Unique, frozen, and...

So Bush trots out his presidential veto as a gaggle of snowflake babies looks on.

Of course Bush's stated rationale for using the veto is pathetically stupid. That goes without saying.

But I thought I knew what it meant to call a person a "snowflake". It has at least one well-established slang meaning with which I am familiar, according to which it is typically used by a black man to refer to a passing white woman, intimating a charming cocktail of racism and sexual predation.

But the Christian Right is shockingly ignorant of black urban slang. Now, apparently, "snowflake" also refers to adopted babies originating as unwanted frozen embryos that would otherwise have been destined for destruction. (Such embryos are still destined for destruction, but at least they won't be doomed to use in stem cell research--evidently a distinction that concerns the baby Jesus deeply.)

Why "snowflake"?

Perhaps because each snowflake baby is unique--though that hardly distinguishes them from babies of other sorts.

Perhaps because snowflake babies started out as frozen--that seems fair enough.

On the other hand, perhaps this use of the term also has a racial connotation, as a visual survey of the snowflake babies in question suggests.