Everybody is using it so it’s a good idea to explore its meaning.
It is a color, of course. Not one of my favorite colors; there’s something optically bullying about it, over-the-top extroversion. It yells for attention when I don’t want to give it.
Orange is also a fruit. Tangerines are much sweeter.
Today, though, “orange” is an example of the figure of speech called “metonymy.” (No, I didn’t remember “metonymy” from my years of English classes. I had to look up figures of speech and mentally toggle between metonymy and personification.)
“Orange” stands in for “imprisoned criminal.” You know, the way “empty suit” stands in for a useless, stupid business executive. Metonymy.
In the last week or so I’ve seen it used often. Sometimes a name is attached to the color, such as “I really want to see him in orange.” And “I really want to see her in orange.”
“Orange” is a comfortable word for anyone who has become so exhausted with horror at awful governance, she is afraid to say “imprisoned criminal!” out loud, lest that vicious prankster sometimes called the devil hears the passionate desire and thwarts it, splat.
“Orange” is being used instead of “kenahorah poo poo poo:”
Kenahorah-Poo-Poo-Poo: a colloquial Jewish/Yiddish custom that we grew up with. Kenahorah is Yiddish for – keep the evil eye away. You can tempt the evil eye by saying positive or happy things. Poo Poo Poo – or “Poo Cubed”- simulates spitting three times to avoid the evil eye. You can also hold up the thumb and the pinkie while you are “poo”-ing.
I wasn’t part of the “we” referred to in the above definition. In my home, we didn’t believe in the devil’s evil eye, any more than we believed in “god.”
So I’m not avoiding saying that yesterday’s indictment does more than suggest Trump and some of his family members were part of the criminal scheme to evade taxes.
What got me about it was how tax cheating was an essence of the company’s operations. Also how dumb it was: it was all obvious. Simplistic. Within the cult-like entity of Trump’s business operations, it was the thing to do. No effort was made to disguise it, to tangle it up in other money movements.
No wonder Trump’s lawyers and at least one family member are proclaiming, “What’s so bad? Everybody does it.”
Well, no, everybody does not cheat the rest of us tax-paying citizens as a regular business plan.
Why did the DA go for this straightforward indictment? My guess is that among the millions of documents the office obtained in discovery, the ones that prove this case were the easiest pickings.
And Trump is named in it: he signed checks. That massive, narcissistic signature has been placed in this case by this first indictment.
So I too want to see Trump and Ivanka, et al., in orange jumpsuits, as imprisoned criminals.
(As for this kenahorah poo poo poo thing? You do it. I’m not superstitious.)