Village Idiot

[James A. Landau]

On Wed 02/21/07 at 12:12 AM (that's Eastern Standard Time; it's a reasonable 9:12 AM in the civilized world) "dwhause at jobe.net" <dwhause at JOBE.NET> wrote:

<quote>
I have this "This man is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
coming from a purported collection of sarcastic British
military officer fitness reports from a Nov. 96 email.  (the whole thing
is available if anyone wants such.)
</quote>

I may have seen the same collection, except claiming to be extracted from reports from previous employers of job applicants.  Does your collection include "this man would be out of his depth in a parking-lot puddle?"  Unfortunately I can't date it more closely than that I saw it at an office I worked in from 1996 to 2003.

Just because one hates President Bush does not mean that one should fall into the trap of assuming that a good insult about Bush was invented for Bush.  99% chance it's an old saying being recycled.  For example the practice of referring to "Bush" as "Shrub" goes back to a Captain Hornblower spoof "Captain Honario Harpplayer, R.N." by Harry Harrison, which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1963.  Members of the American Dialect Society should be above wishful thinking as a source of etymologies.

Believe it or not, I heard a NON-PARTISAN joke about President Bush.  It seems that he met a man dressed in desert robes etc. who looked just like Moses.  So Bush asked the man "Are you Moses?"  but the man did not say a word.  Then a Secret Service agent asked the man the same question and the man replied, "Yes, I am.  It's just that the last time I talked to a Bush, I had to spend forty years in the wilderness!"

   - Jim Landau





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