The word “tramp” is defined with regards to “foot travel”, as in “trampling”, but the contemporary lexicon includes the idea of “aimless wandering”. In short, a tramp is a hobo, but over time, the requirement for “foot travel” seems to have slipped away. There have been since, for example, boxcar tramps who ride the trains and saddle tramps that ride horses. All that remains of the initial use of the word “tramp” is the “aimless wandering” aspect.
Etymology is interesting to me, though it is not my expertise by any stretch of the imagination. There are many cases of “cultural creep” where words are concerned, and there is a degree of importance in understanding the progression of words where communications are concerned.
That being said, here is an interesting word: “douchebag”.
A douchebag, in the original sense of the word, is related to hygiene, a device used in the cleaning of orifices, particularly the vagina, and so is usually linked to females, and commonly associated with prostitutes. The initial application of “douchebag” as a slang term dates back to the 1940s and had been used to express the contempt for the filthy men who frequented prostitutes.
The word “douchebag” has since crept across the generations to express anyone who is “contemptible”, leaving out the precise moral aspect of it all, because what the Hell is morality in the USA as the generations go by? But I digress. A lot. Get used to it.
The word “contemptible” is defined as that which is “mean, vile, or despicable; worthy of contempt”. Of course, that which is contemptible is a matter of perspective and opinion. For example, the contemporary generation that includes, but is thankfully not limited to, “woke ideology”, has in certain corners of the world wide web, co-opted the term “douchebag” to be indicative of people they do not identify with. The truth is, however, that everyone is contemptible to someone, so in modern terms, everyone is a douchebag. When I drive in commuter traffic, I realize in no uncertain terms exactly how truthful this assertion is.
All of these things being said, I used the phrase “Tramps Like Us” in the initial Runaway Train Blog entry, and that is a pop-culture reference to a Bruce Springsteen song called “Born To Run”. I find the song to be enjoyable, but I’ve never spent any money on it, as a single, or on the album it came from, or on anything Springsteen. Why? Because Springsteen, from my perspective, is a douchebag.
Allow me to clarify my perspective on the matter:
I started to use the word “douchebag” on the streets of New Jersey in the 1970s, around the time “Born To Run” was released. By that time, the slang “douchebag” had already degenerated in meaning to the general sense of “contemptible” that it is now. Nobody handed me a dictionary to help me understand the word, but instead, I interpreted the word by the manner it was used and the inflection applied. At some level, even at the age of seven or eight years old, I could intuit the meaning. It was apparent to me that anyone who irritated me was a douchebag. I would pronounce someone as a douchebag, and anyone who echoed the sentiment ratified the truth of it and certified a sort of kinship. Good times.
In this manner, the vast majority of my high school “burnout” friends in the 1980s had summarily concluded that Springsteen was, indeed, a douchebag. In the same manner that I had inferred the meaning of “douchebag”, we all were able to recognize Springsteen as a douchebag. There was never a reason why about it, it was simply so, and to that we all agreed.
It turns out that, somewhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s, when I was still a Jersey guy, that I was coerced by my AA sponsor to go to a Springsteen concert at the old Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. I did not want to go, not even for free, not even if I was paid to do it. After a heap of persistence, I decided the outing with my sponsor would give me some necessary bonding time.
Anyway, I went. Yeah, Springsteen is a douchebag, and I knew it to be so for around twenty years at that point, but I liked a couple of his old songs from the 1970s, so I figured I would get through it and be done with it. Hell, maybe my mind would be changed on the matter. My mind was not changed. In fact, I was able to see what previously I could only intuit. I knew, at some level, that Springsteen is a douchebag, but that night I learned the “why” of it.
People often raved about the three-hour performance and high energy of Springsteen concerts. Turns out that it was basically an hour and a half of music and another hour and a half of political monologue. Seriously. The band played for five minutes and Springsteen would rant for ten. That explains both the “high energy”, with long pauses for rest between songs, and the lengthy show, which was extended to include Springsteen’s ceaseless jabbering. At the time, I personally leaned right, but didn’t give a shit about politics, and I had no idea of what was revealed as Springsteen’s ardent leftist leanings. I couldn’t much discern exactly what the hell Springsteen was going on and on about and it didn’t matter. I was there for an outing, expecting musicians to play music, and what I got was some Boomer jerk-off leftist cult religion. After maybe three songs and three rants, I abandoned off to the concourse to smoke cigarettes and watch the women walk by. I was stuck like that for more than two lousy hours. I was thankfully far enough removed to at least hear myself think and to hear others talk, but the whole thing sucked so bad and promise me, I have not forgotten the degree of suckage involved.
It was not the only cult that my AA sponsor tried to drag me into, but that’s another story for another time.
I am surely not alone as one who detests the political opinions of famous musicians. In my opinion, which is what you have come here for, such people are narcissists, trapped in their ivory towers, with power substantiated by their success and wealth to impose upon others as “influencers”, as if ordinary folk are mindless chimpanzees, lost without the guidance of the elite.
On the other hand, perhaps it can be said that there is a substantial enough amount of automatons that are, indeed, so easily led, and their money, regardless of where it came from, is quite enough to afford luxury homes in Rumson and wherever else in the world the narcissists build their lofty towers.
That reminds me about a particular Saturday afternoon, in Red Bank, a town upriver from Rumson. I was walking arm-in-arm with a girlfriend down Broad Street and she drew my attention to a couple approaching us. It was Springsteen and his wife. Let me just say as an aside that some people, perhaps many people, seem to be so ridiculously fascinated with the rich and famous. Perhaps it is a streak of opportunism. It is very ugly to me, and in that moment, my girlfriend’s ugliness did not escape me. She was suddenly all giddy and wanted to know what we should do, as if somehow these two required some special protocol, something more so than the dozen other couples we had encountered that day and flatly ignored. Of course I told her to ignore these two, as well, reminding her that Springsteen is a known douchebag, and so we did.
It goes to show how we are all douchebags, like I said before. I mean, you have here a known douchebag, the wife of a known douchebag who is, in the least, a douchebag by injection, then you have an opportunistic peasant woman douchebag with gold-dust in her eyes, and me, the douchebag peasant man, insulted by his woman’s behavior, that caused her to abandon her great chance to schmooze with the upper-crust.
Douchebags one and all. Maybe the origins of words really matter.