November 28, 2012--Under the Bus

No one knows for certain where the expression to "throw someone under the bus" originated. But it has come into wider and wider use and is casually and especially applied to political situations.

Even here in Behind, I have recently used it a number of times. In Monday's posting, for example, I quoted Mitt Romney's claim that Obama "threw Israel under the bus" by, in his ill-informed view, not supporting them sufficiently. And yesterday, when writing about Susan Rice, if I had been inclined, I could have quoted Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Okla, who said about Rice that he had initially "assumed she had full knowledge of everything that went on [in Benghazi], I'm not at all convinced of that now. She very well could have been thrown under the bus."

Others spoke about how Obama threw Rice under the bus to avoid having to throw Hillary Clinton under the bus since she, as Secretary of State, was and is responsible for keeping embassy officials and workers safe.

Some claim that the expression originated with Cyndi Lauper back in 1983 when her album, "She's So Unusual" was not received all that well by critics. In response, to quote William Safire, she "jauntily tossed her critics 'under the bus.'"

But Safire suspects that the idiom actually comes from minor league baseball lore--how, when teams moved from stadium to stadium in buses, if a player didn't get to the departure site on time, he might as a result have to ride in the storage bay under the bus.

I like idioms and catch phrases as much as anyone, but this one has been transformed into something that seems particularly violent.

Whatever Susan Rice did or didn't do, the literal image of throwing her under a bus seems excessive. In fact, I recommend that the use itself of "throwing throwing someone under the bus" for any reason, much less "only" perhaps for misleading a congressional committee deserves itself to be retired or, if you insist, thrown under the bus.