newsobserver.com projects - Fish, or Cutlar's bait - Comments

Yes, but

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:09:19 -0400

Your original explanation is correct.

But, I think it's not so much the "gutting" reference, as it is the actual joke.

A "catfish amendment" is supposed to sound friendly but it's actually not, just as the fisherman smooth talks the catfish. (Is this a Southern-fried version of The Walrus and the Carpenter?)

Since this morning, I've found a few more references to the "Hold still, little catfish" joke:

In the 1971 book "Congress in Crisis," author Roger Davidson cites former Time correspondent Neil MacNeil, "Because of past criticisms, he says, Congress has often felt toward its academic critics the way the catfish must have felt toward the fisherman: 'Hold still, catfish,' the fisherman said, 'I only want to gut you.'"

A 1982 Clifford Baldowski political cartoon about Ronald Reagan in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes use of the phrase as a punchline.

And in 2002, Georgia Sen. Zell Miller was quoted in The New Republic: "Do you know what this farm bill says to the South?" asked Georgia Senator Zell Miller. "'Hold still, little catfish. All I'm going to do is just gut you.'"

Also, former reporter Danny Lineberry e-mailed to say he recalled hearing it in Virginia in the 1980s, and he thinks it may be in "The Shad Treatment," a book about Virginia politics in the early 1970s.

(I don't have a copy of the book handy, but if anyone can send in the relevant passage, I'll post it.)

To sum up, Georgia probably has a stronger claim on originating the phrase "catfish amendment" than North Carolina, but the use of the catfish joke in political speech appears to be widespread in the South.

— RTB

Re: Fish, or Cutlar's bait

gercohen — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:52:57 -0400

good catch. :)

So we're back more or less to my 2006 post that you quoted a few days ago "In 2006, bill drafting director Gerry Cohen speculated on a legislative Web site that it comes from fishing, since the amendment is akin to "ripping the guts out of the bill.""

I heard the "gutting" explanation back in 1971, the catfish phrase was oftused then

Fish, or Cutlar's bait

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:30:00 -0400

The use of the term "catfish amendment" can be traced back further.

Roy Parker Jr., a former political reporter for the N&O in the 1950s and '60s, credits former state Sen. Cutlar Moore with popularizing, if not coining, the phrase in North Carolina.

Parker said the Lumberton Democrat, who served in the Senate during that era, proposed a bill regulating the insurance industry. Other legislators then sought to kill it with seemingly friendly amendments.

He said Moore explained the term as "gutting" the bill.

"He’d say, 'They tell us this amendment won't do much, but I feel like it may be a catfish amendment,'" Parker recalled. "I can see him standing up there now saying, 'Don’t worry, little catfish, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to gut you."

That appears to be a common Southern joke, however.

More after the jump.