"Hot dog" victory

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

"HOT DOG" VICTORY

http://www.hot-dog.org/TheHFile.htm

   The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council has changed its story.  Credit is given to Barry Popick (sic).
   Credit must also be given to Allan Metcalf & David Barnhart, World Wide Words, the Straight Dope, Smithsonian magazine, David Graulich's hot dog book, and others for publishing the work of Gerald Cohen, Leonard Zwilling, David Shulman, Peter Tamony, and the other wordsmiths who worked on this in addition to me.
   The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council got away with not telling the truth for over half a decade, and just couldn't do it any longer...It's said that the Dorgan myth began in 1934.  I've found earlier, so they still have to correct some things on the site.
   Two recent stories (published while I was in Iceland) do not mention me, but come pretty close:

USA TODAY, 3 July 2001
   The story is now disputed, primarily because no one can find the cartoon.  (Uh, no--ed.)  Sebak says there are Dorgan illustrations of Stevens and a hot dog, but not the one the legend describes.  Also, historians find references to the "hot dog" in New England in the 1890s.
   So this May, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council officially backed off the Dorgan story.  (Hey, thanks for telling me, guys--ed.)
   "I must confess, it was a bit of a major shift," says Council vice president Janet Riley, calling the retraction a "quest for the frank truth."

TIMES-PICAYUNE (New Orleans), 4 July 2001
   The origin of that story can be traced to newspaper columnist H. L. Mencken, who was not exactly a slouch at creative journalism and frequently researched his subject matter in taverns.
   The council says hot dog historian Bruce Kraig, a retired college professor, believes that story is a lot of hooey and also that the Germans always ate their dachshund sausages with bread.  Furthermore, he says college magazines of the 1890s used the term "hot dog" and at Yale University in 1894, dog wagons sold hot dogs at dormitories.  He says the term was simply a sarcastic comment on the origin of the meat.
   So there you have it--hot diggety dog history.  ("Hot diggety" is 1906--ed.)

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WINDY CITY

   A database check for "Windy City" shows that the July 5th BANGKOK POST and the July 14th COLUMBUS DISPATCH both have it wrong.  It's not the 1893 World's Fair.
   This work never ends.