm sure the other Hitlers felt the same way: "That ass ruined everything for us."

Santorum can't blame his victims for fighting back. The rest is collateral damage, I guess, but the alternative is to sit by and let Rick do his hateful little dance without consequences.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:12 AM on June 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I just bardic'd in my pants.

Sorry guys.
posted by bardic at 12:43 AM on June 23, 2011

You got your peanut butter in my santorum!

No, no... you got your santorum in my peanut butter!
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 12:49 AM on June 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

{somewhat derail} This reminds me of a notion that popped into my head a few weeks back: that every word in every language was probably slang at one point or another. I believe it was a thread on here about pizza that made me think of that...a discussion of bread dough being 'proofed' (allowed to rise) reminded me of 'the proof is in the pudding' (probably in the British sense where pudding=dessert in general vs the American pudding=chocolate, milk, sugar, and cornstarch) leading to the term 'proof' as equal to 'evidence' instead of its original (probable) meaning of 'yeast.' 'Proof' just never struck me as being slang for anything until then.{/somewhat derail}

...of course, now all I can think about is yeasty chocolate Santorum. Thanks, MetaFilter!
posted by sexyrobot at 1:56 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Actually the whole phrase is: The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
posted by Splunge at 2:18 AM on June 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Santorum's fate reminds me of this wise warning from that grand old beard Alan Moore, talking about Celtic bards:

"Now, as I understand it... bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal.

You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you.

And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were."
posted by lucien_reeve at 2:43 AM on June 23, 2011 [34 favorites]

Surprising fact about santorum: it's actually pretty funny when it happens. The relaxation of post-orgasm combined with "oh fuck, thank god this is a leather couch" is full of comedy.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 3:10 AM on June 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure why "The Register" opted for the lukewarm compromise of using 'wikifiddlers' when it meant 'wikipedophiles'.

It's not as if anyone is going to miss the acid acrid ressentiment they're marinating in, or as if they have any dignity or credibility to lose. The embittered contrarian soreheads they claim as an audience will eat it up either way and might even laud their "plainspokenness", enamored as they are with the old libertarian archetype of the no-nonsense truth-teller.

The only thing I can really figure is that maybe they disguised it so as not to appear too sympathetic to Santorum-as-politician, but everybody already knows that "The Register" leans lib right, so why would they try to conceal it? This is puzzling.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 3:12 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Santorum a new asshole.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:24 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

"I edited that into a mess."

Just like Wikipedia!
posted by Eideteker at 4:18 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Blazecock Pileon: "I'm sure the other Hitlers felt the same way: "That ass ruined everything for us."

Santorum can't blame his victims for fighting back. The rest is collateral damage, I guess, but the alternative is to sit by and let Rick do his hateful little dance without consequences."

And you say you have the moral high ground. Hm.
posted by falameufilho at 5:20 AM on June 23, 2011

Geez, it's not like folks are dying here. I feel for the other Santorums, honest I do. But the one is so atrociously, hilariously bad that I have no trouble laughing at the frothy thing.
posted by mediareport at 5:26 AM on June 23, 2011

Well, except for young queer kids who kill themselves because they feel attacked to their core by asses like Rick Santorum, but you know what I meant.
posted by mediareport at 5:27 AM on June 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

His chances of taking the Republican nomination are small, but he's trying, gosh darn it!

And he would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those filthy, filthy homos!
posted by fungible at 5:29 AM on June 23, 2011

Am I the only one that finds the whole "giving something gross a name that coincidentally happens to be the name of a person you dislike" a bit childish?

This is just name-calling taken to another level. I thought we were better than this.
posted by ymgve at 5:49 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is just name-calling taken to another level. I thought we were better than this.

I feel that way about constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:05 AM on June 23, 2011 [22 favorites]

Name calling has a long and honorable tradition. I have no problem playing "shame the bigot" myself.
posted by norm at 6:08 AM on June 23, 2011

This is just name-calling taken to another level.

It would be childish name-calling if people were calling Rick Santorum a red-assed baboon. Rather, making the name of a politician who has said numerous inaccurate, hateful and harmful things about homosexuals into the name for the by-product of anal sex is a form of protest. It speaks directly to his policies and beliefs, confronting him and his supporters the very thing they seek to villify. Furthermore, fuck that guy.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:08 AM on June 23, 2011 [9 favorites]

So, I guess the Republicans are cool with a candidate that plays with dead babies? Who knew?!

You know what? Yeah, I personally think the dead-baby story is creepy but guess what, that's me. And I think for all the odious shit we can attack Santorum for that's a really tasteless choice. He personally thinks his child died.

If anything, credit--creepy, disturbing credit--to the guy for actually following right wing logic to the full, no-hypocrisy level. He thought life began at conception, and went ahead and named, loved, and buried his conception. That's honestly a lot more integrity than thinking abortion is only murder and a fetus is only a human being if you weren't raped.

I hate the man. He's caused countless amounts of pain to thousands of other people because of his own selfish ignorance. I'm not going to mock him because his wife had a miscarriage.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:16 AM on June 23, 2011 [7 favorites]

Here in DC, a team at my local pub quiz night earned a hearty round of guffaws the week after the first candidates' debate by naming themselves "Santorum on the lips of Young Republicans everywhere."
posted by psoas at 6:19 AM on June 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

XQUZYPHYR - For me it was the (as far as I understand) illegal taking home of the fetus for his children to say goodbye to part that I found unsettling and disturbing. Not mocking the miscarriage.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 6:28 AM on June 23, 2011

I'm with XQUZYPHYR on that. I've been hating Santorum for a long time, but leave the baby thing out of it.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 7:21 AM on June 23, 2011

Explain the following, because I can't: I'm all in favor of infantile smearing of the man, but please leave the miscarriage out. Maybe it's a case of "Leave the family out of it".
posted by benito.strauss at 7:26 AM on June 23, 2011

I feel for the other Santorums

The Santora?
posted by COBRA! at 7:37 AM on June 23, 2011

and as I was typing that last comment, I had a mental picture of Bill Murray in a tux, sitting before a fire with a glass of whiskey, deadpanning into the camera "for relaxing times, make it Santorum time." Which, huh. I just don't know.
posted by COBRA! at 7:38 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

I wasn't aware of the miscarriage issue until now - honestly, I haven't bothered to learn much about santorum, for the same reason I haven't been curious about blue waffles, tubgirls, and lemonparties.

All kidding aside, yes, it would be extremely dishonorable, in poor taste, and cruel to innocent people to make the miscarriage an issue. In other words, it's exactly the first the the Right would pick up on as a line of attack.

Now, our own morality and ethics are not about simply being the opposite of our enemies. But you have to remember, these are Republicans. Not only will you not reach them with reason and good faith negotiations, they won't respect you for trying to be honest and ethical. I have said many times here on the Blue that you have to put your boots on their necks, and stomp down hard. It's what they understand, and it's the best tool for changing and implementing policy.

Is it a greater moral failing to permit the evil and ignorant to lead this country or to do everything it takes to prevent that?
posted by Xoebe at 7:52 AM on June 23, 2011

I think if you're being evil to prevent evil then you are not really actually preventing evil so much.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:58 AM on June 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

What if you're being funny and satirical to prevent evil?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:19 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sometimes you have to be a Bigger to bring down bigger Biggers.
- Gart Marenghi
posted by yoHighness at 8:24 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Metafilter:I just wish the place wasn't run by rules lawyers, partisan hacks and assholes.
posted by pickinganameismuchharderthanihadanticipated at 8:46 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

What if you're being funny and satirical to prevent evil?

Then I will watch your teevee show while eating homemade pizza.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:51 AM on June 23, 2011

Santorum: Poor History Scores A Result Of ‘Conscious Effort’ By ‘The Left’ To Keep Students Uninformed
posted by homunculus at 9:17 AM on June 23, 2011

Santorum: Poor History Scores A Result Of ‘Conscious Effort’ By ‘The Left’ To Keep Students Uninformed

Are you fucking kidding me.

I agree that the guy's kids—living, dead, and hypothetical—should be off-limits, but there's really nothing you could say about the man himself that would be vile enough to cover what a repulsive gutter-crawling cancer on humanity he is.

In fact, if I have any objection at all to Dan Savage's neologism, it's that it's funny. Santorum, the frothy mixture, can be funny. It combines sex and poop, which are, after all, two of the great cornerstones of humour. And the irony of linguistically associating a sex act with somebody who's opposed to that act is certainly good for a laugh.

But there's nothing funny about Santorum, the person, equating homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. There's nothing funny about his belief that women's bodies should be property of the state. There's nothing funny about his constant demonizing and dehumanizing anyone who's politically left of J. Edgar Hoover as a drug-addled Satan-worshipping pervert who wants to destroy America. The only difference between one of the murderous theocracies of the Middle East and the government Rick Santorum would like to establish in America is which god he'd use to justify himself.

By all means, spread santorum, smear Santorum, get right up to your elbows in it—where by "it," I of course mean the grassroots campaign to erode Rick Santorum's dignity and political capital. But don't forget why it's so important to keep Santorum from staining the fabric of this country.
posted by Zozo at 12:40 PM on June 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I haven't bothered to learn much about santorum, for the same reason I haven't been curious about blue waffles, tubgirls, and lemonparties.

It's a dreadful medical condition, and a lady covered in gross stuff (she's in a tub, a bath tub), and two old guys (post-retirement?) doing oral.
posted by Greg Nog at 2:13 PM on June 23, 2011

Several years back, when I was able to contribute regularly, I was an advocate for some name other than the dreadful something like Santorum neologism controversy, with two alternatives being Santorum (sex term) and Santorum (neologism). I stood my ground and there was, I thought, a pretty reasonable compromise around Santorum (sexual neologism): There weren't any authoritative sources indicating any real-world use of it as a "sex term" (and that particular parenthetical was a graveyard of deleted articles like Rusty trombone (sex term)); and just calling it a neologism gave you no information about what it was intended to relate to. But (sexual neologism) captured it pretty well, I thought.

I'm not thrilled with the current Campaign for "santorum" neologism, but it does fit the tenor of the actual sources available for the article a little better. Mainly, the name isn't something that I consider critical compared to the basic point of keeping the article.

I suppose that being a Wikipedia editor with a point of view makes me a wikifiddler, but then the cluelessly inclusivist Reg has never really got Wikipedia or been happy with it since it started deleting all sorts of unsourced geek arcana.
posted by dhartung at 3:23 PM on June 23, 2011

Glenn Beck To Rick Santorum: ‘I Could Kiss You In The Mouth’
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:07 PM on June 23, 2011

"not here, glenn - people are WATCHING"
posted by pyramid termite at 7:31 PM on June 23, 2011

Personally I think delete the article, but allow a WikiNews version, and create a new rule to prevent something like this happening again, because the cat's out of the bag now. No manufactured "synthetic" notability created for the purpose of Google Bombing, white/green washing, propaganda or other benefit clearly derived by having a Wikipedia article.
posted by stbalbach at 11:36 PM on June 23, 2011