Bald-headed stepchild

[Alice Faber]

The USA Today weekend supplement, that the New Haven Register thinks is
superior to Parade magazine (bitter, moi?), has a joint interview with
Spike Lee and Douglas Brinkley about New Orleans post Katrina (Lee has a
movie on this and Brinkley a book). The interview is at
<http://usaweekend.com/06_issues/060820/060820katrina.html>. About 1
screen down, Lee refers to FEMA as a "bald-headed stepchild" (presumably
in the universe of government agencies, specifically Homeland Security).
While this is obviously a variant of "red-headed stepchild", also a
semantically appropriate phrase, I was curious whether it was an
established expression that had previously escaped my notice or a nonce
creation by Lee. Googling on the phrase "bald-headed stepchild" gives
518 hits, including the on-line USA Weekend. There is a meta-discussion
at <http://www.wordwizard.com/ch_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=18111> that
doesn't shed much light, as it mostly involves the more common
"red-headed stepchild". In addition, some of the hits refer to a
specific eBay seller whose screen name is "bald headed stepchild".

Most of the dated non-meta hits are from late 2005 or 2006, but I did
find a 2002 ESPN column by the late Ralph Wiley using the phrase:
<http://espn.go.com/page2/s/wiley/020530.html> "But once again, a lack
of mentoring and the Jelly Roll Effect raised their ugly bald-headed
stepchild heads." (From context, Wiley uses the phrase "Jelly Roll
Effect" to indicate that the game always came to easily to Chris Webber,
the player the column is about. But that's a whole nother kettle of fish.)
--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203)
865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                                     fax (203)
865-8963

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org