Blagola

After a contest to name the Illinois Governor Rod Blagoveich pay-me-for- a-Senate-seat-scandal, Slate has awarded the above moniker to the scandal. I have to admit, its not too bad but not too exciting. I enjoy entering these contests but can't complain here because my entry was fairly lame (something about endless bad hair days). I did like one of the runners-up- "Pay-Rod" but I guess that would only make sense to baseball and Madonna fans and unintentionally suggests a connection to male prostitution. (Disclosure- I have been entering these type of contests for years but only have two runner-up commendations to show for it, both cartoon captions dealing with local Boston issues, however I am hopeful on the latest Letterman top 10 contest)

However this brings back memories of The New Republic's contest to name the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal 10 years ago which still has me seething. They came up with the uninspired "Bimbroglio" which frankly sounded sexist and threw the focus on the various partners rather than the Horndog-In-Chief. I still stand by my submission "the Internal Affair" which I think I have mentioned in these pages before (It works on three levels- think about it!). However it goes to show that these contests are hit or miss as no one today uses any of those names or even the execrable "Interngate" to describe the matter. Of course we all now refer to that time as "The Great Blow Job Crisis of 1998"