Musings 172--What's a syndicanted columnist?

So there I was watching C-SPAN Friday morning, when Robert Novak came on as the featured guest. He was explaining how his version and Richard Armitage's version of the Valerie Plame leak conversation were not the same. (See Link for Novak's column)

Novak is not the most photo-friendly guy, but as soon as I saw him on C-SPAN I knew something was wrong. Let's see....ah, white hair, squinty eyes, windsor tie, $1,000 suit...ok, that's normal. Then it struck me. It wasn't Novak, it was the way C-SPAN identified him with the caption at the bottom of the screen. It said, "Robert Novak, Syndicanted Columnist." Hmmm...syndicanted. Is that really a word.

I know that Novak is a syndicated columnist, as are a ton of other talking heads that jabber their blather on cable, but I did not know that C-SPAN was in the word creating business. I thought that Steven Colbert had a corner on that market.

Syndicanted! What a great word. It has to mean a columnist that cants or slants one way or the other. For 10 minutes I watched this new word to the English language flash on screen. I even called my wife in to see it. I thought maybe my education had been short-shifted and syndicanted was a word that I had missed during my education at Marshall University.

"Not a word...they mean syndicated," she said.

"But it's been up for 10 minutes," I said. "Surely, C-SPAN has someone that can read."

"Apparently not," she said and left the room to do other things. She has no sense of history in the making.

Then, suddenly, the camera went from the C-SPAN moderator to Novak...and, the caption at the bottom of the screen read: "Robert Novak, Syndicated Columnist.

Wow! That C-SPAN has a crack crew of folks.

I think it was an unintentional-intentional Freudian slip on the part of liberal media at C-SPAN. I mean it was up for 10 minutes. Syndicanted. It just rolls off the tongue. Yeah, baby!