Village's missing idiot

[Charles Doyle]

While many of us relate the saying "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot" specifically with the current president, and it may have been an Ivinsism from Shrub's gubernatorial days, the core of the expression has entered popular currency as an insult of wider application.

As early as 31 July 1997, a quotation appeared in the _Pittsburg Post Gazette_: "'Somewhere in the world, there are two villages missing their idiots,' one police officer theorized."

A letter-to-the-editor of the _Arkansas Democrat-Gazette_ for 1 December 2000 declared, "I can't but wonder that (sic) somewhere in this great state of Arkansas, some village is missing its idiot." The reference, improbably, is Bill Clinton!

A good many other instances of the proverb used in non-W'istical applications can be rounded up from Lexis-Nexis and Google.

--Charlie
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