Living in a fantasy tale

Posted: May 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On the podcast The Megyn Kelly Show, Dave Portnoy, president and founder of Barstool Sports, was being interviewed by Kelly. They were talking about Meghan Markle’s perceived entitlement and portraying herself as a victim. Portnoy said that Markle didn’t need to work or complain as she is “living in a fantasy tale.” You can hear this one at the 1:34:00 minute mark (May 1, 2025 show). This is a congruent conflation of “a fairy tale” and “fantasy land”, both referring to imaginary places of utter perfection and happiness. A big thanks to Verbatim for hearing this one and sending it in.

(Trump) shoots from the cuff

Posted: September 5, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

Megyn Kelly was talking about Trump’s encounter with Jorge Ramos:

KELLY: When he got up there, you know, in his speech, he was talking about how he thinks they should ban Teleprompters for these politicians.  These presidential candidates which I think, you know, the President actually uses a teleprompter pretty much in most places he goes. But I don’t know that the candidates have been. But the point is, there is a realness to Donald Trump that is missing from so many of these other candidates. They do tend to sound rehearsed and stilted. He is never rehearsed. Obviously he shoots from the cuff and he says everything that comes to his mind which has gotten him in some trouble but I think helps him more than it hurts him. And people are very much connecting to that.

I have posted this malaphor earlier (see March 2014 entry) but it bears repeating, considering the timeliness of this excellent mixed idiom.  Shoot from the cuff is a mash up of “shoot from the hip” and speaking “off the cuff”, both meaning to speak spontaneously and frankly.  (Also see “shoot from the lip” in my Politics section).  Thanks to Sandor Kovacs and Vicki Kovacs for both spotting this one!

Trump’s comment about Megyn Kelly possibly a malaphor?

Posted: August 10, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

At the outset, this is not a political forum and I am not making any political statement.  I am merely suggesting that the Donald might have been confusing his idioms and so I am focusing solely on language here.

Here is the now famous comment:

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,” Trump said during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday night. “Blood coming out of her wherever.”  He later said that he was suggesting that blood was coming out of Kelly’s ears and nose, indicating anger.

This may be a mix of “out for blood” and “looking daggers at me”, both indicating anger and both consistent with the context.  “Smoke coming out of her ears” might also have been in the subconscious, as that expression also describes someone angry, often depicted literally in cartoons.  This is probably a better explanation than his follow up regarding noses and ears, both not describing anger as far as I know (as an aside, since he said he “could see blood coming out..”,  the seemingly unanimous conclusion of “wherever” doesn’t seem to be consistent, since that is not something one “could see” in the way one might be able to “see” another person’s eyes).

I posted a Trump malaphor recently (see the July 21, 2015 malaphor – https://malaphors.com/2015/07/21/i-have-a-pulse-to-the-ground/) so he does jumble his expressions.