"deck chairs on the Titanic"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Tue Jul 31 21:29:03 UTC 2007


"All the new people want an office close to the President's. You should see them
scramble; it's like fighting for a deck chair on the Titanic."

  Yeah, you needed a good seat to watch yourself sink. You couldn't do it in a stupid lifeboat.

  JL

Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Stephen Goranson
Subject: "deck chairs on the Titanic"
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Fred antedated "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" with "like switching
deck chairs on the Titanic," April 5, 1970. Bill antedated that with "shuffling
deck chairs on the Titanic," Dec. 29, 1969.

Possibly--or possibly not--these were influenced by January 17, 1969 reports in
both the Washington Post and NY Times quoting Liz Carpenter of the Johnson
administration: "There are already a lot of new faces in the White House.
All the new people want an office close to the President's. You should see them
scramble; it's like fighting for a deck chair on the Titanic."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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