The buck stops here?

[sagehen]

Charlie asks:
>Did y'all notice  ......?
~~~~~~~
Sure did!  It was much like Foley's own similar evasions when he said, in
effect, that he wasn't going to make any excuses for his behavior and then
went on to catalog what he clearly hoped would be taken as mitigating
factors: his alcoholism and childhood history of abuse by a cleric.
I think these public pronouncements have very different effects depending
on whether they are heard on radio or seen on tv.  Remember the
Carter/Reagan debates?  Listeners to radio thought Carter won hands down,
but television viewers seemed unanimous in giving it to Reagan!  Pictures
clearly overwhelm words.
AM
~~~~~~~
>..... that Speaker Hastert began his much heralded statement to the press
>last week by quoting the expression "The buck stops here" (with an oblique
>but clear attribuiton to Harry Truman)--then proceded to deny any
>responsibility?  He rejected the buck!

Did he not know what the proverb MEANS--or was he able to assume that Fox
News (and the other news outlets) would decline to point out the disconnect
between the proverb and the substance of his statement?

The OED, for its earliest citation of "The buck stops here," cites Truman's
own papers for 1952.  The Washington Post, 15 Dec. 1946, quotes (a
youthful) Clark Clifford describing the plaque on the president's desk with
the saying incribed on it.

According to Keyes's Quote Verifier, a friend of Truman's saw the saying on
a sign on an Oklahoma prison warden's desk; the friend gave Turman a
replica of the sign in Oct. 1945.<

~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>

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