[lbo-talk] Nicknamania

[andie nachgeborenen]

I read a book on the Chicago Outfit that said all those cool sounding names ("No Nose" and "Fingers" and "Mad Dog" and "Scarface" and the like) were given to the mobsters by newspaper men eager to sell copy. The mob guys themselves called each other "Tony" and "Al." Benjamin Siegel, the founder of Las Vegas, would kill you if you called him Buggsy. You could call him hum Benny, thogh, if you were his friend. Otherwise it was Mr Siegel. jks

"Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net> wrote:I think we can say "Chemical Don," or if you like,
"Ghengis Don."

mbs

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On
Behalf Of loupaulsen at attbi.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 5:20 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] Nicknamania

Remember 'chemical Ali'? Remember how the media always talked about how he
was 'commonly known in Iraq as chemical Ali'? Were we supposed to really
believe this? People walked down the street in Basra: "Hey, there's
chemical
Ali! YO! CHEMICAL ALI! WAZZUUUP!"

I started wondering if anyone in Iraq had ever referred to the guy
as 'chemical Ali' at all. I did a dejanews search and found only one
reference to 'chemical Ali' before 1998. However, it was in a kurdish
USENET
group, so it had some authenticity. My conclusion is that Kurdish forces
started calling him that and then this year the usage exploded into the
western media.

Today, however, we get this:

_ U.S. special forces raided the Baghdad home of microbiologist Rihab Taha,
nicknamed "Dr. Germ," who ran Iraq's secret biological laboratory. Troops
brought out boxes of documents and three men with their hands raised. Taha's
whereabouts weren't immediately known.

- - - -

Now, it's just going too far:

DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer

She is called "Dr. Germ," and he is known as the "Missile Man."

After meeting at a New York seminar hosted by U.N. weapons inspectors in the
early 1990s, Dr. Rihab Taha and Amer Rashid became the power couple of Iraq
(news - web sites)'s clandestine weapons program.

- - - -

Should we fight fire with fire? What would you like to call Bush?
Rumsfeld?
Tommy Franks?

LP
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