Urban Dictionary: ‘Norm Coleman’ is a hopeless pursuit, ‘Al Franken’ is a frog

Last seen as the media’s go-to Web site for the “tea-bagging” definition that’s not about protesting taxes, the Urban Dictionary has now found new meaning in the phrase “Norm Coleman”: “The dogged pursuit of a hopeless goal, with utter disregard for a preponderance of contradicting evidence and mounting public distain.” In three definitions for “Al Franken,” all pre-dating his U.S. Senate run, the Minnesota Democrat comes off even worse.

The Urban Dictionary’s earliest “Al Franken” definition, from 2003, is more like a brief and very dated encyclopedia entry:

A former writer for Saturday Night Live, now better known as a liberal activist and comedy writer. Has incited the wrath of many a conservative mainly for cheerfully shoving their own slimeball tactics back in their face. Currently getting very rich off a stupid lawsuit filed by Fox News and dismissed by a very annoyed judge.

The usage example provided now might make a good proposition for a debating society to take up:

“The nice thing about Al Franken is that he doesn’t take himself anywhere near as seriously as Michael Moore.”

The second Franken entry, from 2006, has the phrase all in lower case and two definitions:

1. To succeed in becoming wealthy without talent or charisma
2. To hide a political agenda in the guise of lame comedy and to use large crowds as a cloak for cowardice.

The last “Al Franken” definition is failing the Urban Dictionary’s reputedly lax quality-control, with more down-votes than up-votes from readers:

An ugly frog-faced bastard. But that would be an insult to frogs.

But the single definition for “Norm Coleman” beats the three or four for “Al Franken” simply by being more current — so much so, in fact, that none other than CNN’s Larry King used “pull a Norm Coleman” on his cable TV show last week.

In that case, the Urban Dictionary was ahead of TV. An even newer example shows the interchange in reverse, with Miss California’s Sunday coinage of “opposite marriage” (a man and a woman) attracting more than 1,000 reader votes since Monday.