POLITICO-RELIGIOUS

I'm always fascinated by obscure bits of news, especially if it sounds to be just this side of a hoax or a money making scheme.  These were my thoughts when I began to spend a few hours reading and researching the claims made in an article about the American political news and opinion website -- POLITICO.  According to stories that I found on the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, and Mediaite.com there exists a site owned by a private citizen in Great Britain that has been ordered by the legal firm representing POLITICO.com to cease and desist the use of his wholly owned domain name, tory-politico.com; transfer his domain to POLITICO; and compose a letter to promise not to phuck with POLITICO again.....Really.  How would any sane person confuse Tory Politico with POLITICO?  Mediaite.com also related that another site, The College Politico, has received a similar letter demanding an end to thecollegepolitico.com.

My first response was to go to the site tory-politico.com and see what all the fuss was about.  Unfortunately, a hundred zillion other folks may have been trying to do the same and the site crashed or no site existed or the lawyers for POLITICO won and the site was taken down.......  So, I continued my research, which included checking out the definition of the word politico from Dictionary.com:

POLITICO

–noun, plural -cos.
a politician.

Origin:
1620–30; < It or Sp

politico-  a combining form representing political in compound words: politico-religious.

n.
pl. po·lit·i·cos
A politician.

[From Italian or from Spanish político, both from Latin polīticus, political; see politic.]

Teachers like dictionaries.  I particularly like the dictionaries that tell you the dates and origins of words.  The dictionary reference to compound word use is also very interesting.  That compound word reference and the quote from the owner of ToryPolitico planted another suspicion in my mind.

"in the next couple of days I will be considering my option, this could involve launching a “Save Tory Politico” campaign and a fundraising operation to fund a defence."

Gee, could this be a scheme by a domain name reseller to promote a slew of politico-[your word].com or [your word]-politico.com websites.  Is there money to be made here?  For a moment, or two (or three), I considered that the whole controversy may be contrived.  Then, my better angels got hold of me and I wondered what I or anyone else could do to support the Save Tory Politico or Save College Politico movements.

Hmmm.

Blog, write letters, complain to POLITICO, and?  (.....maybe...)

Who will stop POLITICO?  Who is next on their list?  Look out Soho Politico -- a greedy American may be reaching for you from across the pond.
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