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From: jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: net.games.trivia
Subject: Re: "Mickey Mouse" and "Ribbet"
Message-ID: <822@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-Jan-86 20:35:02 EST
Article-I.D.: rtech.822
Posted: Sun Jan  5 20:35:02 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Jan-86 04:10:24 EST
References: <4300001@konech.UUCP> <804@rtech.UUCP> <8213@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: Relational Technology, Alameda CA
Lines: 34

> 
> ... if you ask people (at least Americans) now to imitate the
> sound a frog makes, you usually get the reply "Ribbet! Ribbet!".  My memory
> is that this is not what people said in the early 1960s.  Am I right or wrong
> on this?  I've always claimed that "Ribbet" was popularized by a sketch on the
> Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 or 1968, in which Tommy Smothers played
> a frog in a puppet theater.

You're right.

> "Here come da judge!  Here come da judge!"  was on everyone's tongue the
> day after Sammy Davis, Jr. did the lead-ins to the judge sketches on Laugh-In
> one night.

I think that was Flip Wilson, not Sammy Davis, Jr.

> 
> For the net.games.trivia readers (and followup only to that group, please),
> what other TV broadcasts have had bits or lines with such staying power?
> 
> -- David Smallberg, das@locus.ucla.edu, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das

Tommy Smothers is responsible for another one.  Once, on the Tonight Show, he
was talking about Richard Nixon and Watergate.  He said something like, "Some
people think that President Nixon is innocent.  Some people think chickens
have lips."  It brought down the house.  People started to use the phrase to
indicate incredible naivete, and there was even a (bad) song written around
it.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."

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