catfish amendment

Was the catfish joke racist?

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:03:30 -0400

Does the catfish amendment have racist roots?

Longtime readers will recall Dome's obsession with tracking down the origins of that peculiar North Carolina phrase.

Forgive us, but we were discussing the posts at a seminar on blogging in Richmond last week, and we had a long ride back.

One of the things we recalled was that the earliest references we could find to the catfish joke — "Don't worry, little catfish, I ain't gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna gut you!" — all centered on a young black child.

It struck us that there are two ways to interpret the joke: 1) The fisherman doesn't realize what he's saying, as in a "Cecil and Leonard" sketch, or 2) the fisherman is trying to trick the fish, as in a Tom Sawyer episode.

Not to get all third-rate W.J. Cash on you, but our theory is that the joke originally was racist, with the punchline depending on a stereotype that blacks are intellectually inferior.

By the time lawyers and politicians began using the joke as a rhetorical argument, the meaning had shifted, with the punchline now being that the fisherman was devious.

And since casting one's opponent in the courtroom or the legislature as the black child in the joke would not be, shall we say, genteel, the racial element dropped away and was eventually forgotten.

A Tar Heel Political Dictionary

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:12:31 -0400

Catfish amendment: (noun) A seemingly friendly amendment designed to kill a bill by making it undesirable.

Chilipunked: (verb, past tense) To be left out of a news story, debate or other political event when one believes coverage is warranted, e.g. a Libertarian candidate.

Folks: (noun, plural) 1. A phrase used by North Carolina politicians to refer to almost any group of people. 2. Voters. 3. Fellow legislators. 4. One's political opponents. 5. The media. Example: "What folks in the press corps don't understand is that folks back home didn't send us folks up here to debate those folks on this issue."

Seed corn: (noun) An item, such as spending in the budget, that could be eliminated or otherwise used foolishly now but would be better saved for the future.

Shampaign: (noun) A brief period in which potential candidates announce they are considering a run, garnering attention from the public and the media before saying they won't run after all.

The Dome's FAQs machine

ryanteaguebeckwith — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:55:43 -0400

Under the Dome has a new feature that's not so new.

Since we started the blog, we've had a feature called Frequently Asked Questions in which we provide concise, encylopedic answers to topical questions.

Some examples: What does the state labor commissioner do? How does a primary runoff work? What is the Queen City Curse? Who is on the Council of State? What is a catfish amendment? Who has been expelled from the legislature?

Though we now have answers to more than 40 questions, we haven't promoted this feature much.

That changed today, when we added a new widget to the right-hand column. It will list the most recently modified FAQ and give a brief description of the answer.

To read the fuller answer, click "Read more," or click "View all FAQs" to browse a complete list.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this new/old feature or any suggestions for other improvements to Under the Dome.

Wayland's catfish

ryanteaguebeckwith — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:52:33 -0400

Retired educator Raymond Stone swears the catfish joke came from Rep. Wayland Spruill.

Stone, who worked for the N.C. Association of Educators in the 1950s, said he recalls the Bertie County Democrat telling the joke frequently.

"He was a great big bald-headed potbellied man who could stand on the floor and wax poetic about the rippling waters of the Chowan River," Stone told Dome. "That was always the thing — 'Hold still, little catfish.' I can hear him right now saying that."

Stone said he could not recall Rep. Cutlar Moore making the joke, as previously reported in Dome.

But he said that regardless, Spruill was a "bigger character" than Moore.

The earliest catfish?

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 08:30:00 -0400

Another reference to the catfish joke has been found.

This one dates to a Congressional hearing before a House subcommittee on appropriations in 1964. In the more genteel language of the era, a representative of an Alabama Electric Cooperative told the joke:

"Bouldin, Vogtle, and Pulley remind one of the fisherman who held a small, wriggling fish in his hand, preparatory to cleaning it for eating, and said: 'Hold still, little fish. I'm not going to hurt you—I only want to gut you.'"

Because of Google's frustrating "snippet view," it's hard to provide the context, but the discussion appears to be about an electrical generation and transmission program that "Bouldin, Vogtle and Pulley" were surreptitiously trying to kill.

As we've written before, this joke was probably old even at the turn of the century. Dome is beginning to believe if we pursue this any further, we'll soon be reading the Apocrypha. Anyone have a copy of the Book of Catfish?

Correction: Michael Van Fossen at UNC-Chapel Hill looked up the reference for us, and Google Books had it wrong. The entry does not date to 1904, but to 1964.

Mr. Catfish

ryanteaguebeckwith — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:04:24 -0400

A Georgia lobbyist named "Mr. Catfish" had his own theory.

Jim Kulstad, a public interest lobbyist in Atlanta, was given the nickname after he successfully thwarted a bill by the Georgia Department of Transportation with a "catfish amendment" in the late 1980s.

Although he'd heard the catfish joke, he said he did not make the connection with the phrase "catfishing," which in Georgia is the practice of soliciting amendments that would either gut a bill or change it enough that it has to go back to the other chamber for concurrence.

"I always liked to think the nickname came from Jim 'Catfish' Hunter for throwing curves, but clearly bottom fishing for Republican votes is more accurate," he wrote Dome. "My nickname came from bottom fishing, no ifs, ands or buts about it."

Still, he said he'd heard the "hold still, little catfish" joke a number of times over the years.

Herring on catfish

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:00:00 -0400

In Georgia, lobbyists also go "catfishing."

A self-employed environmental lobbyist in the Peach State writes Dome that the word is most often used as a verb there, and not as an adjective, as in North Carolina's "catfish amendment."

"We use the term catfishing to mean bottomfeeding, finding unlikely sponsors for amendments that may or more often may not offer things that we want to see, but which will certainly screw up the bill onto which they get fastened," writes Neill Herring.

As an example, he said that a group of lawmakers were trying to pass a bill to build reservoirs. Opponents tacked on an amendment ordering the state to first build one in southern Georgia that had already been denied by the federal government.

More after the jump for the linguistically curious.

The first catfish amendment?

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:00:00 -0400

The first known reference to a "catfish amendment" is from 1957.

As Dome speculated earlier, a minimum wage bill in that year's legislative session may have helped popularize the phrase. We've now tracked down that story.

In an unsigned article in the N&O on April 17, Lumberton Sen. Cutlar Moore is quoted complaining about changes made to a bill to boost the minimum wage to 75 cents an hour.

There was a fisherman, he said, who was having difficulty skinning a catfish which squirmed frantically under the knife.

"Finally," Moore said, "this fellow said, 'Hold still little catfish. All I'm going to do is gut you.'"

The amendments exempted hotel and laundry workers, firms with fewer than five employees, children under 18 and those who work fewer than 18 hours a week. They "chopped the bill down to a mere shell of its former self," the article notes.

It's possible that the phrase "catfish amendment" was already in use by then, and the joke was certainly not original. But the high profile of the minimum wage bill and the numerous amendments make it a plausible candidate.

The full text of the 1957 article after the jump.

Deep catfish

ryanteaguebeckwith — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:26:55 -0400

North Carolina politicians aren't the only ones who like catfish.

A quick check at the N.C. State library reveals an academic treatise from 1978 that elaborates on why that old Southern joke has stuck around so long.

In the autumn issue of Critical Inquiry, Wayne C. Booth writes that a lawyer friend was hired to defend a large Southern utility against a suit by a smaller one. Things went well until closing arguments:

Then the lawyer for the smaller utility said, speaking to the jury, almost as if incidentally to his legal case, "So now we see what it is. They got us where they want us. They holding us up with one hand, their good sharp fishin' knife in the other, and they sayin', 'you jes set still, little catfish, we're jes going to gut ya.

Booth writes his friend knew he had lost the case because of a "genius metaphor."

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.