ADDED: I did some research into the idiom "ate their lunch," because I was just talking about last weekend's SNL skit showing Trump getting bullied by the popular kids in a school lunchroom. I said it makes me sympathetic to Trump to see the smug "cool" kids doing whatever they could to humiliate him, so it was interesting to me to hear Nancy Pelosi triumphing in a way that I thought evoked schoolyard bullies who steal lunch from their victims. But is that the source of the phrase "ate their lunch"?
Researching, I see that "ate their lunch" is a popular idiom in business. Investopedia says:
Eating someone's lunch refers to the act of an aggressive competition that results in one company taking portions of another company's market share.... This can be achieved through the release of a better or newer product, aggressive pricing or marketing strategies or other competitive advantages...
That doesn't explain the origin of the metaphor. What are we talking about? Next, I notice the very similar phrase: ate him for lunch. Are these 2 phrases of the same lineage? If so, which is the corruption?
Many don't believe me, but in March of 1967 a buddy and I were sitting in a local bar. Something was said about lunch, I responded by saying, "I'll eat your lunch". All laughed and went on. The group that was there started using that line. Next thing I know everyone is using it. Believe it or not.
Looking for another way into this problem, I try googling "did the phrase eat your lunch originate in a bully who steals other student's lunch."
"And the most galvanizing two minutes of television of the week — two women tearfully and angrily confronting Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator — was nothing a comedy show could or should touch. Points to SNL for avoiding both. Knowing where not to go doesn’t make you funny, but it at least prevents you from being horrific.... Let nobody argue that Matt Damon doesn’t understand the fragile interior of the douche bro [Kavanaugh]; he went there. But he went there more empty-handed than should have been the case. All those referential moments weren’t shaped comic ideas so much as touchpoints of familiarity — they were SNL’s way of telling you that yes, it noticed what you noticed.... It may be that we’re in a moment — and by 'moment,' I mean 'endless soul-killing years-long slog' — so defined by anger that a certain kind of political comedy is all but impossible. You can’t win by being so afraid of losing half your audience that you say nothing...."
Writes Mark Harris at Vulture in "The Matt Damon Kavanaugh Sketch Proves How Hard It Is to Do Politics on SNL Now." He's apparently concerned not that the show doesn't go after liberals (and therefore misses half the targets of humor) but that it doesn't go after conservatives more viciously. It wouldn't be good to make fun of Christine Blasey Ford, but it would be good to kick Brett Kavanaugh around more intensely sadistically. I've got to give Harris credit, though, for pointing me to this. But this is what social media can do and that's just too rough to go on network TV:
People are never going to stop taking offense, I say, as Glenn Loury urges that we stop taking so much offense. (The Samuel-Jackson-Laurence-Fishburne mixup comes up as an example of taking offense, and both Glenn and I do our Samuel L. Jackson imitations.)
Emails a reader — pointing to this post of our last outing with the dog Zeus — and revealing the non-embarrassing truth that I've never seen the movie "Die Hard with A Vengeance."
I've never even seen "Die Hard" (without a vengeance), but I have watched that clip, and I laughed a lot.
"Why you keep calling me Jesus? I look Puerto Rican to you?"
“It’s definitely going to get attention,” said [Adam] Mansbach, who is writing the script for Jackson’s ad and said it would appear on YouTube on Sept. 24.
So, there's this step, where they say there's a line, but if Mansback "is writing the script," it's a line in the process of getting written. And you get attention saying that's what the potential line is and even outright asserting that it's going to get attention. It will get attention in the future, and you are getting attention now, saying it's going to get attention.
And you've tweaked the NY Post into printing the line and calling it "provocative," and everyone can react, and if the reaction is bad enough the line — the emerging, evolving, line-in-progress — can become something else. And then you can get attention with that ad, that ad that the dumb right-wingers vetted for you, and you can get attention calling the right-wingers dumb for thinking that would be the line.
And you know why they thought that and/or why they got upset? They're racist. You can get attention saying that.
Wow. I did not enjoy that. I already updated my live-blog post from last night to say I did not enjoy that, but I need to get it out of my system. I did not enjoy that. Why do I do that to myself every year? Because there was a time when I truly loved it — and the movies — I guess. Watching the Oscars when you no longer care about the movies is like... watching "American Idol" when you no longer bother with the new music recordings that are released from day to day. Wallowing in the bad seems somewhat fun even as you've lost the hope that there might be something good. Life is funny. And, no, wallowing in the bad as I've lost hope in something good is not how I feel about life itself.
Anyway, the only interesting thing anyone said — that registered with me, anyway — was Mo'Nique: "It can be about the performance and not the politics." I highlighted that line last night, but then this morning, I realized I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Here's the whole text of what she said:
First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics. I want to thank Mrs. Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to. Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, because you touched it, the whole world saw it. Ricky Anderson our attorney of Anderson and Smith thank you for your hard work. My entire BET family. My Precious family thank you so much. To my amazing husband Sidney, Thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forego doing what’s popular to do what’s right. And baby, you were so right!
Now, what was she talking about? What did her husband encourage her to do that was "right" but not "popular"? I'm guessing that she worried about playing a character that would be viewed by many as a racist stereotype, and her husband convinced her that it was a great script and a great dramatic role and she's an artist who should decide based on what is right for an artist: artistic principles. And Oprah touched it, and that worked some magic, taking much of the power out of the accusations of racism that had to have been anticipated.
Here's a NYT Magazine article from last fall that, I think, explains it:
[The director Lee Daniels told Mo’Nique] he had a part for her that was “going to mess up your career. You are going to lose your world, your audience, your standing in the BET community.” Mo'nique was not fazed. “I did not hesitate!” she exclaimed on a warm day in September in New York City. “I said to Lee, if you want me to play this demon, I am there.”....
Although Mo’Nique’s performance as Precious’s mother has generated talk of an Oscar, Daniels has heard complaints from the black community about the image her character projects. “They see the film as negative to black women,” Daniels said. “Black women are the pillar of the family. Black men have left, and how dare I stab at the one thing that’s helped. So I told Mo’Nique, ‘They’re going to hate you for this movie.’ She said, ‘Let them hate me.’ ”
And, by the way, there was no mention of Barack Obama in Mo'Nique's speech. From that NYT article:
[T]he movie is not neutral on the subject of race and the prejudices that swirl around it, even in the supposedly postracial age of Obama. “ ‘Precious’ is so not Obama,” Daniels said. “ ‘Precious’ is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I’m prejudiced....”
... “As African-Americans, we are in an interesting place,” Daniels said. “Obama’s the president, and we want to aspire to that. But part of aspiring is disassociating from the face of Precious. To be honest, I was embarrassed to show this movie at Cannes. I didn’t want to exploit black people. And I wasn’t sure I wanted white French people to see our world.... But because of Obama, it’s now O.K. to be black. I can share that voice. I don’t have to lie. I’m proud of where I come from. And I wear it like a shield. ‘Precious’ is part of that.”
And who knows what Samuel L. Jackson was thinking? Watch his reaction to the speech:
Perhaps he was feeling some vindication in his own choice to play some pretty negative characters (rather than the idealized friend/helpmeet/savior/Morgan Freeman type that must not be all that rewarding to play).
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