Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
SLIPPING MICKEYS
SLIPPING MICKEYS
"Slipping a mickey" means inserting a sleep-inducing drug into another person's drink or alcoholic beverage, surreptitiously, so that after the target drinks it, unawares, they are knocked out, or worse!
That idiom is applicable in politics, protests, legal documents, in many things. There, when on a drum roll litany of complaints or accusations with which the hearers agree, the mickey is inserted with which the listeners do not necessarily agree. The mickey has been slipped in!
Alone, on its own, openly, the mickey would be rejected. So it is conveniently hidden, closeted, mixed into the mass to disguise its presence, until the moment of consumption, when it is too late!
One current-day mickey that is customarily employed in Cornell West's litany is "homophobic."
Another one formerly, frequently used was "labor," by Rev. Jesse Jackson in his litany of grievance.
Beware of the mickey! Whether alcoholic or polemic, it degrades!
I just saw Bill O'Reilly slip a mickey on a FB post. He called for the placement of the national guard in Chicago's violence-prone (black) neighborhoods, on foot patrols!Opining that the mayor, governor, new police chief were incapable of handling the violence there, that he luridly decried. O'Reilly made no mention of jobs for the jobless, economic resources for slum clearance, or micro grants or loans for business enterprise. Just more white men with guns would solve its violence!
This evokes the "War on Drugs'" peck of lethal mickeys that blacks swallowed uncritically in the 1980s and 1990s, before the Internet era!
Watch out for the mickey!