[Ads-l] Request help accessing 1983 Mail on Sunday article about Michael Foot by Norman Mailer
ADSGarson O'Toole
00001aa1be50b751-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sun Jun 8 22:11:12 UTC 2025
The "Daily Mirror" of June 1, 1983 has a slight variant which changes
"is" to "are" in the key phrase attributed to Michael Foot:
[Begin excerpt]
The top are greedy and mean and they will always find a way to take
care of themselves. They always do.
[End excerpt]
Garson
On Sun, Jun 8, 2025 at 5:56 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I received a request to trace a quotation attributed to British
> politician Michael Foot. According to a June 1983 article in the "New
> Statesman" the quotation appeared in "The Mail on Sunday" within an
> article by Norman Mailer. Here is the target text:
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> ‘Foot had a cogent point of view at least. It said we are not here in
> this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to
> serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to
> provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and
> more crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great
> purpose on earth and if you ask me about those insoluble economic
> problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I
> would answer "to hell with them. The top is greedy and mean and they
> will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do".'
> [End excerpt]
>
> Database company Gale has an archive of "The Mail on Sunday"
> (1982–2011). If you have access to this archive, it would be helpful
> if you executed a search for a key phrase such as "top is greedy and
> mean".
>
> If you could send me a PDF together with the precise citation data
> that would be great.
>
> The goal is to obtain a complete and accurate citation including
> newspaper name, newspaper location, date, article title, article
> author, page number, column number, section, and database name.
>
> Thanks for your help
> Garson
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