antedating (?) "ass bandit"

[Wilson Gray]

Youneverknow.



On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) "ass bandit"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The photo is, of course, a key document to many disciplines, epistemology
> not least of them.
>
> Ockham's Razor suggests that the explanation requiring the least number of
> hypotheses should be preferred as the one most likely to be correct. Thus,
> since the self-chosen designation "Ass Bandits" is accompanied by an
> elaborate cartoon depicting a man with a Pancho Villa mustache (a "bandit")
> riding on a donkey (an "ass"), it is most reasonable to conclude that this
> is precisely what the aircrew had in mind: they saw themselves as Mexican
> bandits riding the range on stolen, braying jackasses.
>
> This interpretation is strengthened immensely by the fact that according to
> the meticulously researched and edited HDAS, "ass bandit" as metaphor
> cannot be shown to have existed until 1954.
>
> Another interpretation is possible: namely that the meaning is
> indeterminate. This view gains emphatic support from the works of Derrida,
> who demonstrated that there is no solid ground on which to stand when
> attempting to extract meaning from lexical items, particularly a phrase so
> radically decontextualized as the cryptonym "Ass Bandits" inexplicably and
> gratuitously inscribed upon a weapon of mass destruction. The cartoon
> offers little assistance, as we cannot be sure that it is really meant to
> illustrate the phrase or vice versa, or even whether the cartoon was
> applied by the same putative individual as the phrase. Indeed, the meanings
> of the image and the accompanying inscription may be quite unrelated or
> even antithetical. We can know nothing of the intentions of either the
> artist or the writer: it seems likely, in fact, that they were two
> different "individuals."
>
> Whatever they may have "thought" they "intended" at the moment(s) of
> application, moreover, does not serve logically to certify (much less allow
> us to validate at a presumed distance of roughly seventy years) how they
> interpreted their own "creations" days, hours, or even scant minutes after
> the "completion" of their work.
>
> Thus, no definitive, final, or even probable interpretation of
> image-and-inscription is possible, particularly since each
> viewer-and-reader is forced by his or her externally constructed
> "intelligence" to decode what the photograph so coldly presents. The
> meaning, if any, recedes and recedes from the analytical view, disappearing
> finally into nonexistence.
>
> But there is yet one more position. The Editor of HDAS believes on the
> basis of the admittedly mystical concepts of "Experience," "Masculinist
> Psychology," "General Drift of American WW2 Nose Art," "Spidey Sense," and
> some others, that the phrase on the plane means HDAS def. 1.
>
> Moreover, twenty years after the appearance of HDAS, that same editor
> suggests that a third, intimately related sense of "ass bandit"
> exists/existed, namely "a rapist." The theory is attractive because in the
> cop, con, and criminal community, rapists (especially when arrested) have
> traditionally been held to be less worthy of respect than "real criminals"
> of the colorful Pretty-Boy Floyd variety. "Rapist" may even be the
> ur-sense.
>
> More dedicated scholars may wish to troll cyberspace to test this theory.
>
> Of course, we are still left with the deep mystery of what the images and
> words on the airplane "really" mean - a matter to ponder even if the photo
> is a cruel and ingenious hoax on practitioners of diachronic linguistics.
>
> JL
>
>
> On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:59 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: antedating (?) "ass bandit"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:20 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > 1.  'an eager seducer of young women --usu. considered vulgar'
> > > [first cite from Ellson, _Owen Harding_, 1954]
> > >
> >
> > True. But the question is whether we know that it meant the same thing -
> or
> > something close enough for government work - to zoomies of the USAAF,
> > During The War.
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
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>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org