Funny Politicians

Speaking of quick comebacks by politicians, I enjoyed the exchange between Tom McClintock and the SJMercury in today's letters to the editor. A while back, McClintock, a conservative Republican who often berates Ahnold for being such a profligate spend-and-borrower, used a word in a context the Mercury staffers thought was funny. McClintock defends his usage:

Your staff took me to task (Page 3B, Nov. 18) for misusing the word "climacteric" when I recently wrote, "I remain convinced that California is moving toward a climacteric in which an awakened electorate will soon call for a fundamental restructuring and downsizing of state government." "Climacteric," they snickered, means "menopause." If they would broaden their dictionary searches beyond Wikipedia, they would discover that the word is also defined as "constituting an important epoch or crisis" (Oxford English Dictionary). I suppose I could have written that "events are moving toward a climax," but I shudder to think what your staff would have made of that.

Touche.