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Comment: I was helping my daughter edit a college essay on the Philippines, where my family lived for many years. I wanted to insert the common knowledge legend that the then director of the CIA had said of the dictator Marcos before the 1986 revolution "He may be a son of a bitch but at least he's our son of a bitch." Checking the quote for accuracy and source, I Googled it and was surprised to find a whole lot of other dictators about whom the same quote had been attributed! Batista, Pinochet, Fujimori,Mobutu, the Shah of Iran, Savimbi, Suharto, Trujillo and even Botha have been lumped into this expression. What's true? Was it ever said at all by a CIA director and if so of which tyrant?
Posts: 36029 | From: Admin | Registered: Feb 2000
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As I'd heard it, the quotation was originally by Teddy Roosevelt - the subject was Somoza, ruler in Nicaragua (the father or, more likely, grandfather of the Somoza who ruled before the takeover by the Sandinistas in the late 1970s).
-------------------- You fool! That's not a warrior, that's a banana! - a surreal moment in a role-playing game Posts: 2480 | From: Australia | Registered: Feb 2003
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Crud. I hit the wrong key & lost my post. OK, this guy tried to track it down & was unsuccessful Did FDR Call Somoza or Trujillo "our son of a bitch"? He found that the earliest mentions seem to be of either FDR (not Teddy) or Secretary of State Cordell Hull. But he also found an earlier version that someone posted to usenet: a quote from Alphonse B. Miller's biography of Thaddeus stevens, published in 1939. Stevens was a US Congressman from 1848-1868.
quote:Stevens came late into the House while such a discussion was in progress, and asked which of the contestants was entitled to the seat. A Colleague answered that they were both damned rascals. "Well", retorted Stevens, "Which is our damned rascal?".
-------------------- The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Posts: 4255 | From: Sacramento, CA | Registered: Feb 2000
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I bow to my learned friends above about the saying 'our son of a bitch', but is it worth pointing out that the original term 'son of a bitch' comes from Shakespeare?
'Nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.'
(King Lear, II, ii)
-------------------- Andrew, Ware, England Posts: 1709 | From: Ware, England | Registered: Apr 2003
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The OED has a somewhat earlier reference than Lear: c. 1330 _Of Arthour & of Merlin_: "Abide ou ef malicious! Biche-sone ou drawest amis ou schalt abigge it ywis!"
Shakespeare, pah! Johnny-come-lately! (1839)
-------------------- ~~Ai am in mai prrrrrraime!~~ Posts: 10111 | From: Oklahoma | Registered: Sep 2004
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Nah, it's cheating when you can access the OED online and just cut and paste. You can get lost in it for hours on end though. And that's just looking up the earliest known occurrences of the rude words!
-------------------- ~~Ai am in mai prrrrrraime!~~ Posts: 10111 | From: Oklahoma | Registered: Sep 2004
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