Ask Yahoo looks into the origin of “peanut gallery” — a term that I’ve been enamored by over the years, perhaps because the idea of happy elephants enjoying a show (itself a fixation that goes back to my love of the film Fantasia) has always appealed to me. Not that I associate cheaper seats with elephants or anything, but this term that has always played tricks on my associative mind.

In any event, Ask Yahoo claims that the term predates Howdy Doody, dating back to 1888 in American theatres. The theory making the rounds is that people who sat in cheap seats often ate peanuts. But if I have a hunch this isn’t entirely correct. If these cheaper seats were the cost of “peanuts,” then it’s also possible that the “peanut gallery” may have come into popularity from this slang defintion. In the case of a theatre, a gallery is a roofed promenade or a long passage. So we’re talking about “peanuts” that were either fixed in place (as in seats for “peanuts”) or the sitting nature of theatregoers who were eating peanuts.

The question here is whether or not the affluent theatregoers actually went out of their way to crane their heads at people eating peanuts, or whether the “peanuts,” so to speak, drew attention to themselves:

The Word Detective weighs in with this:

The topmost tier (what we would call “the nosebleed seats” today) was the gallery, where the less affluent patrons ended up. Many of these folks were not shy about expressing their opinions when they found the performance lacking, and often employed the peanuts they bought to munch as handy missiles to get the actors’ attention. Thus, “peanut gallery” gradually took on its figurative meaning of “rowdy rabble.”

No doubt peanuts themselves were as noisy to eat back then as they are now, with considerable shell-cracking to boot. But there doesn’t seem to be anything I can find that corroborates what was served back then. If anyone is an expert on snacks that were served in theatres before the turn of the century, I’d definitely be curious to hear from them.

It is worth noting that peanuts were quite popular in the 1890s. George Washington Carver promoted the peanut as a replacement for the cotton crop, which had been decimated by the weevil. Only a decade or so later, all sorts of devices had been created to harvest peanuts in droves. So the transplant of the Brazilian nut must have taken a major hold upon both American life and, accordingly, American language.

Jumping off from this Book Standard article by Jessa Crispin, here is a list of cliches to be found in any article written about comic books. I urge all reviewers to please clip this list next to their typewriters before sending out a query.

1. Comic books: They’re not just for kids anymore!
2. Comic books: They tackle adult themes!
3. Comic books: They’re not lower-class art!
4. Comic books: They tell personal stories!
5. The Egyptians had hieroglyphics. Today, we have comic books!
6. Comic books as the great equalizer among audiences.
7. The obligatory comparison to Art Spiegelman.
8. The obligatory comparison to Frank Miller.
9. Comic books: It’s about the sense of wonder!
10. Well, wouldn’t you know it, graphic novels really are literature!

Bobbie-B chats with Ian McEwan. Among the most shocking revelation: Birnbaum doesn’t celebrate April Fool’s Day! There’s no mention of Saturday‘s parallels to Mrs. Dalloway, but this probably has to do with time constraints more than anything else.

I’m about as depressed as one can be over that a slick motherfucker like John Roberts, a man infinitely worse than Scalia, is now being seriously considered for the Supreme Court. His record shows wild-eyed ideology rather than a bilateral concern for upholding the law. We’re talking about a man who wants to decimate the separation between church and state and a man who is seriously against a woman’s right to choose — despite the fact that the majority of Americans want Roe vs. Wade to be upheld.

This is a man who wrote in 1990: “We continue to believe that Roe [vs. Wade] was wrongly decided and should be overruled�. The Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion � finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.”

I guess Roberts didn’t read the first paragraph: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Last I checked, “domestic Tranquility” and “general Welfare” involved a woman having the right to choose in the 21st century. It involved a family having children when the parents were ready, so that they would be in a better position to provide the appropriate care and emotional and financial support to ensure that a child can grow up in a safe and nurturing environment rather than a broken home.

If the Democrats do not filibuster this man, if they do not do their damnedest to ensure that we don’t live in a Handmaid’s Tale-like universe of backalley abortions, then they are nothing less than culpable.

I urge everyone who cares to write your Senator and urge him or her to fight this nomination.

From NARAL: Tell your Senator!

[UPDATE: Slate has an article on Roberts’ stand on civil liberties, specifically in the Hamdan v. Rushdie case. Needless to say, the opinion that Roberts penned is troubling for anyone concerned about due process and the Geneva Convention.]