"clean the place" as in "let's get together"

[Gerald Cohen]

Here's more idle speculation:
Keep in mind the expression "clean out the Augean stables."  The message of
the contentious fellow might have been: "We'll put our differences aside
and work together to make things better." But what he left unspoken
was his conviction that making things better really entails cleaning
up the huge mess left by the political party he disagrees with.

Gerald Cohen


On 9/26/10 2:33 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

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---> -
>
> At 2:35 PM -0400 9/26/10, Ry Rivard wrote:
>> I'm a newspaper reporter in West Virginia. Last week, I went to a
>> meeting in the southern part of the state that began contentiously.
>> During the meeting, the subject of some of the tension said he likes
>> to put things in the past, get together, and "clean the place." It was
>> clear he did not literally mean to wash or tidy up anything.
>>
>> For instance, he said re: some of the divisions in the group, "I say,
>> maybe the next time we'll all be together and we'll clean the place."
>>
>> I didn't have a chance to ask -- though I may call someone on this
>> later this week -- but is anyone familiar with "clean the place"?
>>
> Maybe (idle speculation) it's the same idea as "closed the
> place/joint down"--before you can do that, you have to clean the
> place, so...
>
> LH

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