[Ads-l] bite at the apple

[Laurence Horn]

> On Jul 22, 2019, at 11:31 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> Not in OED:
>> 'Opportunity to accomplish one's (often unfair) aim'
>> 
>> Prominent Tweeter today:
>> 
>> "Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the
>> apple."
>> 
>> 1920 _Christian Science Monitor_ (March 31) 8: A Bite at the Apple   While
>> fully appreciating the desire of the employers to take one bite at the
>> apple, to settle the vexed problem on a national basis and with a universal
>> standard ....
>> 
>> 1963  _The [Baltimore] Sun_ (Apr. 25) 48: Mr. Sweeney argued that the
>> intent of the election laws is "to give a man only one bite at the apple,
>> and said a Kentucky decision held that to permit a defeated candidate to
>> become a nominee of a political party "is not consonant with good faith and
>> fair dealing."
> 
> Date: September 24, 1885
> Newspaper: The Altoona Times
> Newspaper Location: Altoona, Pennsylvania
> Article: Pennsylvania Aid To Mahone
> Quote Page 2, Column 3
> Database: Newspapers.com
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Now Blaine wants to break up the solid South and capture it if he can,
> and that is why he is helping his old opponents."
> This was indeed awful to think of.
> "Is Blaine trying to engineer things so he can get another bite at the
> apple?" was asked of one of the most prominent Blaine men in the city.
> "No; of course not!" was the answer in a tone of disgusted surprise.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> James G. Blaine was a failed candidate for U.S. President in 1884. I
> admit that I have not read the article carefully enough to be sure
> that "Blaine" in the article refers to James G. Blaine.
> 

I suspect so the timing and project are both right. That was the election in which the Democrats, with Grover Cleveland as standard-bearer, publicized the letters proving Blaine’s briberies, which he first denied, and then conceded, leading to the chant;

""Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine”

The Republicans mocked Cleveland for his putative illegitimate daughter:  

“Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?
Gone to the White House, ha ha ha”.  

but Blaine was hurt by backlash from a slogan arising from a speech by one of his supporters, tarring the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and rebellion”.  Apparently there were enough drinkers, Catholics, and unregenerate Southerners (note the Democrats’ solid south of the alluded to in the above reference to Blaine’s attempt to break it up) to vote Cleveland in.

The glory days of American electoral politics.

—LH, author of a junior high school report on Grover Cleveland 
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