The Whole Bit

Mike and Chris are a funny pair. Do they amuse us? Yes. Are they like clowns? Not quite. But their vernacular can sometimes trump their avoidance of the truth, their arrogance, their ignorance, their intransigence, and a host of other 'ance' words. So forget about 'tough, tricky and big spot' and let's focus on the use of 'the whole bit' by Dog today.

I looked up the idiom 'the whole bit' on freedictionary.com and here is how they define it. They even include a sample sentence using the idiom - 'the whole of something, including everything that is connected with it. And what a night it was - moonlight, wine, good food, soft music - the whole bit.' So Chris started using this phrase when he started attacking the enshrinement former MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn into the Hall of Fame. He doesn't think Bowie can shine Kennesaw Mountain Landis' shoes basically. The brilliance of Chris(and to an extent Mike) is his ability to condense a complex human being or issue into a phrase or a word. So Chris, while not happy with Landis 'and the whole civil rights thing', allows that he should be in the Hall of Fame because of "The Black Sox, the whole bit". He then went onto say that "Selig will get in. Steroids, the whole bit." Unlike the example from freedictionary.com, where they bothered to list 'wine, good food, soft music', Russo just went with 'Steroids' and threw in the whole bit. No mention of Selig and Collusion or Selig moving his own team to the NL or that really long All-Star game. Russo was on a roll, so a little while later, he was talking about Chad Pennington - "Arm strength, the whole bit." He couldn't bother to add 'played with Randy Moss at Marshall, broken collarbone, that playoff game against the Raiders, etc.' Thanks, Chris for simplifying things for us. I think he uses this terms so he doesn't have to detail other parts of 'the whole bit'. It's sort of like Cliff Notes. Here is my Russion take on things. World War II? The Nazis, the whole bit. I grew up in the 80's, so The Preppy Handbook and the whole bit. Let's not go too crazy with these Mets. Remember their history, ie. Doug Sisk, the bleach and the whole bit. I can't stand Tom Cruise with the 'Matt, Matt, Matt. You're so glib' and the whole bit. Enough with John Adams pouting about Benjamin Franklin and the whole bit. I'm down on Iraq, WMD, the whole bit. I liked that song by Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart, his daughter Miley and the whole bit. 2008 so far in sports? Memphis can't make a free throw, Eli got lucky, Willie shouldn't fly to the west coast and the whole bit.