thick on the subject

[Marc Velasco]

Hazarding the slings, arrows and rants of the list, I press on...

Maureen Dowd used the phrase "thick on the subject", a phrase with which I
was not previously familiar (and am thus tempted to assume came into
existence at the moment I read it).

... and he lectured the bewildered Germans, as though they were _thick on
the subject_, that Saddam was evil because he "gassed his own people."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15dowd.html?hp

Does anybody have any information, which in their eternal (or even passing)
magnanimity they'd like to share, as to origins, original meanings, literal
interpretations, littoral interpretations, antedatings, favored usages,
famous utterances, or passages of scripture containing or pertaining to this
phrase?

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