"You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:58 PM -0400 10/8/09, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>Yeah, Conkling was an interesting character, but he was one of the
>major villains of American history.  He had a lot of personal
>defects, with his big negative contribution being to perjure himself
>in order to clinch the acceptance by the Supreme Court of the phony
>theory that the 14th amendment was intended not so much to protect
>the rights of African-Americans as to protect the rights of
>corporations.
>

I guess he had to make that argument, since Fox News wasn't around to
make it first.

LH

>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Ann Burlingham [ann at BURLINGHAMBOOKS.COM]
>Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 3:08 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: "You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"
>
>On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
><bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: "You got a mouse (etc.) in your pocket?"
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>
>>>  And was it really Mark Twain who came up with the version that
>>>  permits kings, editors, and those with tapeworms to use the first
>>>  person plural?  Or is that a case of generalized attribution?  (Sorry,
>>>  Fred, I don't have a YBOQ handy.)
>>
>>  I'm also away from my YB(o)Q, but the earliest cites I can find
>>are attributed
>>  to New York Senator Roscoe Conkling:
>
>
>Apropos of nothing, I was just reading the NYS Legislature's memorial
>volume on Conkling, full of men expounding at length about how they
>would not expound at length. (The sort of book one finds in my house.)
>>>From the quote, I can see why they missed him.
>
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