Mad Libs – Cracking the Code

I’m old enough to remember when those who weren’t conservative were called liberals. It was very a common use of the term until Hillary said she preferred the term “progressive” instead. Magically it seemed to fall out of favor ever since.

I’m also young enough to have children under the age of twelve. They enjoy playing mad libs, the game where a story is told with words selectively removed and the blanks have instructions to fill them with words of specific parts of speech. We’ve done them enough as a family that some patterns have developed. For example, anytime the blank asks for a body part one of them will offer the word “butt.” The next noun is “poop” and the next adjective is “smelly.” It would get old, but they actually end up rather funny. At least my inner twelve year old thinks so.

And sure, their use of baser words to fill in the blanks is a sign of their maturity, my parenting, their friends, or a combination of them all with a host of other factors. It’s an activity we enjoy together. They learn a little grammar and we have fun.

It struck me that there isn’t a lot of difference between what my kids do with mad libs and what the progressives do with reporting the news. They fill in the blanks of the stories about their opponents with the same predictability as my kids bring to the game. If the story asks for an adjective, it gets filled with “racist” or “sexist.” If the blank is a verb, it’s filled with “hate” or “discriminate.” Nouns are “Nazi” or “white supremacist.”  Some blanks have special uses like “blank-o-phobias” and the scandalous “blank-gates.”  

Upon reading, the finished product is just as disjointed and fanciful as what my kids come up with. A mad lib with my kids that’s a story about planting a flower garden will still talk about “butts” and “poop.” A news story about dwindling unemployment in the lower class will still talk about “racism” and “discrimination.” The stories may not make sense, but they make the authors smile and they get their special words in.

Is it a product of their maturity, training in journalism, the company they keep, or a combination of a lot of factors? Probably all of the above. They’ve definitely gone through a number of phases, too, focusing lately on different topics like “collusion” and “Russians.” Their creativity is amazing in describing the same tired themes over and over again.

So if I’ve cracked the code, maybe we should call “Mad Libs” by a new name: “Mad Progressives.”  But as I think about it, maybe “Mad News” would be a better fit.  How would you fill in the blank?