An NPR article on the prospect of creating a part-time Congress (unlikely) begins by describing “hordes of conservative Republican lawmakers” descending on Washington. Hordes? Yes, hordes of Republicans, all conservative, are about to fracture the previous hold that “hordes of liberal Democrats” had on Congress. This inspired a Google search for the phrase and I found four pages filled with “hordes,” “Republicans,” and “conservative.” From the look of the entries most were attributable to different blog sites feeding off one another. I cannot say if NPR picked the phrase up from the bloggers or whether it was the other way around, but in any case, there you go, “hordes.” Perhaps in some political lexicon of style, “horde” is the word of choice when writing about the new Republican legislators coming to Washington. “Gang,” “flock,” “crowd,” “pack,” “host,” or “multitude” might serve but they all lack, I think, the certain chill factor “horde” evokes, undisciplined barbarians, ruffians each, laying waste to everything truly civilized about life.
I Googled also for “hordes of liberal Democrats.” That phrase does show up but it is limited to only one page plus an over-spill of a mere two entries on a second, not nearly as many as for the conservative Republican horde. I think it is safe to say this clearly is a shameful indication of the media’s bias toward liberal hordes. Simple fairness, real impartiality, everyone will agree should give as many hordes to the one as to the other.
I do note — and perhaps in some way this will mitigate any advantage the media gives to liberals — that “hordes of liberal Democrats” is frequently preceded by an adjectival qualifier. “Sycophantic,” “corrupt,” and “rabid” do tend to focus one’s eye.
Speaking of hordes, tuck this in your minor facts file. When I worked in Congress in 1972-73 there were only eight thousand congressional staffers for both the House and the Senate. Of course that figure had more than doubled from the decade previous. Today there are twenty-five thousand, give or take a thousand or so, inhabiting the congressional lair. That is chilling.
December 29th, 2010 | 1:32 pm
I was interning for Steve Solarz in 1973. Where were you?
December 29th, 2010 | 2:24 pm
Just a minor complaint: listing the number of hits on a Google search is more useful than the number of pages, as your browser sizes pages according to your screen resolution. What might be three pages for you would be one and a half for me, or vice versa.
December 29th, 2010 | 2:39 pm
Off topic, but I just read that Solarz recently died. His lobbying for Turkey was a little disconcerting to me.
December 29th, 2010 | 2:41 pm
Were you searching for the phrase “hordes of conservative republican lawmakers” or the keywords “hordes” “conservative” “republican.”
If we make the search criteria exactly parallel, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in the use of hordes:
“Hordes of conservative Republicans” = 47 hits
“Hordes of liberal Democrats” = 51 hits
But since that search eliminates the phrase that started all this, we can try:
“hordes of conservative” = 4980 hits
“hordes of liberal” = 3829 hits
That encompasses all manner of scary hordes: liberal economists and talk radio shows, conservative lawmakers and catholics.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:45 pm
@Nickp: Sounds like hordes of bloggers.
@Saltzman: Now 25,000, that’s a horde!
December 29th, 2010 | 4:50 pm
@Stuart Koehl
In the Cannon House Office Building, Room 4-oh-dang-something-something, press secretary to KS-3rd Larry Winn, whose chief distinction I recall was being named one of the “dirty dozen” by an environmentalist group. I resigned that year and became KS deputy secretary of state.
@The Googlistas
I searched “hordes of conservative Republicans.” I wanted to see if there were other Republican hordes to cause us worry aside from lawmakers.
December 30th, 2010 | 12:22 pm
I’m not so much worried about Congressional hordes as I am about Congressional whores.
December 30th, 2010 | 12:24 pm
“@Stuart Koehl
In the Cannon House Office Building, Room 4-oh-dang-something-something, press secretary to KS-3rd Larry Winn, whose chief distinction I recall was being named one of the “dirty dozen” by an environmentalist group. I resigned that year and became KS deputy secretary of state.”
I was in Longworth, consigned to a room next door to Bella Abzug. It was an interesting experience, which put paid to all my political ambitions. Nothing like seeing sausage being made up close to turn one into a vegetarian. After graduating Georgetown, I turned my talents to military analysis and history, and have not regretted it in the least.
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