BERLIN - Anonymous sources close to Merkel report that she is brow-beating her staff for the correct word to describe what she wants to call the "Even More Unified European Union".
The penalty for being politically incorrect in word choice is unfathomable to Merkel, according to the source - thus the caution.
Here are the words bandied about at the staff level:
- Empire, used in the MSM already
- Nation, rejected because of nationalistic overtones
- Union, old hat, did not work the first time
- League, the League of nations already flopped
- United Europe, too copy cat. Germany wants to be superior
- Republic, rejected because of Republicans in U.S.A.
- Homeland, does not translate into politically correct words in German
- Club, too informal
- NATO, already taken
- Gefängnis, chosen because nobody knows what it means anyway, and it sounds cool.