Fraters Libertas

Alert Merriam and Webster

Yesterday in describing the unwarranted enrichment of the Pandagon bloggers, I wrote the following:

But it turns out all the bogus gold in the world isn't enough to buy the silence of a man's conscience.

Bogus gold, a term perfectly encapsulating my feelings toward the material success generated by the profane, superficial political analysis provided at said Web site.

Bogus Gold is also, of course, the wholly owned property of local blogger and bon vivant, Doug Williams. He's got a fine political, media, and cultural analysis blog called, you guessed it, Bogus Gold. In fact, I'm quite sure he coined that phrase. Or at least a computerized anagram engine did - at his direction. According to sources, Bogus Gold contains the exact lettering as "Doug's Blog" and he wisely chose the more intriguing combination of letters for his site.

Giving credit where credit is due, I'm sure I never would have come up with the term "bogus gold" without Doug's influence. He is the one injecting it into the mainstream consciousness, if only because no one reads Federal Trade Commission press releases on illegitimate high yield credit card distribution.

Now it appears Doug is objecting to my use of the term yesterday, inferring some veiled slight against him by its use in a pejorative context. Nothing could be further from the truth. The use of bogus gold in informal discourse is actually a tribute to Doug Williams. His etymologic creation has been operationalized for common usage. And I think it could take off, big time. In all walks of life, the resentment towards others unjustly cashing in is virulent. Until now there's been no way to succinctly express the sentiment (especially since "ill-gotten booty" has been forever tainted by the Minnesota Vikings adventures on the high seas). But starting today, anytime you run across a web site pulling down revenues far beyond its merits, it'll be known as a bogus gold. This usage will have no direct relationship to Doug, who's considerable blogging talents certainly exceed his profits. But that's the kind of sick, ironic twists that occur in the old wordsmithing game.

If this all takes off as I suspect, bogus gold will be used so much, it could become a generic term unto itself, like Post-Its or Kleenex. Yes, Doug Williams appears to be on his way to becoming the Kleenex of the blogosphere. Bless you, sir!