heads, hands--who cares!

[Jonathan Lighter]

He rolled his eyes when he said it to show what a doofus Obama is, just
King Canute, who tried to sweep back the sea, and the Emperor Xerxes who
had the Hellespont flogged for thwarting his invasion plans.

Well...maybe he wasn't thinking of them after all.  But the crowd went wild.



JL

On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: heads, hands--who cares!
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Perhaps he meant "do nothing" rather than "be blind to the problem".
>
> At 9/1/2012 01:30 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> >Picked this up from a Steve Benen post on TRMS:
> >
> >"When people in the future look back at Romney's contempt for the idea
> >of "slowing the rise of the oceans," and his party's willingness to bury
> >their hands in the sand, history will not be kind."
> >
> >Searching for "bury their hands in the sand" and variations gives a
> >noticeable number of hits, but not nearly as many to one would expect
> >from a fully-formed eggcorn. Most hits appear to be leading to the
> >lyrics from the same song, but there are still a couple of dozen that
> >look eggcornish. With Benen, I thought he might have been making a pun,
> >of sorts (oceans, hands in the sand?) but heads in the sand would have
> >had the same effect.
> >
> >     VS-)
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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