An illustration of Gomerite mind control - through the power of words.

What came into your mind when you saw the term "Gomerite" - be honest. Does anything with the word "Gomer" conjure up anything but ridicule or derision in your mind? Was Gomerite "demonization" of the word "Gomer" successful?

The cloaking of an origin - or how to change the connotation of a once  admired term into one of public distain or ridicule is an important aspect of sliding something "off the public radar", how better way to control the minds of the public?

Cloaking through "mind control" is an effective strategy providing instant dismissal for anything associated with the "thing" to be ostracized or evaporated or at least trivialized sufficiently to make it "invisible".

Here is a brief history of how the term "Gomer" was manipulated to bring upon it instant credibility dismissal - in the minds of the many, a most effective "cloaking" strategy.

GOMER - An undesirable hospital patient.

There is dispute both about the origin and the meaning of this odd term. Some dictionaries say it refers especially to a patient of any age who is dirty or undesirable, or somebody elderly who is suffering from dementia or confusion. However, some doctors would specifically limit it to a poor or old person with some chronic condition whose need is not urgent but who is keeping somebody with a more serious problem from getting treatment. The term often appears in glossaries of the sort of medical jargon that never appears, or should never appear, in patients’ notes. Much of this is created by hard-pressed medical types who use gallows humour to distance themselves enough from human suffering to remain sane. It is often said to be an acronym of “Get Out of My Emergency Room!”.

It’s more likely that it actually comes from a character played by Jim Nabor in the Andy Griffith Show on CBS television in the US in 1963-64. The name of his character was Gomer Pyle, a mechanic with a pleasant character but dim-witted, as thick as two planks, a real local yokel. From 1964 to 1970 Jim Nabors had his own spin-off show Gomer Pyle USMC, in which Gomer joined the Marine Corps. Gomer, of course, is itself an inoffensive first name of Biblical ancestry (the original was one of the sons of Japheth in Genesis).

Quite how the name shifted from the auspicious world of the testement into motor repairs and military life to medical matters is far from clear, and it’s this gap in understanding that stops more careful dictionaries from citing these TV shows as the source. However, a key influence is a book on medical life called House of God written pseudonymously under the name Samuel Shem and published in 1978. This popularised the medical sense as an acronym for “Get Out of My Emergency Room” and may indeed have invented it, perhaps on the basis of the slightly older sense of the word.

Often the word "Gomer" is used to disparage or ridicule.

Are you able to accept easily a premise founded on the term "Gomer?" Would you name your child "Gomer" if your answer was not a resounding "yes" to these litmus test questions then it is probable the disolution of the word "Gomer" has been entirely sucessful.

What do you think?