George Orwell Is Immortal

Still on my language police kick, I note that I'm not the only one.

Paul Krugman is at it too

Call the metaphor police!

I’ve been worried for a while about the fact that, according to financial reporters, the freezing up of the credit markets is causing a financial meltdown. The world is ending in ice and fire, simultaneously. But this is true cause for alarm:

“The self-feeding downturn now in place shows signs of becoming deeply entrenched,” economists at Citigroup wrote Friday.

Uh oh. we’ve got a downturn that can feed itself and, at the same time, dig trenches.

The fascist octopus will sing its swan song any day now.

The swan song of the fascist Octopus is an example of a dying metaphor from "Politics and the English Language." I googled "fascist" and "octopus" and found many references to Orwell and none clearly about to fascism (or octopuses). One noted that there is no word press blog about fascist octopuses. Might have to set up "Swan Song of the Fascist Octopus" to replace the defunct "George Orwell Might Say." It's a pithy that the last link leads to a comment to brief to make it possible to understand what Dayv was talking about.

OK so googling "fascist octopus" (that is exact phrase) gives
"Results 1 - 10 of about 1,730 for "fascist octopus""

Hmmm how about
"George Orwell" Results 1 - 10 of about 4,220,000 for "george orwell"
Orwellian Results 1 - 10 of about 1,170,000 for orwellian

How does 1984 the book stack up against 1984 the year (1984 the plain ordinary number has no chance) ?

The book stomps the year
Although 2 of the top 10 hits are for the commercial introducing the MacIntosh.

Google suggests that googlers who aren't after the book try related searches

Searches related to: 1984
1984 movie the year 1984 1984 themes 1984 essays
1984 amazon 1984 text 1984 characters 1984 quiz

George Orwell owns the number 1984.

Results 1 - 10 of about 545,000 for newspeak

"Big Brother" number 10 is about the dictator in 1984. One through 9 are about reality TV shows. How many of the viewers know why they are called "Big Brother" ?

Results 1 - 10 of about 42,300 for minitrue.

Results 1 - 10 of about 10,700 for duckspeak.

I wonder what Newspeak word has the most google hits.

Results 1 - 10 of about 509,000 for "thought police"
although some don't seem clear on the concept as they refer to "Canada's thought police"