Mr. Language Man returns

I’ve noticed that the premature triumphalists of the right have lately adopted the phrase “Arab Spring.” I assume this is a reference to the “Prague Spring” of 1968 — the brief period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia which, as you may recall, was brutally supressed in August of that same year.

Small suggestion to my friends on the right: if you’re going to come up with a clever nickname for your triumphalist fantasies, you might want it to refer to, you know, an actual triumph.