Smoke-filled room (1915, 1920)

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Wed Jul 21 06:06:49 UTC 2004


MISC.
 
www.barrypopik.com: More stuff on the website. "Brownie/Meter Maid," 
"bodega." 
www.wordspy.com: Where is Paul? 
  
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SMOKE-FILLED ROOM 
  
With the Republican National Convention coming to New York, I thought I'd 
take another look at "smoke-filled room." 
  
   
(NEW YORK TIMES)  
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2003/10/12/2003071408
Candidates commence alliterative assault with resonant rhetoricBy William 
Safire
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK 
Sunday, Oct 12, 2003,Page 9     
   
Nobody has yet approached the alliterative heights of President Warren G. 
Harding. Not only did he coin the phrase founding fathers -- since edited to 
founders to escape sexism -- but the only newspaper publisher to reach the White 
House also set the high standard to which subsequent generations of 
alliterators have aspired to attain. Ohio's favorite son emerged from the famed 
"smoke-filled room" to rally the nation to "not heroics but healing; not nostrums but 
normalcy; not revolution but restoration; not agitation but adjustment; not 
surgery but serenity; not the dramatic but the dispassionate; not experiment but 
equipoise."  
      
    
(WWW.BARTLEBY.COM)
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition.  2002.  
smoke-filled room   
    
A popular expression used to describe a place where the political wheeling 
and dealing of machine bosses (see machine politics) is conducted. The image 
originated during the Republican presidential nominating convention of 1920, in 
which Warren G. Harding emerged as a dark horse candidate.      1 
    
    

(OED)
1920 Evening Star (Washington) 14 June 1/2 Harry Daugherty..predicted that 
about 2.11 a.m., ‘in a *smoke~filled room’, on a certain night during the 
republican national convention, the next nominee would be chosen. 1965 G. MCINNES 
Road to Gundagai v. 77 These damp and smokefilled holes. 1979 Now! 21-27 Sept. 
74/3 Presidential candidates are not selected by political pros in 
smoke-filled rooms these days.
  
    
(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)
14 February 1915, Chicago <i>Daily Tribune</i>, pg. 6:
Candidates have not been required to talk in smoke filled rooms, and they 
have not been disturbed by the boisterous conduct of men and boys in the 
approaches to the halls.
  
11 June 1920, New York <i>Times</i>, pg. 2:
The home (illegible--ed.) roared approval of the work that had been done by a 
few men in a smoke-filled room.
  
  
(WWW.NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM) ("smoke-filled room" and "nominate") 
 Lima News  Tuesday, June 15, 1920 Lima, Ohio   
...he predicted that about a. a SMOKE-FILLED ROOM" on a certain night, 
during.....It was the plan of the Old Guard to NOMINATE Lowden but the Missouri 
expose..



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