Greetings Agora,

Long time reader, first time caller. This is a phrase I have heard on old American movies and am curious as to who or what a gipper is. To me it seems to be just gipperish.

WIN one for the gipper

http://home.no.net/birgerro/gipp.htm

BNJTOKYO

Thankyou so much for that information. For some reason I thought he was a baseball player. Anyway, I appreciate your assistance bnjtokyo.

Wow!  The Tokyo team comes off the sidelines and tackles that question at the 50-yard line!  :)

-Tim

I know Ronald Raygun played the Gipper in Knute Rockne - All American, but how did he manage to acquire the nickname for himself?

The Reagan Information Page starts out like this:

In honor of the greatest President of the 20th century, we proudly present the award winning President Reagan Information Page! In the spirit of "Winning one for the Gipper" we bring you the truth about the Reagan Era.

I don’t want to get into a debate about the relative merits of 20th century presidents (US or otherwise) - in spite of the somewhat emotive way I phrased the question, I’d just be interested to know if the transfer of the nickname was spontaneous or engineered in some way.

Ed

ed, there may have been some marketing effort, but I bet it didn’t take a lot to associate the "Gipper" nickname to ol’ Ronny.  People naturally have a tendency to associate people with their accomplishments, and even though we know Reagan was merely acting the part, we still associate him with the character.

I’m sure that happens anywhere famous actors bridge the public/private spheres.

What I find more interesting is that, in this case, Reagan was not really a "famous actor".  He was more famous for his political activities and life than for the movies he made, in my view.  However, he seems to have been able to carry the image with him, defying logic (as it were).

-Tim

I was never a big fan of Ronnie Rayguns, but I think the Marines in Faluja are about to smoke (v. tr. sense 5) more than a few for the Gipper, and rightly so.  Had we done something as flagrantly heinous to any Iraqi corpse, civilian or not, there would be no end to the vilifying and excoriating from the world’s weasels.

Hello Katy and thank you for the hearty welcome. I have often though the most effective way of countering an insult is to adopt it. The Rats of Tobruk spring to mind. Possibly also the adoption of the cross instead of the fish as a symbol for the early Christians, although I am not sure about that. I am a little rusty on Chritian history.

[quote author=Tim Ward link=board=idiom;num=1080805330;start=0#5 date=04/02/04 at 10:18:46]even though we know Reagan was merely acting the part, we still associate him with the character.

This calls for a joke on Reagan’s presidency, but wouldn’t that open up another can of worms?