Mr. Zimmer takes us on a tour of the origins of the word that is now part of football's fourth down strategy with short yardage, delightfully now called "tush push." Anything that rhymes will have traction.
Where Mr Zimmer reacts to the latest use of a fad word, Mr. Safire dissected the proper use of words. "Free gift" was called out as being redundant, since a gift is expected to be free, unless it's a reduction in taxes that is offset by a hidden loss of deductions.
"Exact same" was another overdone pairing. Exact and same imply a copy, therefore the same as. Eliminate extra words.
My favorite eye opener from Safire was the correct use of the word "literally." "He literally hit the ceiling." Oh yeah? Unless it's a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sky shot in an Manhattan apartment, it is unlikely someone is going to actually hit the ceiling. Yet, the misuse lives on.
Mr. Safire is no longer with us, but Mr. Zimmer is doing a capable job of offering disquisitions on the trendy language hitting the airwaves, for it is usually the newscasters and sportscasters, or Saturday Night Live guests who start the ball rolling with a cute phrase that is suddenly on everyone's lips.
The Philadelphia Eagles seem to be the ones whose shove toward the line of scrimmage on fourth down that has everyone saying "tush push." Mr. Zimmer tells us that since the motto for the city of Philadelphia is the city of "Brotherly Love" the action after the snap could be called "Brotherly Shove." No way, José.
"Tush" is just too cute a word not to use. Of course its roots are in Yiddish, "tokhes" (took-us), for rear end. A British slang expert, Jonathan Green, has identified the first use of "tuchus," "toches" or "tochas" as appearing in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, as early as 1885.
And according to a 1962 article on Yiddish idioms in the journal American Speech "tushie" was popular among Midwestern Jewish children as in the slide "tushie slide" for a slid down a slope on one's bottom.
1962 seems far too recent for "tush" to have entered the language. Any Jewish kid I knew growing up was urged by their mother or grandmothers to wipe their tush really well after No. 2 emerged. "Did you wipe?" Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and a clean tush is one way to make sure you're still eligible for life after death in heaven.
The Philadelphia Eagle center is Jason Kelce, older brother of Travis Kelce, the most famous man on earth for currently dating the most famous woman on Earth, Taylor Swift.
As anyone who is not in a coma knows by now, Kelce is the star running tight end for the Super Bowl Champions Kansas City Chiefs. As Taylor Swift is a media magnet stronger than the North Pole, their relationship is media fodder. When she shows up at Kansas City games in a sky box with her entourage, the camera will find her any number of times that my suspicion is that Vegas will quote an over/under line on her camera grabs.
Of course being a boyfriend of Taylor Swift might come with an expiration date. The evening news the other night couldn't resist putting a New Rochelle house's Halloween decorations in its newscast showing a likeness of Taylor Swift on the front yard surrounded by fake headstones with the names of former boyfriends. Will Kelce's name appear on a headstone next year? Who knows.
If you were to ask me to spell "tush" I would spell it "tusch" because of all the times I saw overhead subway ads for 1-800-MD-TUSCH, a Manhattan proctologist who advertised to a great extent in the subway as being the go-to doc for anal warts, fissures and hemorrhoids. Nothing wrong with medical advertising, and making it cute is making a memorable ad.
I spent nearly the last 20 years of my employment in the role of health insurance fraud detection for a major New York health insurer, and then for a consulting firm that provided detection services for its clients nationwide. We always had work.
And how do you detect health insurance fraud? Through a combination of specialized computer programing, tips, and looking at subway ads. Huh?
Anyone who is spending as much money as MD-TUSCH was and other practitioners to attract business might not really be on the up-and-up. And it was proved that MD-TUSCH was attracting business and reporting services as covered medical expenses when, to be honest, he was merely providing a bit of a thrill for his patient clientele.
When it came time to amass the data I suggested to my director that MD-TUSCH really wanted the golden phone number: 1-800 ASS-HOLE. I said the phone company denied his request.
Our fraud unit at the health insurer employed two field investigators who were retired Irish-American NYPD detectives. These guys were pure cop, and not likely to convince too many people they weren't that at some time. It didn't matter.
As much as they investigated health insurers, they also served as in-house detectives for employee drug activity and theft of materials, particularly from the in-house printing operation that was somehow going through a lot of paper.
One of the investigators was assigned to make an appointment with MD-TUSCH to get a lay of the land about his medical practice. The investigators would wear wires.
I didn't get all the investigative details that led to the loss of MD-TUSCH's license in New York, other than the investigator observed the entire waiting room looked like a bus from Christopher Street had discharged its passengers at the desk. The doctor's boyfriend was down the hall offering hair styling services. True medical need didn't seem to be in sight.
There was a dermatologist who was snagged after spending nearly $40,000 a month on MTA advertising for removal of acne. Non-covered cosmetic procedures were billed as legitimate covered services.
Since I'm retired these days I don't ride the subways as much as I once did. But when I do I always look up to see if there are any prospects for my successors. Alas, not. Subway advertising doesn't seem to be the same these days.
Entire subway cars seem to have a theme. Maybe police recruitment; maybe a storage service for storing stuff that you can't keep in a Manhattan apartment; ads for the MTA itself on its MetroCard/OMNY fare payment systems. Individual businesses don't seem to be using the subway to attract business.
Those were the days. Tusch...Tush push...No matter how you spell it, it's all the same.
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