The Cadillac of Language Columns

That would be Ben Zimmer's "On Language" column in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "Cadillac Thrives As a Figure of Speech." In fact, I'd encourage you to read it even if I weren't quoted in it.

Here's a tasty passage in which I'm not quoted;  it's worth reading anyway, as is all of Ben Zimmer's writing:

It was perhaps a bad sign when, in a print ad in 1979, Cadillac felt the need to remind consumers that it was still “the Cadillac of cars.” As the fortunes of Cadillac declined in the ’80s and ’90s, the old laudatory expression became a source of pop-cultural satire: Krusty the Clown on “The Simpsons” endorsed an S.U.V. called the Canyonero as “the Cadillac of automobiles”; the rental-car attendant in the film “Get Shorty” assured John Travolta's character that the Oldsmobile Silhouette was “the Cadillac of minivans.” Most recently, in the HBO series “The Wire,” when the young female thug Snoop is sold what a salesman calls the Cadillac of nail guns, she dismisses his pitch with the line, “He mean Lexus, but he ain’t know it.”

I sure miss "The Wire."

Comments

[Duchesse]

Congratulations, Nancy!

When I hear old auto metaphors like "going a mile a minute", I realize how relatively recent the auto age is.

Has Rolls Royce kept its cachet?

[Driving Offences Solicitor]

The cadillac of mini vans is the Silhoutte- thats an interesting POV. thanks for a great post