potato slur

[Jonathan Lighter]

I recommend _The Couch Potato Handbook_ to all interested parties. I cited it in HDAS I.

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: potato slur
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>What a great illustration of the Standard Language Ideology!
>It shows the belief that (a) the presence of a word/phrase in a dictionary
>(especially the OED) legitimizes it, and (b) removing a word/phrase from a
>dictionary would actually affect usage.

And as a one-time acquaintance of Robert Armstrong (a henchman of R.
Crumb), who is not only associated (at least in some quarters) with
the coinage of "couch potato" but has actually received royalties
from the use of the word, I see no slur intended against either
potatoes or couches. Robert was, and I assume is, a remarkably
non-judgmental sort. (FWIW, he always claimed he invented it with
the allusion to "toober" in mind.) I see he's not credited as coiner
by the OED, though, although he was in other stories I've read over
the years. (He's the Armstrong who co-authored _The Official
Couch-Potato Handbook_ in the 1983 cite, but he was already
silk-screening couch potato T-shirts in the mid-1970s.)

larry

>
>
>On 6/21/05 7:45 AM, "Jonathan Lighter" wrote:
>
>> BREAKING NEWS FROM FOX
>>
>> In London today, potato farmers marched on Parliament to demand
>>that the term
>> "couch potato" be removed from the prestigious _Oxford English Dictionary_.
>>
>> The protesting farmers claim that the term demeans the potato and is
>> offensive.
>>
>> They demand it be stricken from the language and replaced with the
>>term "couch
>> slouch."
>>
>> Source: _Fox & Friends_, 3 minutes ago.
>>
>> We report, you deride.
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
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