Mob does not like its title

Washington Post:

In explaining the timing of his pending resignation, Karl Rove told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob."

The mob?

It's a three-letter grenade of a word -- so French Revolution, so frothy-mouthed peasants torching the streets.

Whether deployed innocuously or insidiously as a substitute for a neutral word like "people," it turns a statement into a putdown, a transformation immediately noted by Rove critics. From Gawker: "Only a mastermind could cast the voice of the people as a mob." Wrote Eugene Robinson in this newspaper: "Benighted fools who don't blindly trust his honesty or fully appreciate his genius are nothing more than 'the mob.' " The word is rooted in mobile vulgus, an ancient Latin phrase used by politicians, which translates into "the fickle crowd." Mobile (pronounced mo-bi-leh) referred to the crowd's tendency to change its collective, uneducated mind. In the 17th century, "mobile" was shortened to "mob." (Let us leave aside a discussion of that other Latinate derivative, la Cosa Nostra, or the opposition grass-roots group Mothers Opposed to Bush.)

The official definition of "mob" now:

(a) The disorderly and riotous part of the population.

(b) The common mass of people; the lower orders; the uncultured or illiterate.

"With most words you expect to have some change in semantics," says Ben Zimmer, the editor for Oxford University Press's American dictionaries. "This one has stayed surprisingly similar to its pejorative roots."

As in, "The mob has many heads, but no brains." (Thomas Fuller, British writer of the 17th century)

It is a word designed to rile, implying as it does that the people are not only (a) stupid, but (b) stupid in a collective cow-herd sense. (Americans would always rather be stupid in an independent way. It's a rugged-individualism thing.)

...

While the author was trying to play word games, literally, what Rove was talking about is the attempt by many Democrats and their media, fellow mobsters, to criminalize political differences. Certainly there has been a lynch mob mentality on display by Senate Democrats who have pursued him like Moby dick because they oppose his political goals. I think the term was appropriate and the story makes the point rather than disproves it.

It certainly shows he does not respect what they are trying to do. I agree with him on that.