Lips Are Moving (1935) & Professional Courtesy (1949); Cosmopolitan (1994)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

LIPS ARE MOVING

   An old joke said of lawyers and politicians.  How can you tell he's lying?
 His lips are moving.
    Fred Shapiro had posted this:

I don't know whether this was first used about politicians or lawyers.The
Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations has the following:How can you tell
if a lawyer is lying?His lips are moving.Los Angeles Times, 9 July 1986, at
3.

     Then, Fred Shapiro posted this:

Here's some better information I found since my last posting.  It's taken
from the definitive work on lawyer jokes, an unpublished manuscript by Marc
Galanter:

"I was surprised to discover that this is a rather recent addition to the
lawyer joke corpus, appearing in print first in 1986.  It derives from a joke
about husbands which has been around since at least the 1940s.[Galanter cites
here to Eddie Cantor, World's Book of Best Jokes (1943),p. 171, and Frederick
Meier, The Joke Tellers Joke Book (1944), p. 306.]Although sometimes told about
women, salespeople, senators, criminalsuspects, economists, politicians, and
others, it has become predominantly a lawyer joke -- at least in the United
States."


   This comes from a Newspaperarchive.com scan of a comic
speech-balloon--another encouraging search sign.

   15 June 1935, DENTON JOURNAL (Denton, Maryland), pg. 4, col. 2 comic:
"THE FEATHERHEADS" By Osborne
   PANEL ONE
WIFE:  WELL, WHERE HAVE _YOU_ BEEN SO LATE?
HUSBAND:  WELL--ER--YOU SEE--

   PANEL TWO
WIFE:  BEFORE YOU START--I MIGHT AS WELL TELL YOU I CAN TELL IF YOU'RE LYING!
HUSBAND:  HUH!  I WOULDN'T LIE TO YOU, DARLING--BUT HOW COULD YOU TELL IF I
DID?

   PANEL THREE
WIFE:  BY LOOKING AT YOUR FACE--IF YOUR LIPS ARE MOVING--YOU'RE LYING!!

   PANEL FOUR
WIFE:  WELL--GO ON WITH YOUR STORY.

   PANEL FIVE
DUCK/NARRATOR:  IF YOUR STORY IS DOUBTFUL--LET IT LIE.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
PROFESSIONAL COURTESY

    I don't know Fred Shapiro's latest for this popular joke about lawyers.

    15 June 1949, NASHUA TELEGRAPH (Nashua, New Hampshire), pg. 12, col. 5
("National Whirligig" by Ray Tucker):
   _HUMOR_--Although once a New Deal legalite and bureaucrat, former Price
Administrator and Brain Truster Paul A. Porter has not permitted those
assignments to rob him of his sense of humor.
   In a recent address to a law group, he dared to demean their profession.
   "Three men--a lawyer, an atheist and a professing Christian," he said,
"were shipwrecked on a raft with the sharks circling around.  Then it became
clear that the raft would hold only two of them, they drew lots as to who would
jump off.  The lawyer jumped, but the man-eating sharks turned away and let him
pass through their midst.
   "There," commented the Christian. "he was spared because I offered up
prayers for him."
   "You're wrong," replied the non-believer.  "The sharks spared him out of
professional courtesy."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
COSMOPOLITAN (continued)

   I e-mailed COSMOPOLITAN magazine about the first citation of the
"Cosmopolitan cocktail" in its pages...PLAYBOY runs articles on drinks, but I don't see
that it's searchable online.
   William Grimes's STRAIGHT UP OR ON THE ROCKS has a nice treatment of
"Cosmopolitan" in the 2001 second edition.  I don't know if it's in the first
edition.  A check of Amazon.com's new "in-the-book" search feature shows the
"Cosmopolitan" in Kristin McKloy's SOME GIRLS (1994).

STRAIGHT UP OR ON THE ROCKS:
THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN COCKTAIL
by William Grimes
North Point Press
November 2001
Pg. 119:  The image of vodka as a refresher, and the cocktail as a kind of
sports drink, reached an apotheosis with the Cosmopolitan, one of the stranger
success stories of the present day.  The drink, a pleasant blend of vodka,
cranberry juice, lime juice, and Cointreau, is a slightly wealthier relative of
cranberry coolers like the Cape Codder.  It first surfaced in the late 1980s,
and unlike other fad cocktails, it has not only survived but prospered.  More
than a decade after first being sighted, it may well be the most universally
ordered mixed drink in America, for reasons that one can onlu guess at.  It looks
attractive in a glass, with a pink neon glow.  It bursts with agreeable fruit
flavors.  The key to its phenomenal success may, however, bye the name.  No
one feels silly ordering it.  At a time when classic cocktails command new
respect, it sounds as though it might have a pedigree.  And as a statement, "I am
cosmpolitan" is hard to improve on.  Like a well-written sit-com, it glatters
its audience into believing they are a little more sophisticated and knowing
than they really are.  It's an insider's cocktail that absolutely everyone
drinks, a glossy fake that with effortless charm has insinuated itself into the
cocktail repertoire.  Like the talented Mr. Ripley, it showed up one day wearing
the right clothes.  No one knows if it will ever leave.

Some girls (1994)
by Kristin McCloy
  > Excerpt from page 62 "... wait for her to answer. Claude, can you make a
> Cosmopolitan? Did I go to Andrew's ... it expertly in a silver cocktail
> shaker, vodka and lime juice and Cointreau with a splash of cranberry. What would
> Tommy be doing now, she thought as he ..."