The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

‘Truman’ quote’s D.C. variant: ‘Solomon Scandals’ blog cited by noted amateur etymologist

Who was the first on Earth to utter a clas­sic line, or some­thing close to it: “If you want a friend in Wash­ing­ton, get a dog”?

So far I’ve traced the wit­ti­cism back to Don­ald Devine, a Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, who can’t recall where he heard it. I sus­pect that some­one Wash­ing­tonized a line in Samuel Gallu’s play Give ‘em Hell, Harry, with “in life” used orig­i­nally rather than “Wash­ing­ton.” That would jibe with the opin­ion of Ralph Keyes, author of The Quote Ver­i­fier.

Now a sec­ond quote tracer, Barry Popik (right photo), has more or less reached the same con­clu­sion that Keyes and I have, along with the Harry Tru­man Library ear­lier. In so doing, the well-known ety­mol­o­gist cites an item in the Scan­dals blog—Tru­man dog mys­tery: Help for me from ex-Senator, but no solu­tion, for which I talked to both Devine and for­mer U.S. Sen. Nancy Lan­don Kasse­baum Baker.

“’If you’re going to stay in this town (Hollywood—ed.) and want a friend, go out and buy your­self a dog’ is cited from 1941,” Popik writes, “but the ‘Hol­ly­wood’ ver­sion never caught on. The ‘Wash­ing­ton’ ver­sion is cited from at least 1985.”

At least ‘85, eh? That’s from this blog, com­plete with the related Web link. (Thanks to Gar­son O’Toole for the Popik tip.)