well-traveled snowclone

[Victor Steinbok]

  I am sure Ben Zimmer would correct my contracted "history" of the
claim, but it was not my intent to go deeply into that. I just wanted to
highlight Tancredo's comment, which I just heard on the radio again (the
whole interview is online as well, if anyone wants to subject himself to
that torture).

     VS-)

On 10/21/2010 10:00 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>  An old business snowclone involves the alleged danger/opportunity or
> risk/opportunity duality in a single character. Another version that
> made it into Tom Wolfe's novels is that the Chinese word for "crisis"
> is composed of two symbols--for danger and for opportunity.
>
> Language Log had covered this before:
>
> http://bit.ly/c9HFXl
>
> with a nod to a more direct debunking
>
> http://bit.ly/cWaoWs
>
> This morning, on Colorado Public Radio, Tom Tancredo invented yet
> another version:
>
> "Chinese symbol for opportunity and problem is the same symbol."
>
> Tancredo is not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but
> I thought I'd pass it along.
>
>     VS-)

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