Seems like it wasn’t Edwards’ home town paper, the Raleigh News and Observer, who coined the phrase “Senator Gone.” It was:
coined by The Pilot, the weekly newspaper of Southern Pines, in the southeastern edge of Moore County. Edwards grew up in the Moore County town of Robbins, about 20 miles north.
The Pilot, with a circulation of 15,000, published an editorial June 25, 2003, while Edwards’ presidential campaign was in its formative states, complaining that he had not been doing his job as a senator.
“During his 30 years in Washington, Jesse Helms was known as Senator No,” the editorial begins. “Four and a half years into his first term, John Edwards is becoming known as Senator Gone.”
Me thinks that the N&O might have taken a little bit on themselves, thinking it was them as his home town paper. Easy mistake to make, though. Also, to call it an epithet?
A term used to characterize a person or thing, such as rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn or the Great in Catherine the Great.
A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person.
Yup. Fits. The other definition, An abusive or contemptuous word or phrase, wouldn’t be quite correct, since Senator Gone is pretty much factual.
