Among the dizzying array of news stories to surface in the past several days, regarding the tawdry reality show that the body politic has settled into, one of my favorite old-school slang terms captured a bit of the air in the room.
Former FBI Directory James Comey posted an image to social media, of seashells, arranged to read “86 47,” which led to significant backlash, with many claiming that the messaging was calling for the assassination of President Donald Trump.
Comey, who apologized in a subsequent post, stated that he assumed the image was a political message, but failed to realize that people associate those numbers with violence. Now, I know that some folks are oblivious to some forms of supposedly clever messaging, but I have a hard time believing the former FBI head didn’t get the obvious point of the image. An implication of violence, though, not so much.
I’m one of those people who do not see the connection. I use the phrase “86” all the time, when I’m referring to things I have decided to excise, whether that’s grocery items from my list or a story I’m working on that, for whatever reason, won’t see the light of day.
Despite Comey’s apology, the damage was already done, with plenty of righteous indignation spreading across social media, and even an investigation by Secret Service agents.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spearheaded the hysteria, writing on X last Thursday that Comey “just called for the assassination” of the President, and that the matter was under investigation.
It occurred to me that the whole “86” phraseology had been used recently regarding the president, and it wasn’t too hard to recall the context.
A quick Google search revealed a slew of “86 46” merchandise that was prevalent a few years ago, meaning to impeach ol’ Sleepy Joe. Hats, shirts, stickers and other paraphernalia bore the phrase “86 46.”
When that stuff was prominent, it, like the “Let’s Go Brandon” stuff was amusing; tongue-in-cheek, but in no way was it ever meant to imply that Biden should be assassinated, nor was there ever any righteous indignation, or investigations, targeted at those sending such messages into the world. So, it’s curious as to the mental gymnastics employed to arrive at the conclusion that when referring to Biden’s successor, it’s a threat of assassination.
Cognitive dissonance aside, the term “86” is one that, in my opinion, should be used more frequently in everyday parlance. There are several other slang terms that seem relegated to days of yore which I am fond of that I’d argue the same, but for the sake of the scope of today’s scrawling, I’ll stick to the term de jour.
Eighty-six, as it is implied in Comey’s post, means to throw out or “get rid of something,” per Merriam-Webster.
Merriam-Webster also mentions that the term has been used to mean “to kill,” but that is not included in the official entry, due to a sparseness of use. That connotation has been used as a slang term in the military, for killed in action.
The term is said to originate from 1930’s soda counter slang, to connote when an item was sold out, but it can also refer to kicking out, or refusing service, to patrons of bars and restaurants, if they become too inebriated or unruly.
One source I’ve found on the topic mentions a speakeasy in New York City, which was on the corner of 86th street, during Prohibition. It was a location, allegedly, where many politicians, lawyers, captains of industry, etc., etc., drank, and whenever cops were about to raid it, they’d call and alert for the important folks to head to the 86th, as the back door faced that street, while the cops came in the front door, so the movers and shakers could abscond without being seen. Now that story could be apocryphal, but it certainly seemed interesting to me.
In pop culture, the band Green Day recorded a song with the title “86” on its 1995 album Insomniac. The chorus, which goes “There’s no return from 86/Don’t even try” was specifically written by frontman Billie Joe Armstrong about the band’s persona non grata status around the hallowed punk rock ground of Gilman Street, a San Francisco rock club that the band frequently played before becoming massively commercially successful.
The term gets around in the common vernacular, still, but not too often. Many private citizens (which Comey is now) have said far worse, more crude things about presidents, whether that person was Trump, Biden, Obama, or anyone else who has sat at the Resolute Desk.
So while the naysayers of a presidential administration might sell merchandise with messaging calling for the impeachment of the current officeholder, whether it was Biden or Trump (and, yes, there are already “86 47” T-shirts for sale online), the fact is that Trump was elected fair and square, and unless he is 86’d from office, by the terms laid out in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, he will be the President for the next three and a half years.
I have an idea of something that can be 86’d from government, however: how about our heads of state do away with nonsense, like harping on an allegedly stolen election from five years ago, or posting chest-thumping dispatches to social media that assail pop stars for things they’ve said? Eighty-six stuff like this and get back to governing. Stop with intelligence-insulting distractions and stupidity, and do the job that We the People chose you to do.
