Review
"A handy phrase-book to help us understand the yammering of the Beltway's chatterati."--Wall Street Journal
"Those seriously concerned with the vitality of our wonky Beltway blather may want to skip the next agriculture-subsidy roundtable to train their bifocals on 'Hatchet Jobs and Hardball'.... There, with some imagination, you can freshen your lexicon with some forgotten or fairly obscure, but nevertheless serviceable, bits of political argot. Impress your fellow sheeple!"--Tom Kuntz, The New York Times
"An entertaining and informed lexicon of 600 words and phrases describing both current and past political activities and the politicos who made them happen...a most useful state-of-the-slang compendium."--Library Journal
"Word lovers and miners for old terms of art that deserve new life will find delight here.... The book has a short introduction by James Carville and Mary Matalin. And in addition to nearly 300 pages of citations, Mr. Barrett includes eight brief essays, one of them on '-gate' coinages (Does anybody remember what 'clamgate' or 'waste-watergate' referred to?)."--Dallas Morning News
Product Description
Here is a wonderful Baedeker to down-and-dirty politics--more than six hundred slang terms straight from the smoke-filled rooms of American political speech. Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang illuminates a rich and colorful segment of our language. Readers will find informative entries on slang terms such as Beltway bandit and boondoggle, angry white male and leg treasurer, juice bill and Joe Citizen, banana superpower and the Big Fix. We find not only the meaning and history of familiar terms such as gerrymander, but also of lesser-known terms such as cracking (splitting a bloc of like-minded voters by redistricting) and fair-fight district (which refers to areas redistricted to favor no political party). Each entry includes the definition of the word, its historical background, and illuminating citations, some going back more than 200 years. (We learn, for instance, that a term as seemingly current as political football actually dates back to before the Civil War.) Selected entries will have extended encyclopedic notes. The book also features sidebar essays on topics such as political words in Blogistan; a short history of "big cheese"; all about chads and the 2000 election; the suffix "-gate" and all the related Watergate terms; and the naming of legislation. Political junkies, policy wonks, journalists, and word lovers will find this book addictive reading as well as a reliable guide to one of the more colorful corners of American English.
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