whistling in the dark

[Wilson Gray]

Well, abstracting away from that one remark, I thought that he was a
pretty cool guy. :-)
His column ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

-Wilson

On 11/29/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: whistling in the dark
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I remember him. His column appeared in the New York _World-Telegram and The Sun_.(That's one paper. When the _World-Telegram and The Sun_ merged with the _New York Journal-American_ and the _New York Herald-Tribune_ in 1966, they all  became the _World Journal Tribune_.  Some weeks later the whole shootin' match, er, folded.)
>
>   He wrote a couple of bestsellers, including _The Old Man and the Boy_ and _The Honey Badger_.  I also recall that he looked a little like Hemingway and spent a lot of time big-game hunting.
>
>   JL
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: whistling in the dark
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Does anyone else remember Robert Ruark? He used the full form of the
> phrase in his newspaper column: "as scared as a little nigger
> whistling while walking past the graveyard in the dark," IIRC.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 11/29/06, Alison Murie wrote:
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> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Alison Murie
> > Subject: whistling in the dark
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Tom Edsel, on NPR's "On Point"this morning used the phrase "whistling in
> > the dark" in a context that strongly suggested that he meant something like
> > "building castles in the air" rather than warding off fear of the dark by
> > faking insouciance. Has the meaning of this old expression morphed into a
> > new sort of Panglossianism?
> > AM
> > <^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<
> > W is where Worse comes to Worst!
> > <^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<^>:<
> >
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>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Sam Clemens
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam Clemens

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