Cultural Confusion

Let me say first of all that I am not a member of the Twitter-verse. I don't get it. Little zippy statements flung out into the ozone. Or fights or spam or whatever...my head doesn't fit into 140 character snippets.

And another confession - I did watch American Idol for the Steven Tyler years. He's a nut and I found it interesting.

So on to the cultural confusion - my take on the Tyler-Minaj bruhaha. He said something like: "If Bob Dylan were on American Idol today, Minaj would say - put him in the cornfield."

To my generation, or any fan of the original black and white Twilight Zone, he is referencing the episode with Billy Mummy. It was about a child with awesome mental powers. Whenever he did something horrible, like turn someone into a doll, his mother would turn away and whimper "Put it in the cornfield, Timmy!"

It's been a catchphrase in my house for years. Anything you didn't want to see (like great-aunt Susie's dentures) - put it in the cornfield!

That old TV reference was obviously not in Miss Minaj's wheelhouse. She heard "cornfield" and must have thought plantation slave labor picking the corn... Which is really unfortunate. But then again, what did she think he meant? That she would force Dylan to pick corn? I can't sort that one out.

I have been chatting on a forum about colloquialisms that just don't translate. We were discussing the differences between British, Australian and American English. And here is a pop culture reference that didn't fly. There are just so many ways to be misunderstood!