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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 May 26

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May 26

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Infamous "Latin America" gaffe

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I know it's frequently attributed to Dan Quayle, and he didn't really say that - but who was it who actually said something about how he'd been on a trip to Latin America and after seeing the place and it's people, it made him wish that he could speak Latin? Seen it claimed that Al Gore and George W. Bush said it too. What is the origin of that? --146.200.128.101 (talk) 04:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know it wasn't Quayle? --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:44, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, it turns out that it started as a joke by Claudine Schneider, and evolved into a truism. Kind of like Buddy Hackett's joke about Neil Armstrong saying "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!" --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For a reference, see A Dan Quayle Joke from The Washington Post. Alansplodge (talk) 10:39, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that report was parroted in quite a few other newspapers within a few days of its publication. But apparently it didn't help! --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The pre-WW2 version of this joke was claiming that Ma Ferguson said that "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Motionless with patient lust

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In the episode "Advice & Consent" of the popular television series All Creatures Great and Small Tristan says of another character "He’s like a big glossy spider hanging after that girl" and Siegfried replies "'Motionless with patient lust at the centre of his web',’ who wrote that?". So, who did write that? The episode was filmed in 1977, and is set in the 30s. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 16:57, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly a riff on this line from the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes? "He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them." 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any reason to suspect it is someone other than the credited screenwriters? --Jayron32 17:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that it's because the character himself suggests that it's a quote from elsewhere? It could be original, of course, but the show is literally inviting listeners to provide the proper source for the quote. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 18:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A useful step would be to check the original books by James Herriot on which the series was based. The dialogue doesn't ring a bell with me, but it's a long time since I read them (shortly after they were first published) and I don't have copies to hand, so I can't do it myself. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.235.54 (talk) 18:20, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Proclaiming a wrong, mishmashed or incorrect quote with supreme confidence would be very Siegfried Farnon. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Scotus decisions with two overturns

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Are there any historical instances of:

  1. Some lawsuit Alice v. Bob is (after appeals) decided by SCOTUS and becomes precedent. Later, in another lawsuit Foo v. Bar, not involving the original litigants Alice and Bob, Alice v. Bob is overturned. Later still, in lawsuit #3, Foo v. Bar is overturned, basically restoring the Alice v. Bob decision. So Alice v. Bob triggers two overturns that cancel each other out.
  2. Starts like above, but after Foo v. Bar, there is some civil debate, and then Alice v. Bob is restored by a Constitutional amendment. Again two overturns, the second one being by amendment.
  3. Like #2 but Constitutional amendment happens after Alice v. Bob without the first overturn. Ok, this is just one overturn.

In #'s 2 and 3 I won't count isolated unsanctioned public reactions that sometimes get out of control, but I'm excluding e.g. the famous Dred Scott decision, which was overturned by the 13th amendment only after the prolonged and extremely violent US Civil War.

I do remember hearing about SCOTUS in the 1930s moderating its decisions after being threatened with FDR's court-packing scheme, but I don't know if any overturning happened in that era. There may have also been an implicit threat of violence by the Bonus Army.

I've also heard it claimed that the rise of organized crime in the US resulted directly from prohibition creating a market in illegal liquor. Prohibition was introduced by an amendment and later overturned by another amendment. I don't know to what extent the prohibition-ending amendment was a reaction to the rise in crime.

Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:738F (talk) 20:20, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The history of the US income tax is something like your option #2: Legal_history_of_income_tax_in_the_United_States#History_through_1916. --Amble (talk) 22:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron32, thanks, that list is useful. It's unfortunate that the "case overturned" column doesn't link back to the "case that overturns" column, but the # of rows isn't so large as to make doing that by hand infeasible. It could make a nice wikipedia table if we don't already have one. It also sounds to me that even if we've had no double overturns so far, we may have some coming up, given the inclinations of the current Court. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:738F (talk) 18:17, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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