Dropping the H bomb
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Sue Dunum, "Canadians Using 'Harper' as a Swear Word — 'Go Harper Yourself'", The Lapine 7/1/2014:
MONTREAL — The CBC is reporting today on a growing social media trend for Canadians to use Prime Minister Harper’s name as a cuss word.
“Harper is being used as the new F Bomb,” CBC analyst Claude Perrault told news anchor Peter Mansbridge this morning.
“‘Harper off’ is a big one we’re seeing used alot on Facebook and Twitter. Often in all caps when someone’s really angry…as in ‘HARPER OFF!’”
“Calling someone a ‘Harpering Harper’ to mean either ‘f****** b****’ or ‘f****** c***sucker’ is also trending big for new slang.”
It's nice to see that there's a quantitative angle to the report as well:
In a social media word search conducted by CBC, the national broadcaster found ‘Harper’ being used as a verb in more than 12% of angry social media messages posted in Canada. (“Man, I just about Harpered my pants.”)
Adjective and noun usages were slightly lower at a 10% and 9% respectively. (“What a Harpering Harper hole.”)
The percentages are just as fake as the rest of the article — but still, it's a positive development that the author of a piece of semi-scatological satire feels that it's appropriate to make up some actual numbers.
[h/t Fernando Pereira]
Keith said,
January 5, 2015 @ 8:09 am
I wish CBC would stop harpering on about this.
Ginger Yellow said,
January 5, 2015 @ 9:12 am
Aw, I was hoping for a methodology to determine whether a post is angry. Even a fake one.
JJM said,
January 5, 2015 @ 10:24 am
Er, as a Canadian living not a heartbeat from Ottawa, I can tell you this is utter nonsense.
The proof of the pudding is that if you hadn't posted this, I would likely never have known about it.
I wouldn't trust any political talking-head anyway, least of all a CBC one. This is simply anti-Harper agitprop masquerading as news.
[(myl) The Lapine is a satirical site, comparable to The Onion — the CBC had nothing to do with this. Note that The Lapine's other articles have headlines like "Atheist Suicide Bomber Kills Eighteen Agnostics", and "New Brunswick to Drop 'New' From Provincial Name".]
J.W. Brewer said,
January 5, 2015 @ 11:03 am
Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_Cat_Trilogy#Language_and_invented_slang.
Fernando Pereira said,
January 5, 2015 @ 12:39 pm
@JMM: You realize that this comes from a "Onion"-like satirical site, right?
D-AW said,
January 5, 2015 @ 2:30 pm
Somewhat less offensive than the original "H-bomb" (verbal category)? http://www.grumblemagazine.com/articles/crack/harvard/index.html
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
January 6, 2015 @ 6:28 am
Too bad. That would have been the only good thing he's ever managed to do.
Moonfriend said,
January 7, 2015 @ 1:41 am
This harpering may be a joke, but in the state of Victoria, Australia, there is a verb 'to jeff' named for the former Premier, Jeff Kennett. It takes the place quite nicely of 'fuck', as in 'Go and get jeffed'.
For example: http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/get-jeffed.47906/