The online news source TPMmuckraker (the TPM, in this case, standing for Talking Points Memo) reported this afternoon:

Every single contributor to the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate candidate is actually a conservative—except for the candidate himself.

Yeah, really. The Republicans are funding efforts to get the Green Party on the ballot in order to split the votes for the Democrats. Brilliant! They must have some pretty creative, outside-the-box thinkers on that campaign. Some of them may even use Macs! The whole list is available at Attytood.

Why the sudden change of heart? It may have something to do with Santorum getting a tighter race than he bargained for from his Democratic opponent, Robert Casey. In these days of gerry-mandered districts and bought elections, it’s nice to see incumbants with a healthy dose of “Fear of the People”.

Other extreme tactics he’s employing? How about facing off against Tubemeister Senator Ted Stevens in trying to prevent the Network Neutrality bill from ever making it to the Senate floor (knowing he’d get hammered for voting against The Internet)? Or maybe labeling his opponent as a terrorist-lover by saying Casey took money from Al-Jazeera. Except that it was a different Al-Jazeerah. Oops.

First, you’re hardly the first corporation to get turned into a word. Just the other day I was xeroxing a pile of résumés and noticed “LOSER!” written in sharpie on one of them, so I fixed it with white out. I dropped the stack on my boss’s desk with a post it on the best applicant, saying “put this guy in your rolodex“. Unfortunately, I got an awful paper cut and needed a band aid for my finger and a kleenex to wipe away the tears.

Also, now that you are public domain, unlike your dad “Google”, its up to the people to determine how you’ll be remembered. They say that history is written by the victors, but the dictionaries are a different situation entirely (except in science-fiction novels). It excites me to think that crass wielders of power today (Limbaugh and Santorum, for instance) will have legacies that reflect their crassitude but perhaps not their power (Limbaugh and Santorum, again). It’s happened before, you know.

Finally, as my parting advice to you, “google”, I’d just like to remind you to stay humble. You may think yourself the top of your class (especially since you were added to the dictionary along with “spyware” and “unibrow”), but think of all the words that were on top before you. People may be talking about you right now, but that can change. It was only yesterday when newspapers were in a tizzy about “bling”, “blog”, and—oh yeah, I almost forgot—”googol“.