"Mickey Mouse"

[Thom Harrison]

Whatever the origin, terms of abuse seem always to escape from their
original restrictions, and the Mouseketeers song must at least have
modified the range of application.

My memory is of my college days in the sixties, the homecoming parade, and
platoons of drunken fraternity boys perched on the roofs of their houses,
singing M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E,        as the ROTC contingent marched by.

Thom




At 06:44 PM 12/5/01 -0800, you wrote:
>Gerald and all:
>>
>>     It's not so much from the Mickey Mouse character itself as from
>> TV's Mickey Mouse club, with its pre-adolescent members wearing the
>> silly-looking Mickey-Mouse ears and earnestly singing the Mickey
>> Mouse anthem. To sophisticates, this no doubt represented the height
>> of silliness. Then by extension: silly (nit-picking) rules or
>> directives.
>>
>>     Also, in the jazz era a Mickey Mouse band was one regarded as fit
>> only to play for an animated cartoon. (See Robert Gold's _Jazz
>> Talk_). But the present derogatory use of Mickey Mouse does not seem
>> to derive from this jazz use.
>
>About 30 years ago or so, if a college course was thought to be absurdly
>easy to pass, it was called a "Mickey Mouse" course.
>Anne G
>
Thom Harrison
Macon State College