Hand-me-up Clothes

Peter Sagal: Brian, Republicans have had a hard time courting younger voters, so they're turning to a new spokesman, a gentleman named Scott Greenberg. He is the first known Republican what?

Brian Babylon: Gimme a hint.

PS: Well, with him, the party platform is, 'Skinny Jeans, but a Big Tent.'

BB: Oh, these are...a Republican hipster?

PS: A Republican hipster! The first one found.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I was gonna go with boyscout.

PS: Scott Greenberg, uh, has got the jeans, the horn-rimmed glasses, he's got the three-day growth of beard, he's the kind of guy who would intern on a public radio show if he didn't want to defund public radio.

[wild applause from crowd that not only listens to radio but goes to see it live]

Scott Greenberg in a 2014 GOP ad.

BB: I don't even want to know what this kid looks like, because I know he had...you know hipsters wear hand-me-up clothes.

PS: What does that mean?

BB: Hand-me-up-clothes? That a little boy hands up to a grown man. They wear those little clothes, tight, and they have handlebar mustaches, and I'm scared of those...

PS: This is what I mean: he's doing a great job advocating Republican policy positions because just after one minute of listening to that guy, 100% of Democrats wished they owned a gun.

From the March 22 episode of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me. 

WWDTM has a way of beating a dead horse, but at least Babylon has a new spin on the skinny-jeans-and-glasses description.

The Early Days of Dude

"'For some reason,' Metcalf says, 'early in 1883, this inspired someone to call foppish young men of New York City "doods," with the alternate spelling "dudes" soon becoming the norm.'

 "What, is this my Son Tom" from 1774. Kids these days! From here.

 Some of the early mocking descriptions of these dudes seem awfully familiar today: 'A weak mustache, a cigarette, a thirteen button vest/A curled rim hat — a minaret — two watch chains cross the breast.'"

Okrent, Arika. "Mystery Solved: The Etymology of Dude" on Slate .

Writers online can't seem to avoid the h-word, and Okrent won't let this just be interesting on its own. But I love that it would be thirteen  buttons. What did everyone else have, three? Ten? Where do we draw the line at excess, how weak was his mustache? These are the small distinctions that make fashion history so interesting!

Now you know, dude.