Washington Post-Analysis: The unexpected nostalgia of Biden's "malarkey"

[Gothmog]

This amuses me. The Washington Post has a great discussion on this history and use of the term marlarkey

Link to tweet

Former vice president Joe Biden is aggressively and self-consciously the following things, in no particular order: Irish American, older, a regular guy. Were those traits structured into a Venn diagram, there would be few better words to sit at the center where all three meet than a single word: Malarkey.

Biden loves the word malarkey, so much so that it didn’t take much for me to dig into The Washington Post’s video archive to find this compilation of times that Biden has referred to things using the term. Asked what, exactly, the word meant during the 2012 vice presidential debate, he said that it meant “stuff,” which was his older, regular guy way of saying that it meant BS (which is itself a Post way of saying a particular expletive).....

Cultural phenomenons recur in a cyclical fashion, though the duration of those cycles isn’t constant. It seems feasible that the 1980s brought nostalgia for a term that had emerged 30-plus years earlier — and that Biden is single-handedly powering a renaissance another 30-plus years on. “Malarkey” may be doing for Biden what “Make America Great Again” did for Trump on a smaller scale in evoking the era of President Ronald Reagan.

Most of his embrace of the term is about branding, reinforcing his political identity, and the traits we identified at the beginning of the article. He’s the guy who called Republican ideas “malarkey” and he’s the guy who uses terms like “malarkey” because he’s old and centered and willing to use normal-guy terms like “malarkey” even if that is abnormal.

There’s a corniness to it that is on-brand for Biden. It’s the sort of thing that seems like it could appeal to older voters (and older white voters) more than anyone else. That’s a group that makes up a large chunk of the population, if only a smaller part of the Democratic primary electorate. (Biden’s distinctive strength in the primary is among black Democratic voters.)

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R! "Malarkey" is a great old word.

[Gothmog]

2. There is some history on the use of this term

From the Washington Post article cited in OP

The heyday of “malarkey” on the pages of The Post came in the 1980s. There were a few little bursts before, including in the late 1800s, when Washington Senators pitcher John Malarkey was racking up a grim 2-10 record over three seasons. In the 1940s, Western High School slugger Jack Malarkey got fairly regular write-ups in the paper. By the 1980s, though, the word’s appearances were mostly of the sort that Biden would appreciate. By the 2000s, the popularity of the word had died again.

Google’s extensive index of books allows us to see how the popularity of words evolves over time. Its Ngram tool shows the frequency of words as a percentage of all words from books published in a particular year.

That data shows that use of “malarkey” spiked in books in the 1980s, just as it did in The Post. Interestingly, “malarkey” seems to have edged out “malarky,” with the latter spelling dying out from the 1960s on, as use of the former continued to gain steam. There’s a slight drop-off beginning about 2004; the Google Books data only goes through 2008.

[Thekaspervote]

3. Thx Gothmog... interesting stats!

[Cha]

4. Malarkey was also made famous in the way back machine

to 2012 when he busted Paul Ryan's Bullshit.

Winning is Never out of date.

The vid is posted here.. Thank you, Goth!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287363939#post9

[LakeArenal]

5. Nice. Love that Joe.

[Sloumeau]

6. Gothmog, Thanks for posting this.

[elleng]

7. According to Oxford Dictionaries, malarkey is "meaningless talk; nonsense,"

it came into use in the 1920s and its specific origin is unknown. There is an Irish name — Mullarkey. But a connection from the name to the word hasn't been established.

[Mme. Defarge]

8. I say

no f’ing malarkey!!!

[Deb]

9. VP Biden won't suffer Hair Malarkey's shenanigans

The pox will be removed.

[greatauntoftriplets]

10. Looks like it's more popular now than when this boomer was a kid.

[BannonsLiver]

11. Nice to see some data on this

Rather than a bunch of blather from ageist bigots.

[CousinIT]

12. Well. He can't call it a "no bullshit" tour...

...so what does that leave?

[Scurrilous]

13. "She who is snarky is full of malarkey" - Tenacious D

[Gothmog]

14. Snarky mockery of Joe Biden is sheer malarkey

Link to tweet

Older adults and seniors consistently have the highest turnout rates. One of the earliest Democratic primary states is Nevada, where the youth turnout rate in 2016 was 5 percent. In South Carolina, another early Democratic state, it was 18 percent – which was actually lower than in 2012.

Biden doesn’t care right now about younger voters, because if they show up at all in the early primaries, they’ll likely choose Bernie or Warren. But older people vote in the greatest numbers, they don’t pay attention to Twitter or the late-night wiseacres, and they like Biden.

They’re his base, and they’ve kept him at the top of the Democratic race. The “No Malarkey” slogan is designed specifically for them. Young people think the slogan is synonymous with old guy, but, as one Biden precinct captain in Iowa told Politico, “Older people know what it means, and older people vote.”

And regardless of whether you support or oppose Biden, you have to admit that the “No Malarkey” slogan attests to his authenticity. If he seems uncool, using a word that traces back to the Jazz Age and beyond, then so be it. He is who he is, take it or leave it. Voters tend to appreciate it when a politician eschews pretense and behaves like a human.

[Cha]

16. Retweeted! You find some of the best

tweets, Goth!

[Cha]

15. This is Timeless!