I’m not the smartest bulb in the room

In the continuing sharpest tool/brightest bulb series of malaphors, I give you this one. Ron Cook, a Pittsburgh sportswriter, was on 93.7 The Fan, a sports radio show. He was talking about how he had trouble using Zoom and uttered this nice mashup. It is a congruent conflation of “not the sharpest tool in the shed” and “not the brightest bulb in the chandelier”, both describing someone who is not intelligent. Res ipsa loquitur, I guess. “Smartest guy in the room” might also be in the mix.

Malaphor followers will recognize this kind of mashup, as the phrases to describe someone who is of low intelligence get mixed all the time. I call this phenomenon “idiom overload”.  I have posted other variations on this theme – see https://malaphors.com/2015/12/07/youre-not-the-brightest-toolbox-in-the-shed/ and https://malaphors.com/2013/06/24/not-the-brightest-tool-in-the-shed/.

Also see https://malaphors.com/2016/03/04/hes-not-the-sharpest-light-bulb-in-the-pack/

A big thank you to John Kooser for hearing this one and sending it in!