"alter cocker"

[Jon Ford]

Mike-- Mike, I challenge your linguistic precision! If you are saying 
Bernays is an "alter cocker," that would mean he was a cocker spaniel that 
had been neutered (altered, fixed, etc.) I don't think that describes 
Bernays well at all-- or Chomsky's impression of him, although B.  might be 
considered to a leftist a "Capitalist running dog." The correct Yiddish 
expression I believe (since I just used it in a poem a couple of days ago 
and double checked with a friend of mine from Brooklyn) is "alte cacker" 
which literally translated means "old shitter." However, this doesn't 
describe Bernays very well either, because the connotations of "old shitter" 
are kind of like "babbling old fool" or maybe "old bullshitter" whereas 
Bernays was sharp as a tack up to a couple of years before his death.

Jon


>To entertain the audience he
> > brought up alter cocker Bernays as the
> > paradigm of amoral Madison Ave.


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