Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

How many of you were first aware of the Clean Plate Club vs. the Clean
the Plate Club?

Lately, all I hear about is the first, and they describe it
positively.

But as I understood it when I was 5 years old, only the Clean the
Plate Club was worth belonging to, and if anything, the Clean Plate
Club was a Communist front organization,

The issue reminds me of Smokey Bear vs. Smokey the Bear.  What's
Smokey the Bear's middle name?.......

"The".  Now that joke, which I told over and over about 1955, would
make no sense if Smokey didnt' have a middle name.  So it's plain that
at the time, both the people I told the joke to, who laughed, and I
knew about Smokey the Bear.  And OTOH, if I knew a smokey bear, I'd
probably think I should spray water on him.  

Yet  the US national park or fire service seems in recent years to be
actively promoting the notion that there was no Smokey the Bear. It
seems like they are trying to rewrite history.  (Again, something
Communist governments were famous for, although recent events show
that it is not limited to them.) Maybe there was none in the inner
sanctum of the park or fire service, but Smokey the Bear was all over
the place outside the bureaucratic world.  He was making public
appearance, opposing forest fires, going to parties, vacationing in
the mountains and at the beach, serving with the Highway Patrol,
sunbathing, swimming, and snorkeling in Maui, etc.

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