tent-pissing follow-up

[Joel S. Berson]

Larry, try tinyurl.com (one of the usual suspects).

At 9/3/2013 08:23 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>Prompted by a suggestion (off-line) from Joel
>Berson, I tried googling "tent pissing out" +
>"Arab", and was led to a google book excerpt at
>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=_ERhV58kkFIC&pg=PT107&lpg=PT107&dq=%22inside+the+tent+pissing+out%22+%22Arab%22&source=bl&ots=aCo17YLwBT&sig=j_zId_Z2bNlIat3E0j3qMlDx41c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DHsmUoPIGY6lsASruIHADQ&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22inside%20the%20tent%20pissing%20out%22%20%22Arab%22&f=false
>
>(sorry for not knowing how to figure out a more
>elegant tiny URL the way some of you can)--
>This book, _Eisenhower and Churchill: The
>Partnership that Saved the World_ by James C.
>Humes, notes that Lloyd George's argument for
>putting Churchill in the Cabinet (he was made
>"secretary of state for munitions" just before
>the American entry into WWI) was based on "a
>variation of the Arab proverb--better the camel
>inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

Yes -- I now remember the "who" was a camel.  No
idea where or when I learned of this Arab
proverb, but it must have been before the 1989 of the following instance.

"Old Arab proverb," said Baedecker. "It's better
to have the camel inside your tent pissing out than outside pissing in."

Allegedly Dan Simmons, _Phases of Gravity_, p.
198 (GBooks preview).  Claims to be copyright 1989, with an ISBN number.
http://tinyurl.com/od6xzwr

Joel

>Humes mentions neither LBJ nor Olivier.  Nor the
>well-known difficulty of camel's piss fitting
>through the eye of a needle, to change proverbs midstream.
>
>LH
>
>On Sep 3, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> > On the discussion board for "Broadchurch", a
> rather good British murder mystery serial
> airing currently on BBCA, there's been
> discussion about the line used by one
> character:  "Better to have you inside the tent
> pissing out than outside the tent pissing
> in".  After some back and forth, it was agreed
> that the earliest anyone had heard the line was
> from LBJ re J. Edgar Hoover, and this matches YBOQ's verdict:
> >
> > "It's probably better to have him inside the
> tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in"
> >
> > It certainly has the right fragrance for
> Lyndon, judging from another comment of his to
> John Kenneth Galbraith, "Making a speech on
> economics is a lot like pissing down your leg.
> It seems hot to you, but it never does to
> anyone else." At the same time, it has the
> feeling of an old Texas saw.  As far as we can
> tell, was the
um, salty expression in fact
> spontaneously coined by LBJ (as reported by
> David Halberstam on Halloween of 1971), or was
> he recycling earlier wisdom?  (It's sometimes
> given as "I'd rather have X inside the tent
")
> >
> > LH
> >
> > P.S. For the record, it appears that Laurence
> Olivier used the same line as an explanation of
> why he offered critic Kenneth Tynan a job at
> the National Theatre:
> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/mar/14/art.
> But the standard view is that Olivier was cribbing from LBJ:
> >
> > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436481/reviews
> > From [John] Lahr we learned that Olivier had
> never forgiven Tynan for giving his wife Vivien
> Leigh a bad review, and had only employed him
> at the National in order to have him (as
> President Johnson might have said) "on the inside, pissing out".
> >
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org