Phonemarking (minicast)

Welcome to the summer edition of Slang This, the language quiz from A Way with Words.

Our family tends to sort of mix and match our slang.

Let’s blow this pop stand.

That’s the cat’s pajamas. That’s the bee’s knees.

I have no idea where that possibly could have come from.

I am going to go with a fanatic hobbyist.

All right, great.

Awesome.

Oh, wow.

Welcome to another edition of the Slang This Summer podcast from A Way with Words and KPBS Radio.

I’m Grant Barrett.

While my lovely co-host Martha Barnette ferries around the Aegean Sea and finds out if her classical Greek will get her a souvlaki or a kick in the pants, I’ve been following the 2008 political campaign.

It’s already ferocious.

Which leads us to today’s slang quiz.

I’m going to give you a political word and three possible meanings for it.

Okay.

Your job is to pick the right one.

The slang word is phonemarking.

That’s one word, P-H-O-N-E-M-A-R-K-I-N-G, phonemarking.

Is phonemarking:

A, the improper use of cell phones during debates on the floor of the House or Senate;

B, when Congress people call a government agency pressuring it to spend money on behalf of special interest;

or is it C, answering roll call by sending the speaker a text message?

I’ll be back in a moment with the correct answer.

If you think that phonemarking is B, then you are correct.

It’s when elected officials call government agencies to try to sway their spending.

Phonemarking is an extension of the term earmarking, which is when money is set aside in legislation for very specific purposes, such as repairing a stretch of highway in a certain county in a certain congressman’s home state by his mother’s house.

When a politician fails to get earmarks in place, he phones up the head of the House of Representatives, the heads of federal agencies, and makes a case for his favorite causes, making it an earmark by phone.

Someone in Washington might say, the senator’s phonemarking became so egregious that he called up the game show Deal or No Deal to ask the banker to give the contestant the million dollars.

By the way, the word earmark was originally a farming term.

It refers to the practice of tattooing hogs and other livestock.

So you can probably guess that’s connected to pork barrel politics, in which government money, also just known as pork, is broadly legislated as favors to companies, industries, or communities.

You’d think they’d name it after their own kind and call it weasel meat, wouldn’t you?

If it wasn’t for grafts, you’d get a very low type of people in politics.

Men without ambition. Jellyfish!

For Slang This! from A Way with Words and KPBS Radio, I’m Grant Barrett.

Find out more about our show at waywordradio.org, or drop us a line at words@waywordradio.org.

The last man nearly ruined this place. He didn’t know what to do with it.

If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it.

I will not stand for anything that’s crooked or unfair.

I’m strictly on the up and up, so everyone beware.

If anyone’s caught taking graft, and I don’t get my share, we stand them up against the wall and out goes the weasel.

So everyone beware, it’s crooked or unfair.

Don’t understand the reason for the reason.

Thank you.