because N on Salon

[Victor Steinbok]

Don't i it was Salon, but it's been around for quite some time, so I am
not sure what you mean by "formal register". And N is not just noun, but
could be a whole meme. "Because YEAR" might be the oldest of the kind.

TPM and Steve Benen at the Rachel Maddow blog have been using variants
for a couple of years. "Because 'Bengazi!'" and "Because 9/11" have been
standard MO (one could argue that "Bengazi!" replaced "9/11"). In fact,
variants have been used heavily on liberal-leaning blogs to mock
Republican feigned outrage on a number of subjects. I am wondering if it
started as "because crickets", which is syntactically a bit different
(omitted punctuation). But political nature of the source may well be
relevant.

     VS-)

On 12/12/2013 9:03 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
> The following from a column by Jim Newell on Salon today.  Apparently
> because N has made it at least that far into formal register.
>
> "...was voting *against *the deal to reopen the government and avert
> default, because he could, and because 2016."
>
> (Ignore the political nature of the source.  It's the construction I'm
> interested in.)

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