So. A brief vocabulary lesson. A dingleberry, for those of you who didn’t grow up on a farm, is–and I quote the OED–“dried faecal matter attached to the hair around the anus,” usually (one hopes) in reference to animals. (Other, less common uses, per the same: “a fool, a stupid person (slang)”; “the female breasts (slang)”; and “a cranberry, Vaccinium erythrocarpum, of the south-eastern U.S.”) The term, save for the cranberry species–and it should probably go without saying–tends to be used pejoratively.
With all that said: below are some of the headlines announcing the ouster of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, yesterday morning, in favor of the committee’s second-ranking member, Henry Waxman–a move that, as Roll Call has it, “marks a stunning rebuke of the seniority system that Democrats have honored for decades.”
–Slate: “Dingell Buried”
–Grist: “Dingell, Buried”
–NBC Chicago: “Dingell Buried by Waxman”
–MSNBC’s First Read: “Dingell gets buried”
Hilarious, guys! You. Are. All. So. Clever!
Now, I’m all for cheesy puns, and everything. But, you know, come on.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.