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The Last Dick
Dick's lower-case, lower-abdominal second meaning has been around for while. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it dates to the late 19th century—before the word was used for detectives, but after it had already been employed as a synonym for a certain fancy sort of riding whip. No one knows why it wasn’t Chuck or Hank or Jack that attached its name to that particular piece of the male body. But as dirty-word prohibitions loosened over the 20th century, more and more people began to hear the word and think of something other than, say, NBC executive Dick Ebersol. Slang dictionaries show a progression of other negative connotations for the word, which was used to connote an incompetent or a bully. Newly abusive conjunctions also came into fashion, as the word became attached to -head, -brain, and -nose, the latter of which the OED helpfully informs us first cropped up in 1974, the year Tricky Dick and his own ski-slope nose left Washington for good. In 1999, the word broke into prime-time television when an Ally McBeal character was referred to as a “big dick.” It wasn’t a physical description.
No wonder, then, that as the Dicks of Cheney’s generation—Gephardt, Armey—have preceded him into retirement, younger folks have eschewed the term. The sportscaster Eisen goes by Rich. The Texas governor Perry is Rick. The comedian Gervais is Ricky. Even the full name Richard has taken a tumble, falling to only the 99th most popular male name in 2007, behind Cooper, Antonio, and Kaden. I suspect Cheney would frown on such newfangled appellations: so weak, so flimsy, so post-Watergate! By Cheney’s logic, the prissy standards of modern America shouldn’t force someone to forgo torture, or to let congressional meddlers butt in on war planning, or even to disclose how many people work in the vice president’s office. And they certainly shouldn’t make people give up on an all-American, manly nickname, either. No, sir.
Of course, Dick may just get a reprieve. The president-elect’s closest Republican friend, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, is known as Dick. So is another Obama pal, Clinton Richard Holbrooke. I hope neither one gets a job in the administration. Keeping the name in the headlines for the next few years would feel sort of anticlimactic. Plus, neither man really lives up to the name in all of its privileged, midcentury essence: Lugar seems too much of a nice guy; Holbrooke, with his star turn mediating shades of gray in the Balkans, seems too modern. Cheney, on the other hand, is all that we could want for an already anachronistic moniker’s last turn in the spotlight: so bald, so taciturn, such a…well, you know. Goodbye, Mr. Vice President. You did your name proud.
Michael Schaffer is a writer in Philadelphia. One Nation Under Dog, his book about petmania, the pet industry, and what modern petkeeping says about modern America, will be published by Henry Holt in April.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Michael Schaffer is a writer in Philadelphia. One Nation Under Dog, his book about petmania, the pet industry, and what modern petkeeping says about modern America, is available from Henry Holt. For more visit www.michaelschaffer.net.
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Michael Schaffer is a writer in Philadelphia. One Nation Under Dog, his book about petmania, the pet industry, and what modern petkeeping says about modern America, is available from Henry Holt. For more visit www.michaelschaffer.net.
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Michael Schaffer is a writer in Philadelphia. One Nation Under Dog, his book about petmania, the pet industry, and what modern petkeeping says about modern America, is available from Henry Holt. For more visit www.michaelschaffer.net.
I was confused when my posts on a sports site kept being rejected. I had referred to Dick Vermeil, the professional football coach. The computer wouldn't allow "Dick" to appear!
read about bush's expansive private paraguay retreat and the tax dollars spent to build a huge airplane runway there. that's where he'll go next.
Funny how the generation of Dick passes during the generation of a new and hopefully less embarrassing name: Barack Obama.
Cheney has shamed his family name and helped define his nickname for generations to come. Hopefully we will hear no more from either name (nick or otherwise and unless an indictment is made) for a long long time.
I shivered and shook my head at the confusion inside me when I thought to myself, "I'd like to get my hands around the neck of that Dick". The time for a new favorite nickname is way past due.
My favorite memento of the Bush administration is a magnet that I bought at Lollapalooza in 2003. It has a picture of Bush & Cheney on with the words Bush & Dick-we're gonna get screwed. An boy did we ever. They can both go straight to an undisclosed location, or better yet, how about Guantanamo?
This is a fun read; thanks!
My grandparents lovingly called my father, when he was a child, Dickey.
The family photo album has captions like, "our little Dickey at Niagara Falls."
In England, confusingly, Fanny refers to a lady's front bottom rather than her back bottom.
I hope he's also the last dickhead to leave!
You don't know Dick at all.
Mr Sharp or his successor will have to redo the Dick Book due to the extraordinary circumstances of the 21st century, to wit, all the big Dicks seem to be republicans, from the lower end of the gene pool. So bid a fond farewell to the big Dick and Dickhead, who was capable of devaluing the country, an Ivy league education, the Constitution, his family name and his presidency!
lets not forget the ever popular "Dick Danger Ale" housed in washington state's Danger Brewing Company... as well as my own legally changed name to Dick Danger in late 2001...
beezzz said:
"In England, confusingly, Fanny refers to a lady's front bottom rather than her back bottom."
It's the same in Australia. Not only that, but it's several notches higher on the rudeness scale than "fanny" is in Amerrican vernacular. Imagine the looks I got when I said to the Australian Customs Agent "Hang on, my passport is in my fanny pack, I'll just grab it for you"
there is also the classy phrase that Jon Stewart used on his show Monday night: "nipple-dick"
and the ever common "that was a dick move"
Well - he was in fact, a Dick.
As a baby name consultant, I always advise against the name Dick! Rick and Rich are the most accepted nicknames nowadays, according to the millions of visitors at our site, BabyNames.com.
That the word "dick" is a popular usage synonym for a pedunculated reproductive protuberance and that didn't stop parent naming their son's "Dick," but Dick Cheney might is an astronomically sweeping value judgment on the man.
Thank you.
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