Dan:

I just wanted to forward to you the following link to the "Conservative Book Service." They have some remarkable, funny and terrifying books and products on this site. My favorite is the "Talking Ann Coulter" doll, and "Everyday Graces" -- a collection of moral stories for children by Karen Santorum, described as "at-home mother of six, and wife of the U.S. Senate's foremost defender of traditional morality." Notable is her illustration of "the importance of good grooming, in a story about the battle of Thermopylae." No mention of the alternate use of her husband's last name.

http://www.conservativebookservice.com/

Cheers!

No Good Acronym

Hi Dan,

After reading this week's column, I think now is a good time to discuss getting the term "santorum" into the Oxford English Dictionary. According to the website, words are selected for inclusion in the OED after they have 'caught on' and are established in the language. They require several independent examples of the word being used in print and that it has been used for a reasonable span of time, but "a large number of examples collected over a short period of time can show that a word has very quickly become established." If readers collect scans of the word being used in print outside Savage Love and send them to me at sinisterpoison@yahoo.ie, I'll correlate them and send them to the OED editors. Keep in mind the following: "Of course, even if a word is initially rejected, the evidence for it is kept in our files and databases, in case further examples turn up. The OED's Quotations Room contains thousands of words for which we have only a single example, many of them dating back decades or even centuries: usurance has been awaiting a second example since 1912, and abrasure since 1827!"

I think this would be worth the effort. :)

- Cunning Linguist

http://dictionary.oed.com/readers/research.html