A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
When I first heard that phrase, it was attributed to Gloria Steinem or Flo Kennedy. Neither, though, has ever claimed authorship of it. Steinem, however, once attributed it to Irene Dunn, who in turn says she was paraphrasing Charles Harris, an American psychologist who supposedly wrote "A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle" in an article he wrote for the Swarthmore College newspaper while he was an undergraduate there during the 1950s.
But even Harris admitted that the expression probably existed long before then. Indeed, an 1898 editorial in the Hartford Courant, a Connecticut newspaper, opined:
The place [Aragon, Spain] didn't need an American consul any more than a cow needs a bicycle; for it had no trade with America and no American tourist ever dreamed of stopping there.
Well, as Groucho Marx said, "You've got a point there. Now why don't you go and put a hat over it." I mean, a cow or a fish may not need a bicycle. But so what? Who's to say they can't have a bicycle if that's what they want?
Better yet--what if the fish wants to be a bicycle?
When I first heard that phrase, it was attributed to Gloria Steinem or Flo Kennedy. Neither, though, has ever claimed authorship of it. Steinem, however, once attributed it to Irene Dunn, who in turn says she was paraphrasing Charles Harris, an American psychologist who supposedly wrote "A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle" in an article he wrote for the Swarthmore College newspaper while he was an undergraduate there during the 1950s.
But even Harris admitted that the expression probably existed long before then. Indeed, an 1898 editorial in the Hartford Courant, a Connecticut newspaper, opined:
The place [Aragon, Spain] didn't need an American consul any more than a cow needs a bicycle; for it had no trade with America and no American tourist ever dreamed of stopping there.
Well, as Groucho Marx said, "You've got a point there. Now why don't you go and put a hat over it." I mean, a cow or a fish may not need a bicycle. But so what? Who's to say they can't have a bicycle if that's what they want?
Better yet--what if the fish wants to be a bicycle?
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| From Web Ecoist |
