"...will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Try telling that to Spanish King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who jumped to the defense of their fellow Spaniard, former PM Jose Maria Aznar, when he was dissed as a "fascist" by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the recent Ibero-American Summit.
Now, this particular "F-word" has been overused of late, though maybe not as much as that other F-word. For example, type in the words "fascist" and "Bush" in Google, and you'll get over 2 million hits. We can say what we like about George W. Bush and his peculiar world view, but I don't think Mussolini would have let him into the Fascist Club. No, the F-word has been overused to the point of meaning "I don't agree with you," or "your policies are to the right of"... and fill in your favorite nasty (Attilla the Hun is a favorite).
Interesting that Chavez' loose use of the word should be applied to a Spanish politician. But there is still lots of historical baggage around in Latin America, ever since the Conquistadors, so it is not surprising that the Bolivarian Socialist president (soon, president-for-life?) should take on the former colonials. Meanwhile, within Spain, the F-word is no historical matter, what with the recent beatification of pro-Franco (now, there was a fascist) Roman Catholic martyrs by the Vatican.
Recently another hyphenated word hit the news, when the Los Angeles City Council formally banned the N-word. Now, I'm not sure what practical effect this will have on the streets of Los Angeles, or even in certain hip hop recording studios. A friend of mine recently took issue with the use of the N-word among African Americans, and was way ahead of the Los Angelenos.
Finally, the T-word. This one is more complicated, since we're talking about taxes. In some circles (for example, the US Republican Party), taxes are things that are supposed only to be cut. Today's NYT has a great Thomas Friedman op-ed, where he returns to a familiar theme, that of energy independence. Friedman has consistently fought the good fight for energy conservation, even when Cheney's Energy Task Force called it tantamount to a dirty word. And that was when oil was less than $25 a barrel.
No Republican candidate would ever espouse Friedman's proposal for a gasoline tax to fund programs to make the US less dependent on imported oil (from the Chavez-Ahmedinajad Club). Whether any Democratic candidate will have the gumption to tackle this national security priority is anyone's guess.
Historical note: rummaging through my papers, I find a old (early '70s) college paper "Economic Implications of the Energy Crisis" (I got an A, so I guess that's why I kept it). Anyway, I wrote that "some independent oil companies were reported paying $15/bbl for Nigerian oil." Imagine. Shocking. Elsewhere in the paper, I cited some "embarrassingly high" oil profits from the November 11, 1973 New York Times: Shell, 274%; Exxon, 80% etc. Plus ca change...
But here's where my Pollyannaish naivete shows: my conclusion (again, I was a college senior, so give me some slack) was that the "US will attempt to find alternate sources of fuel, so as not to be dependent on the whims of foreign suppliers again." Wow, did I get that one wrong.