Rep. Bachmann’s son: Pseudo-intellectual Thesaurus Rex

Thesaurus Rex: He’ll eat us all!

It’s a common claim to make against someone using big fancy words that they’re trying to sound smarter than they really are. This is sometimes true (though most often it’s just a sleazy argument without merit), but nowhere can it be applied any more perfectly than to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) son, Lucas Bachmann, who graced the lexical world with this:

“[M]ovement intellects such as Buckley are indelible,” Lucas Bachmann wrote. "Like the majority of conservatives, I watched and marveled at his eloquent didacticism drawn from a prolix lexicon that can only be described as Buckleyesque."

Ie. “Buckley’s writings are awesome and they really sound just like Buckley!”

If there has ever been a purer word salad than this, then the lexical world has not yet been graced (or impugned) with it. This is just brilliant in its phony, thesaurically-based pseudo-intellectualism. (Not to mention the amusing irony in the fact that in trying to bolster his appearance of intelligence, Lucas is actually trying to become the very thing – an intellectual and “elite” – that his mother so passionately denounces.)

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)