monkey butt

[Ronald Butters]

"monkey butt" is also a slang term for external yeast infections to which athletes such as long-distance runners and cyclists are especially prone to.

On Dec 13, 2011, at 9:07 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> A bit of grammar...
>
> Evan McMorris-Santoro--one of TPM enterprising reporters whose writing
> could be significantly improved by a sharp editor--put out an
> interesting introduction to a piece on David Axelrod supposedly
> comparing Newt Gingrich to a monkey butt. I believe Axelrod actually
> compared Newt to a monkey whose butt can now be observed, not to the
> butt itself, but who is counting?
>
> http://goo.gl/tOvSF
>> Any question that the Obama campaign will ignore the surging Newt
>> Gingrich to continue their attacks on Mitt Romney was answered in full
>> today when Obama senior strategist David Axelrod compared the former
>> House Speaker to the ass end of a monkey.
>
> To shorten this up a bit, "Any question that X was answered in full when
> Y." IMHO this is a prime example of the need for a supervising editor.
> It's not that the example is unusual--I've heard others express
> themselves similarly--but it is a bit difficult to decipher when
> skimming the news. In particular, with a proper choice of X and Y, this
> may be a perfectly ordinary expression. But not here. More fully, I
> would analyze this as "Any question that X [is true] was answered [in
> the affirmative] when Y." There are two difficulties for me here--first,
> the statement would be a lot easier to parse if "that" were replaced
> with "whether". Second, Y does not answer the question in the
> affirmative--at least not the way EMS stated it. As written, the answer
> to the question is "No!" So there may be a hidden hypernegation behind
> this structure.
>
> As for the point of comparison, here's Axelrod's line (quoting someone
> else, in part):
>
>> He said, 'just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more
>> you can see his butt.' So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the
>> pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.
>
> I'll let you judge which interpretation is correct.
>
> VS-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org