This election season is almost over - praise the gods on Mt. Olympus!

I’m wondering if any of the words that have now been designated as dirty will continue to have that status from here on out, or if their dirty status is just a fad.

Here are just some of the words that, thanks to this election cycle, are now officially dirty:

Muslim - Apparently some people aren’t voting for Barack Obama because they still believe him to be a Muslim, even though we’ve all been making fun of this for months now. But more importantly, when did America get an official state religion that you had to belong to in order to be considered for the Presidency? Did I miss that Constitutional Amendment? If “Muslim” is a dirty word, then I’d like to nominate “Christian” for that treatment, please.

Elite - The military, which is generally supported by the very same people using this word as a smear, uses phrases like “elite squads” or “elite commandos” all of the time in their proper, complimentary context. If “elite” is another way of saying “the best,” then don’t we want “elite” teachers teaching children, “elite” engineers designing our bridges and “elite” scientists running our nuclear power plants? If learning and wanting to be smarter is “elitist,” then why do we send every child to school?

Professorial - This is related to elitism, but I think it deserves its own mention. On September 23 of this year, TV loudmouth Chris Matthews asked this question: “Is Barack Obama too professorial? Too detached from the human experience?” The implication being that smart people are somehow “detached” from normalcy, and that being a college professor is somehow a bad thing. But for Joe the Plumber to be able to have a job, some “professorial” people had to engineer the whole idea of running water and indoor plumbing, as well as the processes of designing and manufacturing pipes and tools and so forth. Yes, I’ll call Joe if I have a leaky faucet, but if I need someone to design equipment to manufacture the tools which Joe will use, I’ll have to call a well-educated, “elite” engineer who was, at some point, taught by several college professors.

Socialism - Our two closest allies, Canada and Great Britain, are proudly socialist people, as is the whole of western Europe and the Scandinavian countries like Sweden, not to mention much of Central and South America. These countries provide health care and education for their citizens and still manage to be major parts of the global economic system. In the United States, we have socialized fire departments, police departments, schools and, of course, the military, which is the largest socialist expenditure on the entire planet. The same people who use socialism as a dirty word would never stand for the fire department asking for their credit card number before saving their children from a fire. And yet those same people who demand that we all pay for the military balk at the idea that we should all pay for health care - which we already do anyway through insurance premiums. If being a capitalist means that everyone has to fend for themselves, then count me as a socialist, please.

I can only imagine what words will be officially dirty in 2012. Thor help us.