Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Stephen Colbert on recent gay headline news (Barack Obama endorsing same-sex marriage, North Carolina amending its constitution to ban it), as reported on Talking Points Memo:

Stephen Colbert couldn’t believe it: a sitting president pushed the “rainbow button” and launched “gay-mageddon.”

(Video on the TPM site, and on the many other sites that have reported on Colbert, and here.)

More from Colbert:

The proponents of North Carolina’s Amendment One celebrated by eating wedding cakes with bride and groom figurines on top. The sight really choked Colbert up. “I always cry at the prevention of weddings,” he said.

“What I love most about this bill is that by preventing gay people from having the legal right to marry, it not only protects traditional straight marriage, but also helps preserve traditional straight stereotypes of gayness,” he added. “Because I believe gay people should be having hot, sweaty, depraved, anonymous man-piles in the basements of techno clubs, devoid of the slightest emotional connection, just as God intended.”

Entertaining as Colbert’s routine is, my interest here is in the libfix –mageddon ‘disaster’ in gay-mageddon. The libfix has been much reported on, usually in connection with the libfix -pocalypse and related portmanteaus. A sampling:

AZBlog, 12/22/08: Portmansnow words (link): portmanteaus snowtastrophe, snowpocalypse, snowmageddon

Mark Peters’s blog, 5/30/09: Wordgeddon (link): Barack-alypse, blog-pocalypse, Conficker-geddon, smarm-a-geddon, snow-mageddon, snowgeddon, snowpocalypse, bankageddon, a-stock-alypse, oinkmageddon, a-pig-calypse, a-pork-a-lypse, pigflu-pocalypse, ham-a-geddon, hamthrax, pignarok, ap-sock-alypse, bra-mageddon, tire-swing-pocalypse, zombie-robot-trex-alypse, cuteageddon

Ben Zimmer on Word Routes, 2/11/10: SnOMG! It’s Snowmageddon 2010 (link): snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, and more

ML on LLog, 3/1/10: The half-life of the hashtag (link): on –mageddon, -pocalypse

AZBlog, 2/18/11: Dingburg portmanteau (link): Carmageddon

Barry Popik’s blog, 7/10/11 (link): carmageddon, carpocalypse

AZBlog, 7/14/11: For the Angelenos (link): carmageddon, carpocalypse, karmageddon

AZBlog, 8/10/11: -mageddons and -pocalypses (link): Obamageddon, Barackalypse, snow- words, car- words, heatmageddon, heatpocalypse, birdmageddon, birdpocalypse, wordmageddon, wordpocalypse, bookpocalypse

(Michael Quinion’s affixes site doesn’t have -tastrophe, -pocalypse, or -mageddon.)

Where -mageddon goes, -pocalypse goes as well. So gaypocalypse is no surprise. A small sampling of cites, starting with two that have direct plays on the title Apocalypse Now:

Gaypocalypse Now: on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show of 12/2/10, John McCain questions the accuracy of a 10-month survey about the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” (link)

Gaypocalypse now: a 7/27/06 comic montage (link)

Last bastion against the Gaypocalypse: a 8/22/11 posting on Australian anti-gay ravers (link)

The Four Unicorns of the Gaypocalypse: name of a blog (link)

Now Barack Obama is, in the eyes of many, leading us into Gaymageddon and the Gaypocalypse.

This entry was posted on May 11, 2012 at 7:02 am and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Libfixes, Portmanteaus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.