Featured in the New Yorker, July 26, 1993
Q: Mr. President, in a recent news conference you used the rather colorful expression “He doesn’t know me from Adam’s off ox.” Senator Dole alleges there is no such term and says you employed this “pseudo-colloquialism” (he also called it a “Gergenism”) as a calculated attempt to sound “downhome” in order to woo back Southern Democrats who have deserted you. Would you care to comment, sir?
A: Yes, Brit, I’d be glad to clarify that allusion. In a team of oxen, the “off” one is the one farther away from the driver—that is, to the right. So if our ancestor Adam is far back in memory his off ox is even farther away—but maybe not as far right as Senator Dole. When I left Arkansas to attend Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, people back home would ask my mother where I was, and she would tell them I was off. Off at Oxford. I could have said he didn’t know me from Adam’s hatband, or Adam’s pet monkey, Adam’s brother, his brag dog, his chief communications officer—whatever. We use lots of these sayings in Arkansas, but you don’t know split beans from coffee about Arkansas, do you?
Q (follow-up): Sir, isn’t this another example of what your critics call Slick Willie waffling—claiming to be both an Oxonian and a good old boy?
A: Brit, let me say that “Adam’s off ox” is heard chiefly west of the Appalachians, according to the Dictionary of American Regional English. In the Northeast, there are only two lonely spots where the D.A.R.E. maps the usage of “Adam’s off ox”—one in upstate New York and one in Massachusetts.
We have a language gap. Let me point out that I wouldn’t naturally say, “He doesn’t know me from Adam’s off bull.” When I was coming up in Hope, we didn’t say “bull” in mixed company. We said “he-cow.” A bull was a gentleman cow, or a male cow, or a top cow. Up here inside the Beltway, you call a bull a bull, and you call bull “bull.” In the South, we have an expression for people who do that. We say, “He’s a person who says what he thinks.” And it’s not necessarily a compliment.
What you call “waffling” is just good manners back home. I was taught to say “he-cow.” And we didn’t say “rooster.” We said “chicken,” or “hechicken.” Schoolteachers would speak of “the he” and “the she” and “girl birds” and “boy birds.” People never said “cock” in public. Any word with “cock” in it was taboo. They’d say “hoe handle.” Why, some Southerners still won’t say “the clap.” They say “the collapse.” Some old-timers back home still can’t bring themselves to say my brother’s name, Roger. “Roger” used to be a dirty word. A verb.
But yesterday’s gone. Now you can say “bullshit,” and it doesn’t even mean anything. Let me just say this: The trait of being inoffensive in mixed company is a major strength of this Presidency. You see, the whole world now is mixed company. It’s an advantage that the President of the United States is in the habit of spontaneously blurting out obscure regional metaphors that wouldn’t make ladies blush a century ago. I expect to do more of it.
Hey, I just got here and I’ve got a lot to learn. I know the Presidency is more than knitting cat fur into kitten britches. That reminds me—I could have said, earlier, “He doesn’t know me from Adam’s house cat.” And it might interest you to know that Adam’s house cat was called Nethergarment. A polite term for britches. Why, I know folks who won’t even say the word “socks.”