Dogcatcher elections (1906); Fired With Enthusiasm (1932?); Chile con carne

[Laurence Horn]

>DOGCATCHER ELECTIONS
>
>    You used to hear this phrase all the time.  However, it seems to have
>disappeared, with most of the dogcatchers.  Trent Lott's star has fallen so
>fast, for example, that he "couldn't get elected dog-catcher."
>    I didn't see it in the RHHDAS or in William Safire's POLITICAL DICTIONARY.
>  It's not in the CASSELL DICTIONARY OF SLANG.
>    I think it did start with the below-mentioned candidate.  I haven't
>checked the WASHINGTON POST.
>
>
>    10 October 1906, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 2:
>       _Hearst in California._
>    "Hearst couldn't be elected dog catcher in any part of my State," declared
>State Treasurer Truman Reeves of California yesterday to Mayor McClellan, on
>whom he paid a social call.
>
>    1 April 1968, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 28:
>    Of the President (LBJ--ed.), she said, "I think he saw the opposition
>growing so great that he couldn't run for dog catcher and would rather go
>down in history as having done his best than be defeated in November."
>
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>
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>FIRED WITH ENTHUSIASM
>
>    Not to be confused with CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, the HBO show by Larry David,
>a co-creator of SEINFELD.   Perhaps Fred Shapiro has some thoughts on the
>purported Vince Lombardi coinage.
>
>
>    7 September 1970, NEW YORK TIMES, "Lombardi Without Tears" by Robert
>Lipsyte, pg. 24:
>    WIth the same personality and a lesser intelligence, Lombardi would never
>have been able to tell men that they had better be "fired with enthusiasm or
>you'll be fired with enthusiasm."
>
>    16 September 1932, NEW YORK TIMES< pg. 16:
>    Eugene Savage, mural painter, said that if the student going to the
>American Academy in Rome "was not fired with enthusiasm, he should be fired
>by the director."
>
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>
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>CHILE CON CARNE
>
>    Supposedly, the first "chile con carne" citation is 1857.  Supposedly,
>it's an American dish.  John Mariani's encyclopedia includes that famous
>quotation that chile con carne is "a detestable food with a false Mexican
>title which is sold in the United States from Texas to New York."
>    So what do you make of this, which I came across today?
>
>MEMOIRS OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
>by William Davis Robinson
>Philadelphia: Lydia R. Bailey, printer
>1820
>
>Pg. 71:  ..."the end justifies the means."
>
>Pg. 84:  ..._rancho_*...
>*_Rancho_ signifies a farm...
>
>Pg. 150:  ..._chile_ (capsicum_)...
>Pg. 150:  For all culinary purposes, this vegetable is as essential to the
>Mexican, as salt is to the European, and indeed more so, because a Mexican
>would rather go without bread, than lack chile with his meat.
>
>(Yes, no "chile con carne," but "chile with his meat" is close--ed.)
>
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>
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>BORDELAISE SAUCE (continued)
>
>    I added the WIlliam Makepeace Thackeray citation for "escargot," but left
>off that he has one for "Bordelaise sauce" as well.  It's on LITERATURE
>ONLINE and another database (MOA-Mich. books?).
>    William Makepeace Thackeray, THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP ON HIS WAY THROUGH
>THE WORLD (1860; NY: Harper Brothers, 1862), pg. 144:  "Aren't you tired of
>truffles and ecrevisses a la Bordelaise;..."
>
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>
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>PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS
>
>    The NEW YORK TIMES article is 23 October 1985, pg. C1, "Growing U.S. Taste
>for Mushrooms."