Opinion: Put a veepstake in this cliche’s heart

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There are a lot of odd people around, many of them roaming distractedly about the dusty halls of this downtown Los Angeles institution, who get deeply irritated by overused words and cliches. We in the journalism field often refer to such people as ‘copy editors,’ and I like to think I’m not as obsessive as these tweedy nerds. And yet... the word ‘Veepstakes’ is really starting to fry my potatoes.

On New Year’s Day, The Times printed an editorial about phrases we’d like to see excised from the lexicon. ‘Veepstakes’ didn’t make the list, no doubt because Barack Obama and John McCain hadn’t yet even emerged as their parties’ presidential front-runners, let alone gotten around to thinking about their running mates. Now that the decision is imminent, it seems impossible to turn on the news or read a paper without running across the word.

‘Veepstakes’ didn’t just pop up for the 2008 campaign -- I know, because I looked it up. In the Los Angeles Times, there have been 11 mentions of the word in 2008 and zero in 2004, but a computer search turned up two mentions in 2000. A more comprehensive search on Factiva, a database of hundreds of news publications from around the world, turned up 546 stories with the word in 2008 and 389 in 2004. Yet even if the word isn’t new, there is a pattern here: It’s appearing a lot more often in this campaign. In other words, it has crossed that invisible barrier that separates clever from irritating, even to non-word-nerds.

To political writers desperate for a catchy headline, I have some suggested alternatives: Second-Fiddle Riddle. No. 2 Review. Successor Showdown. In the Running for a Mate. Yeah, that last one is pretty awful. Help me out here, folks. Just please, stop feeding us veepstakes.