[Ads-l] beltway

[Dan Goncharoff]

NYC had discussion of a Belt system of roads back to 1929, and a "belt
line" road across Long Island as early as 1925.

DanG

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 4:43 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Barry Popik has a page on "inside the beltway" (of course):
>
> https://barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/
> beltway_inside_the_beltway_beltway_insider
>
> He notes a political column in the Washington (DC) Afro-American from Nov.
> 14, 1970 titled "Inside the Beltway":
>
> https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nc0lAAAAIBAJ&
> sjid=9fQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5498,7237359&dq=inside-the-beltway&hl=en
>
> ...and there's this 1975 cite from the NYT (also given on the Wikipedia
> page for the phrase):
>
> New York Times, Oct. 12, 1975, Week in Review, p. 4
> In the White House of Richard M. Nixon, it was said that Watergate would
> become serious only if it “got outside the Washington Beltway.” (...) It
> can be said that the myriad of doubts about the Warren Commission’s
> findings in the death of President Kennedy represent the reverse situation.
> The doubts would never be taken seriously until they were inside the
> Beltway.
> http://www.nytimes.com/1975/10/12/archives/but-withheld-
> information-is-unlikely-to-change-the-conclusion-the.html
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 4:13 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A bit earlier for "inside the beltway":
> >
> > Dallas Morning News, Jan. 28, 1979, p. 6A (Genealogybank)
> > "Carter Comes Out to Begin 2nd Half" [AP wire story]
> > When the week was nearly over, one aide involved in much of the planning
> > observed that "inside the beltway" -- the concrete ribbon of interstate
> > highway that circles that nation's capital and many of its suburbs -- the
> > budget and the State of the Union address are seen differently than they
> > are in the rest of the nation.
> >
> > Also published the same day in other papers, e.g.:
> > Santa Fe New Mexican: https://www.newspapers.com/image/210930101/
> > Port Huron (Mich.) Times Herald: https://www.newspapers.com/image/
> > 210212635/
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 1:27 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Bill Mullins found "Inside the Beltway" from November 1980.
> >>
> >>
> >> It can be found as early as September 1979, and perhaps by the person
> who
> >> may have coined it or popularized the concept.
> >>
> >>
> >> Richard Pettigrew served as "Assistant to the President" for
> streamlining
> >> beauracracy under Jimmy Carter.  When he resigned, he lamented the
> >> difficulty of what Trump would call "draining the swamp," or Hannity
> might
> >> term the "deep state," but what Pettigrew referred to as "the turkey
> farm"
> >> or the "'iron triangle,' that unholy alliance of special-interest
> groups,
> >> members of Congress and middle-level bureaucrats whose careers depend on
> >> the continued existence of a federal program, no matter how poorly run."
> >>
> >>
> >> He also explained "inside the beltway."  The editor included the full
> >> description, as though it was not then a current idiom:
> >>
> >>
> >> One of the first things he learned was that the nation was divided into
> >> two parts: "inside the beltway" (the beltway is the interstate highway
> >> circling Washington and its suburbs) and "outside the beltway."  Inside
> the
> >> beltway are Congress and the federal agencies.  Outsie the beltway is
> the
> >> rest of the United States.
> >>
> >>
> >> Tallahassee Democrat, September 23, 1979, page B8<
> >> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15094969/tallahassee_democrat/>.
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>

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