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Reader question:
In this quote – "No player is above the team. You run into a lot of
problems when the tail wags the dog" – what does "the tail wags the dog"
mean?
My comments:
What the quoted lines mean to convey is the idea that players should cater
to team interests instead of the other way around, or problems arise. Obviously
a team has a lot of players each with their own individuality. If players all
follow team rules, then you have a team and order. If the team tries to cater to
each player's idiosyncrasies, well, chaos ensues.
We all know that dogs wag their tails. Tails can't wag dogs. Dogs wagging
tails is the normal order of things and events. Hence, when "the tail wags the
dog", things are out of order.
"The tail wags the dog" is an American idiom, usually referring to the
manipulation of a chain of events in order to divert attention from another –
more important – chain of events.
I once watched "Wag the Dog", a movie starring Robert De Niro and Dustin
Hoffman. It begins with these words: "Why does a dog wag its tail? Because a dog
is smarter than its tail. If the tail is smarter, the tail would wag the
dog."
You get the picture. In fact, that movie presents a perfect case of the
tail wagging the dog. In it, political advisers to the administration forge a
case for war against Albania, of all places. Horrific pictures and so forth whip
up public euphoria which eventually leads to military intervention.
Only to divert public attention from a sex scandal involving the President,
of all people. Ring a bell? Well, some people thought Bill Clinton might have
"wagged the dog" in his time as President letting NATO bomb Kosovo. Wag the Dog
the film might have helped spawn that theory. It has certainly helped popularize
the phrase.
As demonstrated in the movie, the White House spin doctors are able to
manipulate the media because they understand what makes the American public, er,
lick. They feed the public something tasty to hold onto while they get on with
their own business, whatever that is. Like, there's a guard dog on duty in front
of a house. A burglar can not get in without risking suffering dog bites. But a
well-trained burglar who brings a bone with him might be able to get in without
a fuss from the dog, that is, if the dog is less than well trained. The burglar
understands that dogs love to chew on bones and so he hands the dog a bone to
play with while he goes about his business, scot-free.
Enough dogs and politics. Here are media examples for you to see more of
this phrase in action.
1. 'Wag the Dog' Back In Spotlight
A president embroiled in a sex scandal in the Oval Office tries to save his
presidency by distracting the nation with a made-for-TV war far from American
soil in an obscure country.
It's not the latest news out of Washington, but the plot of the movie "Wag
the Dog." In the 1997 movie, a shadowy spin doctor played by Robert De Niro
recruits a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to invent a war against
Albania.
The film came out just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke – and no
doubt benefited at the box office and then at the video store from the
publicity. Now, the film is all the buzz again because of President Clinton's
announcement – three days after admitting for the first time an inappropriate
relationship with Ms. Lewinsky – that he ordered military strikes in two
countries.
- CNN.com, August 21, 1998.
2. Jewish Liberals Say The Dog Wags the Tail (I Say the Tail Wags the
Dog)
Doni Remba, a peace activist, disputes my claim that the progressive voice
in Jewish life has been marginalized by the neocons. He has some evidence: he
says he's getting traction in the Jewish press for his view that there has to be
a progressive lobby, to push for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. His
post follows, below.
I have one important quibble, ahead of time. Remba reflects the
conventional leftish pro-Israel view that the dog wags the tail. i.e., that
Israel is a client that does as the imperial U.S. wants it to do. The U.S.
doesn't want Israel to talk to Syria; so it doesn't. His view of the Israel
lobby is that it is merely seconding rightwing choices that the U.S. government
is making. And so he says:
American choices heavily constrain the Jewish state, eliminating options
and creating the environment in which Israel must make its own now far more
limited and difficult choices. |
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发表于 2016-7-9 23:47:17