The Army locution was immediately seized upon by politicians and comedians.
"Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial," said the Democratic candidate Joe Lieberman, "if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer." And the humorist Marsk Russell observed that "Saddam crawled out of his spider hole, saw his shadow, and that forecast four more years of Bush."
Hair-shirt hell
A few more of last year's goofs need straightening out.
I wrote that the Supreme Court's willingness to hear an appeal of a decision permitting discovery of an energy task force's files "augers ill for government in the sunshine." An auger is a bit; to augur is to foretell. George Washington wrote that General Charles Pinckney's appointment "augers [sic] well of the aid that may be expected of his services." Safire slept there, too.
On the analogy of S.J. Perelman's firm of Whitelipt and Trembling, I wrote of the law partnership of "Nasty, Brutal and Short." Todd Mariano gotcha'd me with the quote from Hobbes' Leviathan about "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Bashing the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, I wrote, "Bashar lied in Colin Powell's face last year." Jane Acheson, present at the creation of McGraw Hill's College Division, gently pointed out that I should have written lied to his face, not in his face. As I started to wish that my too, too solid flesh would melt, Hamlet's voice came through to me: "Who calls me villain/Tweaks me by th' nose, gives me the lie i' th' throat/As deep as to the lungs?" A lie in the throat.
A Google search shows lied to one's face is used three times more often than lie in one's face.
That places my usage in a respectable minority, with no correction needed. I forgive Google for shortchanging me on spider hole, though I suppose if I had entered "tarantulas" the etymon would have popped up and grabbed me.
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