"congressional meat-puppet"..........!

[Scot LaFaive]

>
> To get back on topic...


Okay then.

Related to this, I remember this exchange from the movie, "The Fifth
Element." I still don't really understand it.

(Police): Are you classified as human?
(Bruce Willis): Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

Scot

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "congressional meat-puppet"..........!
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> To get back on topic...
>
> Another meaty sci-fi putdown is "meatbag" -- as used by the robot
> Bender on the show "Futurama". Discussed by Mark Peters here:
>
> ---
> http://blog.oup.com/2008/07/futurama/
> The most catchy and common insult debuted in the very first episode
> “Space Pilot 3000,” when Fry questions the true shininess of Bender’s
> hindquarters, who replies, “Shinier than yours, meatbag.” Then in the
> third episode, Bender—ever the thoughtful dinner companion—said,
> “Cheer up, meatbag. You barely touched your amoeba.” Much later, in
> “Amazon Women in the Mood”, Fry’s probable death is pre-mourned by
> Bender (“I’ll miss you, meatbag”) and Leela (“Me too, meatbag”). In
> the most recent episode, the direct-to-DVD movie The Beast With a
> Billion Backs, Bender uses the word three times, showing his
> diabolical (“Too long have we been slaves to the meatbags!”) and
> cuddly (“I love you meatbags”) feelings on the subject. And in the
> preview for the next DVD release, Bender’s Game, he asks some kids,
> “What you doin’, mini-meatbags, shootin’ craps?” coining the awesomest
> nickname for kids since house ape.
> Though this meaning is new, meatbag isn’t: an OED quote from 1848
> shows it used to mean the tummy region: “Dick was as full of arrows as
> a porkypine: one was sticking right through his cheek, one in his meat
> bag.” Meat is the meat of many other Bender-propelled insults,
> including slabs of immaturity that are linked by the word (meatloaf,
> meatball) and the category (pork-pouch, pork pie, sausage link,
> beefball). In Bender’s hard drive, human and pig and cattle and
> breakfast are all part of one grossly mammalian family, as we are.
> ---
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Dave Wilton<dave at wilton.net> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: "congressional meat-puppet"..........!
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > And there is the 1994 SF short story, "They're Made of Meat," by Terry
> > Bisson. This was an much-copied story on the internet about ten years
> ago.
> > Very popular.
> >
> > http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm
> >
> > Made into a video:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> > Benjamin Zimmer
> > Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 9:08 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: "congressional meat-puppet"..........!
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>
> >> So where does the "meat" part come from?
> >
> > It's a pejorative for a human who acts like a puppet. "Meat" = human (or
> > human-ish). Cf. "meatspace" vs. "cyberspace".
> >
> > William Gibson used "meat puppet" to mean "a person with a neural cut out
> > chip;
> > the chip allows computer software to completely control their actions":
> >
> > http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1439
> >
> >
> > --Ben Zimmer
>  >
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