Shennanigans!

Every morning during the week, Jenny and I wake up to NPR's "Morning Edition" because the news is a little easier to take when you're not quite awake. Unfortunately, this can make for some surreal moments like the one I had this morning. I woke up to one of those cute reports where they interview people in state with an upcoming primary. Since the Democratic nomination is still up in the air, I can see why NPR would be interested. And since this is NPR and not the idiots at CNN, the networks and Fox News, they usually find people who can string words together into a coherent thought. Unfortunately, they did find one woman used a word that has bounced around my head all day: "shenanigans".

"Shenanigans" in this context referred to Bill Clinton's extra marital affair with Monica Lewinski - as in "I believe Hilary would be a good leader since she was able to handle her husbands shenanigans". Now, when I think of shenanigans, I think of merry pranks, that episode of the "South Park" where the town beats up carnies, and Favra's favorite restaurant. Bill Clinton's (numerous) indiscretions never would have occurred to me. Should we really be referring to Bill's libido laden stupidity with the same term we use for college pranks? I call shenanigans on the woman's use of shenanigans.

The only word that I would consider to be more entertaining is "hoopla". I never hear that one any more. The last time I heard "hoopla" was in an old "Kids in the Hall" skit. I have to say, my shenanigans do result in a fair amount of hoopla. But never a donnybrook and they don't require much skullduggery either.

I don't know what this blog entry is about, but I guess the lesson is that you shouldn't mix up iniquity with shenanigans at 6:20 AM. Because that will cause much in the way of hoopla.