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Shortly after the football game ended Sunday, a friend
called to announce that a hearty celebration was in order.
Why?
I asked. Did you beat the point spread for
some major money?
Don't I wish,
he said. No, it's like this. Now
that Buffalo has lost three straight super bowl games,
Denver won't be the laughingstock of the NFL. Buffalo will
be the butt of all those jokes.
In other words, no matter how bad it gets for Denver fans, Buffalo has it worse.
Something similar happened last summer when the national
media discovered Arkansas. Various Arkansawyers said the
state motto should be Thank God for Mississippi,
for
without Mississippi, Arkansas might have ranked last in
income, literacy, etc.
Somebody else has it worse, so cheer up. This is known
as Dutch comfort,
and it is just one of many
demeaning phrases:
Dutch courage comes from a gin bottle. A Dutch treat is no treat at all -- you pay your own way. To get in Dutch is to get in trouble. Dutch gold is an alloy of copper and zinc that tarnishes easily. Dutch nightingales are frogs.
These expressions arose during a bitter commercial and military rivalry between England and Holland during the 17th century. Patriotic Englishmen disparaged the Netherlands as a nation of drunken frauds.
Why have these insulting phrases survived? Apparently the Dutch have better things to do than to portray themselves as victims of insensitivity; I've never heard of a Dutch Anti-Defamation Society.
At any rate, vernacular English is not a
politically-correct dialect, because this process
continues. A siphon hose is often called a New Mexico
credit card,
treacherous fords across creeks are
Wyoming bridges,
and when I donned bib overalls
recently, I heard about my Oklahoma tuxedo.
But why should we pick on other states? Why continue to use linguistic fossils from the 1667 fight over New Amsterdam, renamed New York by the winners? We have an Official Language, and I propose these for inclusion:
Boulder Lunch: Any non-filling menu item which costs more than $15 and consists of 300 calories of garnished tofu served inside a greenhouse guarded by vegetarian German shepherds trained to kill anyone who smells of tobacco.
Colorado Springs Gratitude: Oppose all federal spending
while profiting mightily from military payrolls; formerly
known as biting the hand that feeds you.
Aspen Tolerance: Extends to everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, criminal record or sexual orientation, excepting only the 99.3 percent of the world's population which cannot afford $1,500 hotel rooms.
Salida Promptness: Whenever; also known as Southern Colorado Standard Time.
Denver Ambition: To be horrified if the Broncos win enough games to go to the Super Bowl.
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