Dog and Pony Show Origins

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is James Bordeaux calling from Vermont.

Welcome, James. What can we do for you?

Well, I had a quick question about a saying that I hear often around my workplace, and I was just kind of wondering where we got it from.

Okay.

Often we have a term or phrase here where everybody says, dog and pony show. And I was just curious to find out kind of how we got that.

And, James, what do they mean by that, dog and pony show?

Usually the reference is, you know, when we have, I work on a National Guard base, and oftentimes, like a lot of the lower officers, you know, they’re getting prepared for some sort of meeting or brief, and, you know, they’re getting ready to go put on, like, a show, I guess, so the upper commanders can kind of get an overall look of what’s going on.

But it’s used very often, and I was just curious how we got it.

And do they say it in a proud way or a disparaging way?

Usually it’s kind of a disparaging way. It’s not always like in such a great, you know. Got to go do the dog and pony show.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Dog and pony show. And it’s definitely disparaging.

This has got a really interesting history. It goes back for sure to the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was pretty fixed in government and military speak to refer to these kind of like perfunctory performances, these presentations where you had to just display your data and display your knowledge.

And just everybody just kind of politely golf clapped at the end of it and moved on, you know, because they were obligated to come and you were obligated to speak and nobody really wanted to be there.

But it comes from there was a time in American history where there was a kind of a, I won’t call it a warfare, but this enmity between the big traveling circuses and these tiny, literally dog and pony shows where this guy and maybe his wife and his kids had trained a few dogs to do a few tricks, and maybe they had one or two ponies, and the dog occasionally would leap upon the pony and go around in circles, and then they would get money for this.

And they were highly regulated. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, you can see cities all across the United States start creating these regulations against dog and pony shows because apparently there was a particular kind of vice that also traveled with these shows.

There was illegal alcohol being sold in another tent or there was a hoochie coochie show happening. And the dog and pony show was kind of the front for all these other illegal activities.

And so to disparage the dog and pony show would kind of put down all these vices as well. And to kind of talk about the rinky dink aspect compared to the grand affair of a circus with the marching band.

Right, or the menagerie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the beautiful horses and maybe the elephant and the odd rhino or what have you, you know.

So it all kind of descends from this kind of petty warfare between these traveling shows, shows up in legislation and in law, becomes the kind of thing that other people pick up on, shows up in the military and government by the 1940s.

And here we have it in modern business speak as a way to talk about these perfunctory presentations.

That’s awesome.

Yeah. So it’s sort of like a poor substitute for a circus or a menagerie then.

Yeah.

Yeah. Knock off.

Yeah. It’s not even a good circus.

Not even a good circus.

So I guess that sort of fits with the kind of presentations you’re talking about?

Yeah. I mean, everything we do here is, of course, it’s all based on data, and it’s always the same data or there’s no change. And if there’s this change, it’s very little, and it takes hours of preparation and hundreds of people to put it together.

And I could definitely understand why it would be a drudgery.

Yeah.

Well, James, now you have the history. Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

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