The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The term “mad as a hatter” predates Lewis Carroll’s character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Where it was used.) It refers to the 18th and 19th-century hat-making industry win England, where hatters used a mercury nitrate to treat fur, exposing the workers to toxic fumes that caused mercury poisoning. This condition led to neurological damage, resulting in symptoms like tremors, confusion, and irrational behavior, which became known as “mad hatter disease.” Now you know. Next.

A herring, when cured in salt to preserve it, has a bright red color. Herrings were once used to train hunting dogs to follow a scent.

If the hounds were on the trail of some game, a red herring dragged across that scent trail would distract the dogs, who would become confused. A “red herring” has thus become the name of any distraction that has been deliberately used to distract someone or something. Politicians have become adept at dragging red herrings across their actions, confusing responsibility for their voting, and have become the most popular at having the expression used to describe their behavior.

Speaking of politics, back in the days when England was ruling most of the world, those bastions of English exploration were tasked to send back progress reports and other political documents. These  many missives of large bunches of paper were tied with–you guessed it–red ribbons. Red tape is now how all we citizens refer to the many stumbling blocks that government throws in our path, should we try to deal with them.

It unfortunately has been used by many petty bureaucrats as an excuse: “We cannot do that.” Probably that’s true. They could, if they gave a >#!@! 

Too much red tape.

I was once given a ticket down in the Twin Cities for jaywalking, believe it or not. And yes, I was sober, but at that time, I worked in downtown Minneapolis, and took a shortcut across a street. And got caught. Huh. I had no idea you could be ticketed for that. Around 1900, the word “jay” meant a rube or a bumpkin or a hick. Back on the farm, jay birds walked anywhere they wanted,  so it came to mean country hicks and farmers and such. We continued to walk that way in busy towns, which originally wreaked havoc with teamsters pulling loaded wagons with several horses. And the law stayed, as I learned to my chagrin.

Now you know.