Malarkey

Malarkey.  What a great word.  It means the same exact thing as bullshit, but you can say it on national TV.

It’s less pretentious than saying “Your previous statement was inaccurate/untruthful/misleading/erroneous.”

Malarkey!

It’s more American than saying rubbish, nonsense or poppycock, which you’re more likely to hear during question time in the British Parliament.  Maybe not actually poppycock.  I don’t know who actually says poppycock.

It has a classier ring to it than baloney, that much maligned and (fortunately) FDA regulated sandwich meat which was so frequently the main course of my brown bag lunches when I was a young lad going to school.

It’s much more serious than saying piffle, balderdash or codswallop and more dignified than saying hogwash.

It’s significantly classier than saying horse puckey, dog poop, or simply “that was a steaming pile,” leaving the audience to use their fertile imaginations as to which member of the mammalian extended family left aforesaid steaming pile.

Of course, Biden could just have said “You are lying” and it would have worked for me, too, but malarkey has a nice ring to it.

This is the beauty of the English language.  All of these words mean essentially the same thing and yet choosing just the right one at the right  moment makes all the difference.  Speaking well is an art.

When Joe Biden used that word to describe everything Paul Ryan had been saying in the debate, he pretty much summed up everything people need to know about this election.

When Romney says “I care about 100% of the people,” we can just say “Malarkey!”

When Paul Ryan says they don’t plan to end social security and medicare, although the budget he tried to push through congress would have done just that, we can say “Malarkey!”

When people say that Mitt Romney saved the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, we don’t need to point out that he did it with a huge amount of federal funds, and nobody was seriously trying to shut it down in the first place, we can just say “Malarkey!”  The average American voter will understand it much better.

When people talk about Mitt’s great business experience, we don’t need to go into a lengthy explanation of vulture capitalism, outsourcing, asset stripping and what not.  If the average American voter wanted a lecture on economics, they would go to college.  We can just say “Malarkey!”

It’s direct.  To the point.  And applicable in response to just about anything a Republican is likely to say.