The WaPo took a look at the Fred Thompson candidacy and boy, did they do a bang up job. Not to be outdone by other newspapers in the smear campaign against Fred, they attacked one thing the others have yet to focus on: his name.
In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)
We’re thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).
Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.
Fur-red-duh.
It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.
Waterlogged paper towel.
Fred.
The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a “Fred” is defined as “a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things” (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).
There has never before been a major presidential candidate named Fred.
I certainly hope people are not paying for this crap. Honestly, this is needed? An article detailing how people named “Fred” are not sexy, but rather stupid? This is what counts as election coverage at the Washington Post. No wonder the print media is dying.
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