As I type, New York is all a twitter. It’s General Assembly week at the United Nations. Hotels, bars, restaurants and high-end hookers are excited, but from what I hear, those who live in the city aren’t. It’s a crazy, zany time when all those heads of foreign heads of state come to town. For news types and news nerds, it’s often referred to in shorthand ask UNGA week and pronounced as such. As in rhymes with cowabunga. UNGA stands for the United Nations General Assembly.
Hhhmmmmm…wasnt there once an off colored joke about some hostages taken by natives and threatened with death by ‘unga’???
Anyway, isnt it odd that are few Latin words and Latin sounding acronyms that DON’T sound nasty??
For example, there’s the word, “caucus”. Sounds phallic, right?
We all know about caucus. After all of last year’s pre-election brouhaha, we learned. the word caucus in Latin means, “apparently not STILL!not Hillary’s year
POTUS and FLOTUS are two words that sound as though they’d be surrounded by an anus or two scribbled on some wall found in Ancient Rome. You know, graffiti.
Or grafitum.
POTUS and FLOTUS are acronyms, short for President of the U.S. And First Lady of the U.S., respectively.
The first time I heard of these references was 2002. When I was a reporter, s million years ago, the Associated Press was gospel—they were then official arbiters of journalistic style. I don’t know if the AP’s take on POTUS and FLOTUS after first reference. I’m too lazy to look it up, but I know this: President Trump must be referred to as such on first reference, but in subsequent lines he can be called Mr. Trump or even Trump if the story is long enough and mentions him enough times.
But SCOTUS??? The Supreme Court of The United States. Would it even work when spoken in a report ot just shorthand for print? Imagine listening to Megyn Kelly utter SCOTUS five times in one report or shows or whatever the hell she’s doing these days.
I thank the greater Cosmos that Megyn is no longer anywhere in my chosen viewing bandwidth and that the election is long over and done with. I’d keel over if I had to hear ANY newsperson mention the word caucus again.
But the worst…THE WORST sounding acronym in the world is right here in my own back yard.
“SCOTEX”
Yep, that’s the acronym for the “Supreme Court of Texas” and frankly, it sounds like a maxi-pad.
