The Great American White Trash Novel Award
francis muir
"francis muir" <francis....@balliol.org> wrote:
> On 11/1/03 6:29 AM, in article 20031101092954...@mb-m29.aol.com,
> "OFurorHortensis" <ofurorh...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Latane mused:
>>
>>> And why isn't this racist term verboten? After all
>>> it's only meaningful in a racial context in which its other half is "black
>>> trash" otherwise known as the word that dare not be spoken except by
>>> rappers
>>
>> I'm not sure this is accurate. There is now talk of "trailer trash" in some
>> quarters.
>>
>> It seems to me the offensive element is not the reference to race per se,
>> although that cannot be dismissed, but the sobriquet "trash" itself. That is,
>> it should be as objectionable to hear someone refer to others as unadorned
>> "trash" as to refer to them as "white trash" or more particularly, "poor
>> white
>> trash," the phrase employed locally.
>>
>> And of course there is rilly a lack of delicacy about it all. There was a
>> reason people did not say "common," preferring "ordinary" in relation to
>> parties one social step up from "poor white trash." It was more genteel.
>
> In England the ultimate polite descriptor of "one of them" was :
> "the man on a Clapham bus". Probably originated with one of the
> Law Lords, but Bartlett would know.
By Golly the Boy was right.
The Man on the Clapham omnibus. In legal parlance, 'the reasonable person'.
Possibly the phrase was first used by Sir Charles Bowen, QC (later Lord
Bowen), who was junior council against the claimant in the Tichborne case
(1871-4).
: From _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 16th Edition_ (1995)
and from the same Lord Bowen:
On a metaphysician: A blind man in a dark room,
looking for a black hat which is not there.
Lord Bowen, Attr. in Notes & Queries, 182. 123
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella:
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
Lord Bowen, Quoted in Walter Sichel, Sands of Time
David E. Latane
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, francis muir wrote:
> The Man on the Clapham omnibus. In legal parlance, 'the reasonable person'.
> Possibly the phrase was first used by Sir Charles Bowen, QC (later Lord
> Bowen), who was junior council against the claimant in the Tichborne case
> (1871-4).
> : From _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 16th Edition_ (1995)
>
Then perhaps the opposite would be the council for the claiment--a loony
from Cork?
D. Latane