At first it was easy to believe Dick Armey when he said he had merely "stumbled" in referring to Barney Frank as "Barney Fag." The two words are, after all, more similar than they look. Who has not, at some point, evoked good natured chuckles from the wait person by inadvertently ordering "fags and beans"? Or one recalls the sad fate of several of Frank Sinatra's former associates, consigned to the depths in cement shoes for an innocent slip of the tongue.
But within hours Armey had flipped into insensate rage, shouting, red-faced and with quivering lips, that he had "simply mispronounced a name and did not need any psychoanalysis about my subliminal or about my Freudian predilections."
Which is worse, anyway: to be called "Fag" if you are in fact "Frank" or to be accused of harboring predilections of the "subliminal" variety if you are in reality a Republican from Texas? In less time than it takes to pronounce the curiously Freudian French unit of currency, the victimizer had become the victim; the insulter was now the insultee.
This is the famed counter-victim flip, which now enlivens our political culture. Its appeal is obvious. Think of all the times you have accidentally elbowed some elderly or pregnant person to the ground in the course of boarding the bus or train.
Think of the nasty aftermath, the clumsy apologies, the possible fines. How much nicer it would sound, when recounted to friends and family, if that elderly or pregnant person turned out to have been trampled while inexplicably assaulting you!
For a particularly elegant counter-victim flip, consider the one performed by Newt Gingrich following his mom's revelation to Connie Chung that he has been known to refer to the First Lady as a "bitch." A clear-cut case of rudeness, you might think, until the counter-rudeness maneuver was brought into play. With trembling jowls, a rich spray of spittle, and other hallmarks of righteous Republican rage, Newt went after the wily Chung for allowing such a low word to be uttered in the presence of his or any mother, never mind that she had done the uttering herself. Presumably he had only spelled it out when mom was around, or thought she would take it as a harmless reference to Congressman Frank.
Though they seldom get the credit they deserve—for this or anything else—white male professors on our college campuses invented the counter-victim flip. Irritated by feminists insisting that "he " is only one of several available pronouns, maddened by students of color with their absurd claims about the size of Africa relative to Northern Europe, they counter-flipped with the charge that they were being abused by "jack-booted storm-troopers " of political correctness. Soon there were hot-lines for professors suffering from hurt feelings, and support groups for those experiencing the torment of insufficient adulation.
You don't have to be white, of course, to be proficient at the counter-victim flip. No one has surpassed O.J. ("like a battered husband" ) Simpson, whose recently released book includes fan letters likening his martyrdom to that of Jesus before him. Everyday we now watch him on television being reviled by squadrons of lawyers, without a moment's peace and quiet in which to mourn his ex-wife's spectacular suicide.
In fact, the only people in public life who seem not to have mastered the flip are Hillary and Bill.
For them, no insult is too cutting, no term of abuse too crude, that it cannot inspire another round of desperate waffling and groveling.
Imagine, for example, if Bill had offered a Newt-style response to Paul a Jones's charges of sexual harassment: "Bitch followed me to my room, started ripping off my clothes."
Or from Hillary: "So this nice fellow from the poultry business gave me a hand with some cattle futures. I don't happen to be a vegetarian—is that a crime? "
In the age of the counter-victim, there is only one rule of thumb for those who smart at labels like fag or bitch: whatever you're doing to provoke such rude language, stop it at once!