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The word santorum is a sexual neologism for a "frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex," and was proposed by readers of American humorist and sex-advice columnist Dan Savage in 2003 to "memorialize" then-Republican U.S. Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, prompted by controversy over his statements on homosexuality. Savage asked his readers to submit new definitions for the term. The word became a successful Google bomb when Savage created a website for it, which unseated the Senator's official website as the top search result for his surname on the Google web search engine.

Background

In an April 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Santorum stated, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery." Santorum further stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts.

Critics of the statement included the Log Cabin Republicans, whose representatives argued that comparing gay sex to the other acts mentioned was outside the mainstream. Also, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee demanded that Santorum resign as chairman of the Republican Senate Caucus, with a committee spokesman calling Santorum's comments "divisive, hurtful and reckless." In contrast, Concerned Women for America agreed with Santorum's comments in a written statement.

Contest

Savage, who is openly gay and has had a history of political activism supporting gay rights and sexual rights, angrily addressed Santorum's comments in an op-ed published in The New York Times on April 25, 2003 titled "G.O.P. Hypocrisy." He linked Santorum's comments to the broader agenda of his party, saying "Mr. Santorum, who holds the No. 3 position in the Senate leadership, was only repeating what many Republicans have already said." Savage next handled the matter in his sex-advice column, Savage Love, on May 8, saying: "Striking down an insulting, discriminatory, unconstitutional law will not, as Santorum fears, open the doors to incest, adultery, bigamy, and bestiality. Straight people blew those doors off their hinges long, long ago."

Letters on the Santorum controversy began to arrive, "assuming correctly that the incident was right up Savage’s sex-politics alley," according to Liz Spikol of the Philadelphia Weekly. As Rick Santorum's anti-gay comments were forgotten about by the media, a writer under the pseudonym "Sex and Rick Santorum" urged Savage to organize a reader contest to determine a definition for the word "santorum." The reader reasoned that since Santorum had invited himself into the bedrooms of homosexuals, they should be "inclusive" and name a gay sex act for him. Savage agreed, after pointing out that there are no "gay" sex acts, saying: "There's no better way to memorialize the Santorum scandal than by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head."

Savage noted that the column had previously succeeded in creating a sexual slang word, "pegging," by getting the definition to begin appearing in dictionaries of sexual slang. "I threw it out there to my readers," Savage later said. Savage published several definitions suggested by readers in subsequent columns. The winning definition was submitted by "Wipe Up That Santorum, Anal Pokers" in the May 29 column. Votes were collected by e-mail, and the winning definition was announced June 12; Savage concluded by asking for questions about santorum, and urged his readers to get the word out. Savage has said that the winner was a "perfect fit," as there was no prior name for it. Santorum, he explained, is "unwelcome. If you’re doing right, it’s not gonna happen, and if it happens, it’s a bit of a killjoy, which is what it would be if the actual senator strolled into the room."

Web activism

Savage set up a website, santorum.com. The site, also known as Spreading Santorum, gives the definition of the term "santorum," under which a brown, splattered stain appears on the otherwise-white page. After this splash page, the site features letters to Savage tracking the dissemination of the term. The site includes a video of a person asking Santorum about the term at a town meeting-style forum and a letter that Santorum sent to a man in California outlining his objections to the "obscenity" of the website. Savage considered he had met his goal of "rubbing it in nose."

Political impact

The Economist noted in January 2006 that "gay activists use name to denote something indescribable in a family newspaper." In April 2006, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the "disgusting" definition was "spreading like kudzu on the internet." The Inquirer described the Savage coinage and other references to Santorum in The Sopranos and Veronica Mars as illustrating his name's evolution into "cultural shorthand ... for social conservatism." The regional gay newspaper Bay Windows said in August 2006 that Savage had "succeeded in turning into an oft-Googled slang term." According to the Philadelphia Weekly, writing in October 2006, the term "gained real traction" and "found its way into salacious dictionaries — and books published on actual paper," with Savage admitting that he "worked pretty hard" to get it out there.

Indeed, the Human Rights Campaign included the full definition in a reprint of an item from Gay City News. The article noted that Savage had donated $2,100 to the campaign of Santorum's challenger in the 2006 election, Bob Casey, but Casey had not accepted the donation. According to the Scranton Times-Tribune, Casey returned the money after hearing of Savage's promulgated definition of santorum, saying that Savage had gone "over the line" demarking political civility. Savage gave the money instead to an anti-Santorum political action committee. Subsequently, Casey defeated Santorum in the 2006 election for a U.S. Senate seat from the state of Pennsylvania. Although a California weekly suggested that the campaign's "ripples were felt strongly by the outgoing senator himself in the recent midterm elections", and Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle declared that "Dan Savage helped kill Rick Santorum", Savage himself says "you can't really measure impact."

In a celebratory column, though, Savage wrote: "While Santorum would have been defeated even without a filthy, lowercase definition of his last name floating around out there, having a name that can barely be mentioned in polite company anymore didn't help.... We helped to make Rick Santorum into a national laughingstock — with an invaluable assist from Rick Santorum, of course." Savage pointed to Kathryn Jean Lopez, conservative columnist and editor of the National Review Online, as an example of his success. In her election day column, Lopez described Santorum as "the politician most successfully victimized by nasty Internet political tactics" and predicted that "some angry people will get the chance to celebrate ... I don’t mean people who disagree with him on a federal marriage amendment. I mean people who think it’s pretty funny that when you Google the senator’s name, you get a repulsive lower-case version of his last name."

Santorum has been contemplating a campaign for the Republican nomination for President in 2012. The high Google ranking of Savage's site in searches for his name has been seen as a potential roadblock. One reputation management professional who specializes in helping individuals with such issues commented, "It's devastating. This is one of the more creative and salient Google issues I've ever seen." In February 2011, the political newspaper Roll Call wrote an article on his "Longtime Google Problem." and Maureen O'Connor of media blog Gawker commented, "The question is whether you can actually get over something like that. You know, it's one thing to try to bury a negative article about you, but it's something different to bury your name when you're getting Googled."

Response by Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum discussed the "santorum" phenomenon in a February 2011 interview with the publication Roll Call. The former Senator explained to Roll Call, "It’s one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak." He pointed out to Roll Call what he viewed as a double standard regarding the response to the phenomenon, "It’s just a sad commentary. You want to talk about incivility. I don’t know of anybody on the left who came to my defense for the incivility with respect to those things."

On April 28, 2011, Rick Santorum said to The Daily Caller about the issue, "I don’t see it as a problem at all." The Daily Caller reported that Santorum's political action committee had paid money for a Google advertisement to appear when individuals input a search term of "Rick Santorum". Former Senator Santorum commented, "That’ll take care of itself over time and if this campaign takes off and we decide to do this my guess is we’ll have lots of other things that will transplant things like that. And if it maintains, it will just show a rather disgusting side of politics, unfortunately. What will change, that is if we decide to move forward, I’m sure will be writing a lot of things and there’ll be lots of links to other things that will far supersede some nasty people that are trying to be crude."

Recognition in media

The print journal Gay and Lesbian Humanist noted the contest in its Summer 2003 issue, but before a definition had been selected. At its annual meeting in January 2005, the American Dialect Society selected santorum as the Most Outrageous Word of the Year for 2004. Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower later wrote in Slate, "This year the strongest contender was santorum.... We dismissed one potential problem — that newspapers wouldn't print the term if it won — on the grounds that we shouldn't censor ourselves. And indeed... santorum did win, but many newspapers simply skipped this category in their coverage. So much for academic freedom." The word appeared as a humorous aside in a college newspaper, and even in a music review. The term's popularity as a political epithet has extended to bumper stickers and t-shirts. Tucson Weekly movie reviewer Jim Nintzel wrote in April 2006 that he introduced the word to Rob Corddry of The Daily Show, noting that "Despite his high-ranking position as a member of the media elite, Corddry wasn't aware of this important linguistic development." Subsequently the show referenced the term in its July 12, 2006, December 11, 2006, and May 9, 2011 episodes Google Current also covered the Google bombing of the term on July 15, 2006.

On February 21, 2011 Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report called attention to the term in response to Senator Santorum's public dismay that when his name is searched by Google, the above definition is still the first search result. The comedian also referred to the "frothy mixture" on his April 25, 2011, show in a sketch about having a beer with various Republican candidates, and called on people to once again "Google it." On May 9, 2011, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show also mentioned the term without defining it and then told the puzzled portion of his audience/viewers to google it. When guest Keira Knightley appeared for her interview, she admitted she had googled it backstage and now felt "like innocence has been taken away."

References

1. ^ Savage, Dan (June 12, 2003). "Savage Love: Gas Huffer". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com. Retrieved December 19, 2006. Cite error: The named reference "Savage Love June 12" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
2. Budoff, Carrie (July 27, 2006). "No thanks, Casey donor told: The campaign found sex columnist Dan Savage too hot to handle. His $2,100 check has been returned". Philadelphia Inquirer. www.philly.com. Archived from the original on 2006-09-06.
3. ^ Peoples, Steve (February 16, 2011). "Santorum Talks About Longtime Google Problem". Roll Call. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
4. ^ Loughlin, Sean (April 22, 2003). "Santorum under fire for comments on homosexuality". CNN. Time Warner. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
5. Associated Press (April 22, 2003). "Raw Data: Excerpts of Santorum's AP Interview". Fox News. www.foxnews.com. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
6. Shepard, Scott (May 10, 2003). "Both parties see benefit of courting gay vote". Cox News Service. www.seattlepi.com. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
7. "Santorum Comments Draw Fire". Fox News Channel. www.foxnews.com. April 23, 2003. Retrieved December 21, 2010.
8. Savage, Dan (April 25, 2003). "G.O.P. Hypocrisy". The New York Times. The New York Times Company.
9. Savage, Dan (May 8, 2003). "Savage Love Family Ties". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com.
10. ^ Spikol, Liz (October 4, 2006). "Savage Politics". Philadelphia Weekly. www.philadelphiaweekly.com. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
11. ^ Savage, Dan (May 15, 2003). "Savage Love: Bill, Ashton, Rick". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
12. ^ Savage, Dan (May 29, 2003). "Savage Love: Do the Santorum". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
13. "The political year: Will lightning strike the Republicans?". The Economist. www.economist.com. January 5, 2006. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
14. ^ Robinson, Tasha (February 8, 2006). "Interview: Dan Savage". The Onion. AV Club. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
15. "What's in a name? Simply 'Santorum' says plenty". The Philadelphia Inquirer. April 23, 2006. {{cite news}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Missing pipe in: |first= (help)
16. "So they say". Bay Windows. baywindows.com. August 10, 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
17. ^ Humm, Andy (August 9, 2006). "Rick Santorum's Flip Flop on Bias". Gay City News. Reprinted by the Human Rights Campaign. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
18. Lucey, Catherine (October 11, 2006). "Sex-columnist Savage goes live on Santorum". Philadelphia Daily News. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After all, it was his no-holds-barred column that spawned the infamous sex term named after Sen. Rick Santorum. (No, really, we can't print it. Just look it up on Google.) In fact, Savage's raunchy reputation meant that Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey Jr., refused a $2,100 donation that the Seattle-based writer tried to give to his campaign earlier this year. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
19. ^ Krawczeniuk, Borys (August 1, 2006). "Casey: Donor "over the line"". Scranton Times-Tribune. www.thetimes-tribune.com.
20. Krawczeniuk, Borys (November 9, 2006). "Casey dominated like no one before". Scranton Times-Tribune. www.thetimes-tribune.com.
21. Sorensen, Saundra (December 28, 2006). "Html & the new journalism: How the blog flourished in 2006". Ventura County Reporter. www.vcreporter.com. Retrieved March 12, 2007.
22. Morford, Mark (January 17, 2007). "Thoughts to keep you warm when it's cold". San Francisco Chronicle. www.sfgate.com. Retrieved March 12, 2007.
23. ^ Savage, Dan (November 16, 2006). "Make a Joyful Noise". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com. Retrieved March 12, 2007.
24. Savage, Dan (November 14, 2006). "Savage Love Web Extra". The Stranger. www.thestranger.com. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
25. Lopez, Kathryn Jean (November 7, 2006). "The Poll that Matters: Will Pennsylvania voters defy conventional wisdom and reelect Santorum?". The National Review. article.nationalreview.com. Retrieved March 12, 2007.
26. Mencimer, Stephanie (September 2010). "Rick Santorum's Anal Sex Problem". Mother Jones. motherjones.com. Retrieved September 12, 2010.
27. Holmes, T.J. (February 19, 2011). "Rick Santorum's Google Problem". CNN Newsroom. Time Warner. Retrieved February 19, 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
28. ^ Moody, Chris (April 28, 2011). "Santorum says he has no plans to fix his 'Google problem'". The Daily Caller. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
29. Smith, Warren Allen (Summer 2003). "Gossip from Across the Pond". Gay and Lesbian Humanist. www.pinktriangle.org.uk. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
30. Jesse Sheidlower (January 11, 2005). "Linguists Gone Wild! Why "[[wardrobe malfunction]]" wasn't the word of the year". Retrieved December 19, 2006. {{cite news}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help) Not surprisingly, posting comments on the Wall Street Journal would require intentionally misspelling the Senator's name (eg. Santorrum) since santorum "does not comply with community standards."
31. "Frosh Supplement 2003: Glossary". Gauntlet. University of Calgary. September 4, 2003. Retrieved December 19, 2006. Sex: The most effective method of study avoidance. Common side effect, santorum.
32. "Disc of the week: Antony and the Johnsons, I Am a Bird Now". Montreal Mirror. www.montrealmirror.com. February 10, 2005. Retrieved December 19, 2006. Boy George, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed and Devendra Banhart lend extra sparkle to this graceful glitter-opera, which climaxes with "Fistfull of Love," a glorious slip 'n' slide of a soul song that's well worth the Santorum stain.
33. Nintzel, Jim (April 20, 2006). "Trigger Happy: Rob Corddry stars in the 'Schindler's List' of paintball movies". Tucson Weekly. www.tusconweekly.com. Retrieved December 19, 2006. The Daily Show correspondent and I were talking on the phone the other day and--as it so often does--the subject of santorum came up. As regular Weekly readers know, santorum was the name given to "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex" by readers of the nationally syndicated Savage Love column to honor U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
34. "Headlines - Exit Strategies". The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. December 11, 2006. Retrieved February 22, 2011.
35. "Santorum". Google Current. www.current.tv. July 15, 2006. Archived from the original on November 11, 2006. Retrieved December 19, 2006.
36. Sehgal, Ujala (February 22, 2011). "COLBERT: Rick Santorum's Long-Term Google Sex Term Problem Is Not As Bad As Chris Lee's "Short-Time Craigslist Problem"". Business Insider. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
37. Stewart, John (May 9, 2011). "The Daily Show: Keira Knightly". The Daily Show. www.thedailyshow.com. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
38. Dwyer, Devin (May 10, 2011). "Rick Santorum's 'Google Problem' Resurfaces with Jon Stewart Plug". ABC News. ABC. Retrieved May 10, 2011.

External links

• "SpreadingSantorum.com".
• "Santorum on Rotten.com". Retrieved August 22, 2006.
• American Dialect Society list of Words of the Year for 2004, listing "santorum" as the "most outrageous" word of 2004 (PDF file)

• American political terms
• Sexual slang
• American political neologisms