Help Us Give Christine O'Donnell The Santorum Treatment

Now that noted dingbat Christine O’Donnell has thrust her way into our national discourse, she must be stopped.

A few years ago, a Republican senator named Rick Santorum drew widespread ire (and applause from one group, Concerned Women of America, for which Christine O’Donnell naturally used to serve as a spokeswoman) for comparing homosexuality to bestiality and incest. In response, sex columnist Dan Savage led a successful Internet campaign to redefine “santorum” as “that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” “Santorum,” like another Savage neologism, “pegging,” is now in wide usage, and the website Savage set up for it has long outranked Rick Santorum’s own on Google. Not only did Santorum lose his bid for re-election in 2006, but his presidential ambitions — he has been exploring seeking the 2012 Republican nomination — are in jeopardy. And that is partly because his name is forever associated with something he would consider disgusting and probably evil, and that serves to remind the rest of us just how reprehensible Santorum’s politics actually are.

And now, some half-decade later, we have the Republican candidate from Delaware who is just as reprehensible, and who necessitates a Santorum-level response. O’Donnell is not conservative — she is a cretin. If you need reminding:

• O’Donnell on politics: “When you go into the voting booth, ask God which candidate will further the kingdom of God.”
• On morality: “There’s only truth and not truth. You’re either very good or evil.”
• On homosexuality: It’s a “deviant sexual orientation” and symptomatic of an “identity disorder.”
• On China: “There is a very carefully thought-out and strategic plan to take over America. I think the Chinese government is definitely a foe.”
• On science: “They are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”
• On science: “Evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”
• On pseudoscience: “Creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.”
• On school violence: “We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we’re having weekly shootings, practically. My point is there are consequences to our actions, and if we as a nation tolerate sin, generations to come will reap the effects.”
• On women in the military: “By integrating women into particularly military institutes, it cripples the readiness of our defense.”
• On condoms and AIDS: “To just throw a bunch of condoms over to Africa and say, ‘Here, we’re helping you with AIDS,’ is just going to further the spread of AIDS over there.”
• And, of course, on masturbation: “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.”

In the words of Karl Rove, O’Donnell is “nutty,” and in the words of the head of the Delaware Republican party, she is unfit to “be elected dog catcher.” And even though she will lose her Delaware election to Chris Coons, her Tea Party funding and endorsements from the NRA and Sarah Palin all but guarantee that Christine O’Donnell will have further opportunities to pollute the national discourse with her counter-factual, empty-headed nonsense — and perhaps to make further runs for office. O’Donnell’s a public relations professional, and she thinks this is her moment; she won’t be going away easy.

And so Jezebel is going to take a leaf from Savage’s playbook, and we’d like you to help. How do you think we should redefine “Odonnell”? Is an odonnell a sex act? A substance? A body part? A device? A feeling?

“Odonnell” could be “that chunky discharge that signifies the latter stages of a yeast infection.” (“I wanted to sleep with him, but…there was odonnell.”) Jessica suggests an odonnell could be “the blood clot that doesn’t get absorbed through the dry-weave layer of your pad.” (“I just changed my pad, and wtf, I already have a massive odonnell sitting there just being gross.”) To Dodai, an odonnell is “a SORE spot you get from masturbating.” (“I was gonna rub one out, but I was developing an odonnell.”) Or maybe odonnell is “that feeling of searing, episiotomy-lite pain that occurs when a clumsy partner tries to penetrate your perineum.” (“He odonnelled my poor ladyparts so hard I immediately knew he was a proud graduate of an abstinence-only sex ed curriculum.”)

The only guidelines are that the phenomenon or thing that you call an “odonnell” must not already have a name, and that your suggested definition be as sex-negative as the candidate herself. (An odonnell is decidedly not “that feeling of delightful, tingling numbness you get in your extremities immediately following a very satisfying sexual climax.”)

Gross or risible, noun, verb, or adjective…tell us, what’s an odonnell?

Email [email protected] with “Christine O’Donnell” in the subject line, or post your suggestions here. In short order, we’ll declare a definition worthy of the name.

With a little effort and creativity, going forward we’ll be more likely to hear about “odonnell” and a lot less likely to hear about O’Donnell.