POLITICALFOOTBALL

Political football

A political football is a topic or issue that is seized on by opposing political parties or factions, and made a more political issue than it might initially seem to be. "To make a political football" of something is defined in William Safire's Safire's Political Dictionary as "To thrust a social, national security, or otherwise ostensibly non-political matter into partisan politics". In 1953 the gangster Lucky Luciano complained in an interview to Safire that "I been a political football".

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political football

Noun

  1. A contentious political issue or problem that is often debated or discussed, but that remains unresolved; an issue or problem which is avoided by authorities and handed off to others.
  2. Ongoing unproductive wrangling or posturing between political factions, resulting in failure to deal with an issue or problem in a decisive or appropriate way.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: political football
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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