This is a brand-new little dictionary that many might find intriguing.
It comes from the editors of Australia’s own Macquarie Dictionary and is called Dirty Politics with the sub-title of ‘the A-Z of trickery, treachery and other tasty treats.’
In the foreword Sammy J writes: ‘Civics education is waning in Australia, but I dare say that if the Department of Education boffins were brave enough to insert the words “jeffed”, “woketard” and “ratf---k" into the national curriculum we’d suddenly have a whole generation of young people freshly engaged in the history of privatization, culture wars and bilateral relations.’
Perhaps.
But I suspect the real problem is that there no history of any sort of civics education in Australia.
Not in the past and not now.
There has never (to the best of my knowledge) ever been a course that taught about the Australian constitution, the complex relationship between the states and the federal government, and the various houses of our different governments.
I’m happy to be proved wrong, but it seems to me that Australians were just supposed to absorb (through their skin?) how the system worked by the time they were old enough to vote.
Well, this book, Dirty Politics, won’t fill that gap.
But it is a handy guide to how our politicians talk—and what the (sometimes alarming) things they say reveal about how their brains work.
This book will tell you why a government official will be delighted to find a ‘hollow log’, what a ‘head nodder’ does on the evening news on television, the power wielded by the ‘kitchen cabinet’ and why it's always dangerous to ‘poke the dragon.’
Most of the expressions have direct relevance to Australia, although some (such a ‘pork barrelling’) that began in America have made their way here, there are others (such as ‘mugwump’) that still don’t make much sense outside the United States.
Not all the terms it defines are current language.
For instance, it defines ‘pink’ as meaning ‘a person with moderately left-wing or radical political opinions.’
But it strikes me that this expression died out some time ago.
I well remember hearing the late, great Eric Baume attack people for being ‘pink’ (a safe thing to do, since calling someone an out-and-out communist was, at the time, legally defamatory).
But that was a while ago.
However, if you’d like to know the significance of phrases such as ‘nothing to see here’ and ‘know where the bodies are buried’ this is the book for you (and for probably for all political junkies!)
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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