{"id":12556,"date":"2009-11-29T10:49:13","date_gmt":"2009-11-29T18:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2009\/11\/29\/recombinant-idioms.html"},"modified":"2009-11-29T10:49:13","modified_gmt":"2009-11-29T18:49:13","slug":"recombinant-idioms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2009\/11\/29\/recombinant-idioms\/","title":{"rendered":"Recombinant idioms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There was a good Frank Rich <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/22\/opinion\/22rich.html\">opinion piece<\/a> in the <cite>New York Times<\/cite> a week ago on Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n<p>But the reason I'm mentioning it here is not the topic or the quality but the clever reworkings of well-known phrases.<\/p>\n<p>Which I'm now going to pick apart and over-explain, thereby killing their humor value, just 'cause I think they're particularly clever.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li>The column's title, repeated in the body of the column: \"The Pit Bull in the China Shop.\" Palin having referred to herself (essentially) as a pit bull, plus the idiom \"bull in a china shop.\"<\/li>\n  <li>\"she will not stay in Wasilla now that she's seen 30 Rock\": updating the old song lyric \"How you gonna keep them down on the farm now that they've seen Paree?\" with Palin's hometown and with the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/GE_Building\">GE Building<\/a> at 30 Rockefeller Plaza&mdash;which in turn is both (a) synecdoche for New York, the entertainment industry, and the national spotlight, and (b) a sly reference to Tina Fey, who played Palin on <cite>SNL<\/cite> and stars in the TV show <cite>30 Rock<\/cite>.<\/li>\n  <li>The third recombinant idiom that caught my attention isn't by Rich; it's a quote from a Matthew Continetti <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/017\/180xvziz.asp?pg=2\">article about Palin<\/a>: \"You shall not crucify mankind upon the cross of Goldman Sachs,\" mixing the classic William Jennings Bryan \"<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cross_of_Gold_speech\">Cross of Gold speech<\/a>\" with today's financial travails.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a good Frank Rich opinion piece in the New York Times a week ago on Sarah Palin. But the reason I&#8217;m mentioning it here is not the topic&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idioms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}