Talk:Throw under the bus

Untitled
I just realized that I made a self-link to my Double-Tongued Dictionary by moving some of the citations I've gathered there over here in order to correct the false etymology. Will someone vet this for me? The main point of the correction here was to refute a citation that has been widely misunderstood to be the earliest usage, both by William Safire, who quotes Paul Dickson, who in turn attributes the lines as if Cyndi Lauper herself said them, which she did not. Newsweek, in its turn, credits the 1984 "find" to Safire and doesn't mention Dickson. But it's wrong. 1991 is the earliest in-print use for the term that's been found so far.GrantBarrett (talk) 22:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

In the comics
Dilbert has a nice joke using "under the bus": http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-09-21/

Shall we include that reference in the article? 93.83.157.42 (talk) 06:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Prase as been around a lon time.
The lede seems to suggest the phrase has only come into use after 2004, with one exception were a journalist happened to use the same phrase, coincidentally, back in 1982. This was a well-established saying in American English by the last few decades of the century, and probably well before that. If it had a spike in popularity in 2004 it was a REVIVAL, not the origin this seems to be suggesting.AnnaGoFast (talk) 06:21, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Not only an American English phrase?
I don't believe this phrase is exclusive to American English as is implied in the article. Google’s Ngram Viewer suggests that while the phrase is more popular in American English, the phrase ('under the bus') is still used regularly in British English. In fact, it suggests that it was used equally as much in both dialects in the 1960s. There are a number of examples of the phrase being used in the UK, in the same way that it would be used in American English, most visibly in a political context. It's possible that the phrase may have been considered exclusive to American English in the past, but I don't believe this to be the case anymore. Clyde1998 (talk) 23:26, 27 July 2018 (UTC)


 * More to the point, it directly contradicts the second paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.188.163.92 (talk) 05:02, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Baseball
In this Newsweek article, William Safire traces the phrase back to minor-league baseball, though it seems to repeat what this article says is an erroneous claim about Cyndi Lauper. The baseball angle might be speculation and wrong, but might be worth further research. -- Beland (talk) 23:51, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Other examples
I removed the section Other Examples. It is at best merely a thinly disguised "In Popular Culture" section which promotes lists not in keeping with WP:IPCEXAMPLES and invites "cruft" content. Maineartists (talk) 23:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)