"rerun of a bad movie"

[victor steinbok]

> The Vietnam story, like a rerun of a bad movie, is repeating itself across the border in Cambodia.

Dec 28, 1971, St. Pet. Times

There are several other hits for Vietnam, some sports metaphors.

> With less than 30 seconds remaining against the Atlanta Hawks, the Washington Bullets were beginning to think they were watching the 10th rerun of a bad movie.

Dec 29, 1992, Albany Herald (AP story on Washington Bullets snapping a
9-game losing streak--hence "10th rerun")

> For the New York Mets, it was like a rerun of a bad movie.

Oct 19, 1986Toronto Star [On the 1986 World Series opener]

VS-)

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "rerun of a bad movie"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> YBQ credits George W. Bush with having compared the alleged machinations
> of Saddam Hussein as "a rerun of a bad movie."
>
> He may have been the first to apply the words to Iraq, but GB turns up more
> than fifty earlier exx. of the metaphor.
>
> Earliest and most notable is from NYT journalist Harrison Salisbury's _Orbit
> of China_ (N.Y.: Harper, 1967), p. 177: "[T]he clamping down on sources of
> conflicting opinion; the closing of windows through which a clear view of
> the real world could be obtained, what was happening in China seemed like
> the rerun of a bad movie."
>
> JL:
>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>

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