Paul Reiser and "Don't Go There"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I noticed that guests on "The Jerry Springer Show" were saying "Don't even go there!" around 1994.  Springer reached a point where he once asked (something like) "What's all this 'Don't even go there?'"  Presumably this was a new one on him.
I don't know when Paul Reiser began to use it on his show, but unless an earlier Reiser quote from his series is forthcoming, I'd be very skeptical of the claim.

The earliest exx. I found (all from the Springer show) all included the word "even."  Nowadays it's usually left out.


JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Paul Reiser and "Don't Go There"
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I am reading an unpublished manuscript that makes the assertion that Paul
Reiser's expression "Let's not go there" (on the TV show Mad About You,
1992-99) may have originated or popularized the phrase "don't go there."
Any opinions on the validity of this assertion?

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
Yale Law School forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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