Forgive me for mixing foreign languages in the headline. I’ll explain.
Just to show how the first 45/47 presidency tossed me into a PTSD amnesia, I’d forgotten that I once had a great name for the Leader of the Free World whose legal name induces nausea in me.
The last few weeks, I’ve messed around in a few posts, trying to come up with a clever, usable moniker for He Who Shall Not Be Named. None of my attempts made me happy. Then, like a bolt from the blue, it came back to me this AM: I used to regularly call the Commander-in-Cheat between Barack Obama and Joe Biden, L’il Duce.
Jeez! What have I been thinking?
Friends and colleagues have come up with good handles for him. Susan Sandberg, for example, likes to call him The Mad King. That’s a good one. I like it. I’d been wishing I could come up with something creative and catchy like that.
And, for chrissakes, I had! Years ago!
The Convicted Felon to Whom I Refer is nothing if not a penny-ante, ersatz, wannabe fascist dictator like one Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini of Italy.
The Original Duce.
Mussolini was referred to, when he ran Italy with an iron hand between 1922 and 1943, as Il Duce. The tag was a made-up Italian word for the leader of the Fascist gang of hoods that took over the country of my heritage by force. It comes from the Latin, dux, and was/is pronounced DOO-chay. The Blackshirts and other cetrioli who adored him slapped the Italian definite article, il (the), on and, presto, the tyrannical gasbag had a memorable name.
Hell, 45/47 is nothing if not another tyrannical gasbag. So, Li’l Duce it will be, once again.
Oh, a little more Italian vocabulary. A cetriolo is a cucumber or pickle or something of that shape. Originally from the Latin, citriòlum, even as far back as 2000 years ago it had come to be an insult. Italian-Americans pronounce it TCHIH-drool. Now, think of another thing shaped like a cucumber or pickle or something…, yep, you’ve got it. Ergo the insult.
So, yeah, way back eight or so years ago, I modified Il Duce, with its Italian definite article, to the more modern slang, Li’l, for The Man Who Would Be King of the World. Presto, again.
The beauty of calling 45/47 Li’l Duce is it’s the ultimate insult. He hates being associated with anything little. Like many who fret about the size of their cetrioli.
And, since Li’l Duce is staging a coup, what we’re watching is The Li’l Duce Coup.
Apologies to speakers of the Italian and French languages, the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, and no one else; this insult is too good to pass up.
