"...Roosevelt called President Hoover a 'fat, timid capon' "

[steve2470]

http://bit.ly/1p5a7jg

Hoover called Roosevelt a "chameleon in plaid" and Roosevelt called President Hoover a "fat, timid capon". In the last days of campaigning, Hoover criticized Roosevelt's nonsense tirades and glittering generalizations as ignorance and defamation.

The good old days of politics, eh ? Nonetheless, I'm very glad FDR won.

[UTUSN]

1. Sigh. If only... n/t

Last edited Mon Jul 21, 2014, 09:45 AM - Edit history (2)

[surrealAmerican]

2. At least they were poetic with their insults.

As an aside, "chameleon in plaid" would make a decent band name.

[Historic NY]

3. "capon"....

[lovemydog]

4. I had to look it up

ca·pon
noun
a cockerel castrated to improve the flesh for use as food.

[steve2470]

5. actually, this may be urban legend

The above screenshot is the only original source I can find so far of "fat timid capon". It's from the NY Times archive, at:

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/%22fat%2Ctimid+capon%22/since1851/allresults/1/allauthors/oldest/

Also, in the book "Off The Record With F D R 1942-1945" by William D Hassett, there is this excerpt:



found here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uGINy_fqdbYJ:www.archive.org/stream/offtherecordwith002090mbp/offtherecordwith002090mbp_djvu.txt+&cd=37&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=opera


So....maybe this is an urban legend.