Yeah, I’d never heard or seen of one being used as a verb until this article in The Atlantic on John McCain, lobbyists, and the FCC.

Here’s the potential trouble for McCain: intervening with the FCC to force a vote on a lobbyist’s behalf is a lot like a self-dealing lawmaker earmarking money on a lobbyist’s behalf. In fact, what McCain admits to doing on Iseman’s behalf can be thought of as the regulatory equivalent of an earmark.

Here’s why. Every year the FCC gets about 3,000 letters, many from people in a bind similar to Bud Paxson’s, and many of them generated by lobbyists. An FCC friend says his colleagues are so experienced at dealing with this mail flow that they joke about whether a given piece of mail is a $10,000 letter, a $20,000 letter, and so on. Most of the letters the FCC receives are not acted on. McCain’s letters were.

So the first thing that should stand out about the Paxson case is not the FCC’s eventual ruling but the fact that McCain sent six letters and wrote to each of the commissioners individually (this is unusual) demanding immediate action. The second thing that was unusual was the legal situation. Paxson was asking the FCC to allow an educational license to be purchased by a commercial interest. The FCC had never allowed such a deal.

The third thing that should stand out is the unusual breakdown of how the FCC voted. Susan Ness, a Democratic commissioner, took the rare step of breaking with her fellow Democrats and voting with the Republican commissioners to approve the Paxson deal.

There is a colorful FCC expression for such an unusual decision: it’s called a “Purple Cow.” If an FCCer says “Let’s Purple Cow this,” what he means is “Let’s a make a rule that only applies to this particular case.” Within the FCC, the decision, and Ness’s vote in particular, is widely considered to have been a Purple Cow.

But I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather be than see one!