School of Journalism

Articles from Mainstreamia can be confusing. In Mainstreamia, words do not always mean what they mean to Normal People. I thought I would help with an analysis of some Mainstreamian vocabulary with which our readers may not be familiar:

"gaffe-prone" (with or without hyphen), as in

"Gaffe-prone Pope Benedict XVI will be tested on delicate trip to divided island of Cyprus. Pope Benedict XVI, often under fire for political missteps on foreign trips, is heading into a potential diplomatic storm when he visits Cyprus this week, a pilgrimage to a divided island that could anger Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world.

The article helps by helpfully giving examples which we will analyse to produce a working definition:

1) Regensburg address = gaffe *.

At that time Benedict said that God, in order to be the actual real God, had to be logically consistent: rational. Therefore, a being who claimed to be God but contradicted himself, couldn't really be God. This "logically consistent" idea is a concept that Mainstreamians don't have, a trait they share with Muslims, who also have difficulty with "irony," (see posts labeled "The Laws of Rational Thought" on the sidebar). So, when Muslims reacted with violence to Benedict's admonition that they should not be violent, Mainstreamians said it was Benedict's fault, because he had produced this "gaffe".

2) Condoms make the problem of AIDS worse = gaffe.

On the plane on the way to Africa last year, Benedict made everyone in the world Mainstreamia who was already mad at him for being the pope even madder by saying their pet project to exterminate sterilise free the Africans from the oppressive shackles of sexual and moral self-control is a bad thing.

It sounds confusing at first, but try to see it from the point of view of Mainstreamian thought. In Mainstreamian thought, it is not sexual contact with infected persons that spreads sexually transmitted diseases. It is something they call "unsafe sex", which means sex without a condom. Therefore, you aren't allowed to say that it is a bad thing to give Africa (and other uncomfortable places with bad air conditioning) container vessels full of condoms and to tell them to be like the cool kids North Americans/Europeans, and have a lot of sex outside of marriage.

Remember, sex does not spread AIDS; unsafe sex spreads AIDS. Saying it is a good idea to only ever have sex with someone you are already married to, is Bad.

It makes people have sex without condoms, which is what gives you AIDS.

From these helpful examples, we can deduce that in Mainstreamian, the word "gaffe" means "When the pope says something true that we don't like".

Hope this helps.

* Also referred to as a "political misstep," in case anyone were still foggy on "gaffe".