Alas, another perfectly good word has bitten the dust. Like so many other useful words before it, “fair” has been viciously hacked into meaninglessness by an unruly mob of campaign strategists. Despite over a billion Google results, the word “fair” now has but one meaning: “whatever I want whenever I want it, particularly if I am lying on the ground kicking my feet and pounding my fists like a four-year-old.”

Bereaved spokesmen for the word reported that “fair” had fought heroically against: generations of children battling their parents (“it’s not fair” often followed by “I hate you”); overpaid athletes lamenting a bad result; criminals-who-were-caught expressing jealousy for criminals-who-were-not-caught; and virtually all ticketed motorists.

The unfortunate word lost the battle for its life in what appeared to be a minor skirmish over the taxation of the rich.

According to veteran political reporter, Dana Milbank, in The Washington Post, “President Obama admits it: his proposed ‘Buffett Rule’ tax on millionaires is a gimmick.”

Milbank reports that the President said, “There are others who are saying: ‘well, this is just a gimmick. Just taxing millionaires and billionaires, just imposing the Buffett Rule, won’t do enough to close the deficit,’ well, I agree.”

Here is a link to Milbank’s story http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rebuffing-obamas-buffett-rule/2012/04/11/gIQA7m4HBT_story.html

Physicians struggling to save the hapless word expressed guarded optimism when the President himself conceded that the idea was just a gimmick, but the plug was pulled when campaign strategists continued beating the word into meaninglessness at a White House press conference featuring four millionaires and their middle-class assistants. These were presumably the losing semifinalists in the pitched battle for naming rights to the coveted rule recently won by Warren Buffett. Milbank described them as “bobbleheads.”

In a related development, financial reporters have observed that Mr. Buffett is nothing if not a good dealmaker. They speculate that he traded personal humiliation for an ironclad commitment that no such rule would ever become law. A possible nominee for a deal of the year award.

As the late “fair” was being wheeled out for burial, emergency medical technicians delivered “triple digit IQ” to the intensive care unit where it was immediately put on life support.