drink the kool-aid (1982, 1985)

[Sam Clements]

I screwed up.  Column 5 of page 1

sc
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Clements" <SClements at NEO.RR.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 16:29
Subject: Re: drink the kool-aid (1982, 1985)


>A slightly earlier cite using newspaperarchive.  (Allen Ginsberg speaking
>at
> Gettysburg College)
>
> 20 February 1981  _Gettysburg(PA) Times_   Front page, col. 1
>
> "We are all being put in the place of the citizens of Jonestown, being
> told
> by our leaders to drink the Kool Aid of nuclear power."
>
> At least, I hope this is the same meaning.
>
> Sam Clements
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Benjamin Zimmer" <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 16:06
> Subject: drink the kool-aid (1982, 1985)
>
>
>> OED3 dates "drink the kool-aid" ('to demonstrate unquestioning
>> obedience or loyalty') to 1987. Here it is from 1982, metaphorically
>> extended from the Jonestown massacre:
>>
>> ---
>> 1982 John Caris _Reality Inspector_ 112 Did contemporary society now
>> have a leakage problem; was it losing its survival consciousness; was
>> it attempting a global Jonestown incident? How long would people
>> continue to drink the kool-ade of environmental pollution and
>> tranquilized thinking?
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=wlcMzrtP0c4C&pg=PA112
>> ---
>>
>> In a 2005 thread I noted that, for some, the expression could be
>> understood as relating not to Jonestown but to Ken Kesey's Electric
>> Kool-Aid Acid Tests:
>>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509D&L=ADS-L&P=25814
>>
>> Also suggested by the Wikipedia entry:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid
>>
>> The acid-spiked alternative reading is at play in this 1985 cite:
>>
>> ---
>> 1985 _Akron (OH) Beacon Journal_ 26 June (NewsBank) Even if you don't
>> drink the Kool-Aid, a Grateful Dead show is a trip.
>> ---
>>
>> Most of the other mid-'80s cites in the databases are Jonestownesque,
>> however:
>>
>> ---
>> 1985 Carole Bayer Sager _Extravagant Gestures_ 40 How lucky for both
>> of us that you were not in Jonestown, for surely you would have drank
>> the Kool-Aid.
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=whINWQng1dUC
>> ---
>> 1985 _Washington Post_ 23 Sep. C1/2 What he didn't want, Foley was
>> telling Joyce Aboussie, Gephardt's campaign manager, was "what I call
>> the politics of Jim Jones, you know, that 'let's drink the Kool-Aid'
>> kind of downer."
>> ---
>>
>> Still, I wonder if the happier evocation of acid tests helped to keep
>> the image of "drinking the kool-aid" from being too much of a
>> "downer."
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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