crummies = communists

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:08:44 -0500, Mullins, Bill
<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

>"Fair Enough" Westbrook Pegler, Los Angeles Times Jun 6, 1941;  pg. 2A
>col 7.
[...]
>
>red-baiter -- OED has 1950; and
>
>bleeding heart -- OED has 1958
>
>"The Americans have been on to this for a couple of years, however, and,
>although a few intellectual bleeding-hearts who would say Joe Stalin was
>a Communist lest the comrades call them red-baiters have been insisting
>doggedly that Communism is no issue, nobody is fooled on that point any
>more."

OED has "red-baiter" from 1929, actually. And you can find "bleeding
heart" (both nominal and attributive) in earlier columns by Pegler...

* bleeding-heart, attrib.

1937 _Washington Post_ 15 Jan. 9/1 The good Doctor, who is wintering in
the bleeding-heart and hallelujah sector of Southern California, recently
said he would prefer jail to the payment of a fine for contempt of the
United States House of Representatives.

* bleeding heart, n.

1938 _Washington Post_ 8 Jan. X7/1 And I question the humanitarianism of
any professional or semipro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single
person must be allowed to hunger, but would stall the entire legislative
program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic
figure, to save 14 lives a year.

(The latter column was objecting to an anti-lynching bill then before
Congress, one of many that the Senate recently apologized for not
passing.)


--Ben Zimmer