Spin control : ‘Wide stance’ has growing following
Chalk up another one for Sen. Larry Craig. He coined a phrase during his restroom arrest that is moving into the public lexicon.
“Wide stance.”
As in “I have a wide stance,” which is what Craig said when questioned about his foot tapping and maneuvering that was interpreted as a sexual come-on by an undercover officer in the adjoining stall in the Minneapolis-St. Paul restroom. In just more than a month, that phrase has come to mean “a closeted homosexual,” according to Urban Dictionary, a Web site that lets readers provide their own definitions of slang terms making the rounds.
“Wide stance” was last Monday’s Word of the Day, and there were a range of definitions. But the one with the most traction, it seems, is the definition above.
To be helpful, the definers even use it in a sentence:
“Genevieve is really crushing hard on the varsity QB. Someone should tell her that the dude has a wide stance.”
Speaking of stances, a colleague suggests that the elephant in the logo for the 2008 Republican National Convention is Craig-like.
Of course, an elephant is a big animal, so when it gets up on its hind legs, it has to adopt a wide … never mind.
But if you want to see the logo and judge for yourself, it’s at www.spokesmanreview. com/blogs/spincontrol.
Strange bedfellows
The temperature dropped last week, although not enough for hell to freeze over. So what was MoveOn.org doing outside Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ downtown Spokane office with balloons, signing a letter of thanks?
The progressive-liberal group that almost always backs Democrats was applauding the conservative Republican for her vote on SCHIP, the federal proposal to pay for children’s health insurance. Of course, there was something more that MoveOn-ers wanted: for McMorris Rodgers to vote to override the veto that President Bush smacked on the legislation a day earlier.
The activists sent out a call to action Thursday morning, saying this was one of 225 such rallies around the country – targeting mainly GOP congressmembers, one can safely assume – to keep those who voted for the bill in the yes column for the override and convince a few no votes to switch sides.
Thing was, McMorris Rodgers had already decided she was going to vote to override. Her chief of staff, Connie Partoyan, said Thursday morning the congresswoman had already made that call, and staff was telling anyone who called that was the plan.
Told her boss and MoveOn were seeing eye-to-eye on this bill, Partoyan replied: “This might be a first.”
MoveOn folks and McMorris Rodgers’ local staff seemed equally unsure about being on the same side. Told the congresswoman was saying she would override, demonstrators seemed a bit incredulous but set about signing the letter of gratitude they had prepared. About that time, the McMorris Rodgers Spokane staff walked by, having knocked off for the evening, and found it a little hard to process that a group with a history of complaining about their boss had just dropped by to say “Thanks.”