There are certain phrases that are used over and over and over, and the person using them actually believes he thought of them.

You hear them every year hundreds of times and nobody seems to notice they are the exact same things of which you were breathlessly informed last year, and the year before, and the decade before that.

One of these is a phrase I have heard from conservatives since the 1950s. They give you that constipated, Wisdom look that signals they are going to say something really stupid, and they say, “This time we are going to get the Negro vote.”

In that case at least the words change. In the 1960s every conservative would give you that same constipated look and say “We are going to get the BLACK vote.”

By the time for the next changeover, to “African-American,” it became “We are going to get the MINORITY vote.” I have heard this piece of Inside Information several thousand times, and every time the guy telling me thought he had come up with it.

Since the early 1980s, this phrase will eventually come from every liberal you talk to for awhile:

“You know, AIDs is becoming a heterosexual disease.”

I heard that many times in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1986-1994 and 1994 to 2004. And I expect to hear it as long as I talk with liberals.

They also say that AIDS is not a homosexual disease. Then they say it is becoming a heterosexual disease.

And, of course, every one of them just read it so they think they are telling me something right off the press.

Another thing you will always be told on every documentary is that just because this group eats raw meat and cannibalizes and can’t count to ten, you think they’re primitive.

But, says every documentary, “They are really very sophisticated.”

Compared to what? If absolutely everybody, including howler monkeys, is “very” sophisticated, that means that nothing is NOT very sophisticated.

That’s like saying everybody has a very advanced sense of smell. If everybody has it, it’s not “very.”

But there has not been a documentary since the 1950s which did not say its subjects were “amazingly sophisticated” and “very sophisticated.”

Then there are the heroes. If you were dead drunk in the Twin Towers building on 9/11 and didn’t wake up while you died in the collapse of the building, you were a “hero of 9/11.”

If you were one of the thousands who were drafted, sent into World War II, and lost his rifle as soon as you hit the beach, you were part of “The Greatest Generation.” It doesn’t matter if you were one of those who swallowed a clock to get out of the draft, you were a hero.

Compared to what?

Once again, everybody is a hero, so no comparatives need apply.