Quote: "There are only 90,000 people out there...."

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, G.

In principle this an excellent example of a case where the attributed
source almost certainly uttered the words (more or less); but given the
context (a "meeting" of cabinet officials), they may have been meant to
characterize somebody else's opinion, been intended ironically, or even
said in jest.

I'm not claiming that they were, however. Perhaps Hickel 's book clarifies
it.

JL


On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 9:04 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Quote: "There are only 90,000 people out there...."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The HathiTrust search engine says there is a match on page 208 for the
> following "There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn"
> within his edition:
>
> Year: 1971
> Title: Who owns America?
> Author: Walter J. Hickel.
> Publisher: Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall
> Physical Description: xii, 328 p. 22 cm.
> Original Classification Number: E855 .H63
>
> I have not seen the above book. A book reviewer in the Los Angeles
> Times gave the following context for the quotation attributed to
> Kissinger.
>
> Newspaper: Los Angeles Times
> Article date: September 16, 1971
> Article title: Book by Hickel Explains How Nixon Fired Him: Tells
> Differences Over SST and Rebuffs When He Criticized Invasion of
> Cambodia
> Article page: A4
> Article author: Don Oberdorfer
> Newspaper location: Los Angeles, California
>
> [Begin excerpt ; check for OCR errors]
> Presidential Asst. Henry A. Kissinger objected to Hickel's demand for
> "full compensation" with "full consultation" for any land taken by the
> government from the Pacific islands people of Micronesia, where the
> United States is in charge under a United Nations trusteeship. Hickel
> quotes Kissinger as saying at a State Department meeting, "There are
> only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?"
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 7:47 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Quote: "There are only 90,000 people out there...."
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Among the Henry Kissinger quotes in YBQ, one does *not* find the
> following,
> > which is, as they say, "all over the Internet."
> >
> > As best I can tell, it appeared for the first time in former Interior
> > Secretary Wally Hickel's "Who Owns America?" (Prentice-Hall, 1971), but
> GB
> > won't cough up the page.
> >
> > Kissinger seems to have been discussing, in 1969, Marshall Islanders who
> > had been exposed to radiation from U.S. nuclear tests in the 1950s, but
> not
> > having seen the context I can't swear to it.
> >
> > "There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?"
> >
> > According to Jack Anderson's column of Oct. 22, 1971, "Kissinger tells us
> > he can't remember making the statement that Hickel attributes to him. It
> is
> > contrary, he says, to his actual views."
> >
> > Anderson that the statement was nonetheless typical of both Democratic
> and
> > Republican attitudes toward Micronesia.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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