My preferred rendering

I like "Tempest in a Teapot". Say you start to actually get grumpy about an on-line argument...

Just for the trivia buffs, "Rin Tin Tin's boy", Rusty, was played by Robert Blake. Later, he also played "Little Beaver" to another Western hero, Red Ryder.

BTW: Tonto got his name by virtue of the Tonto Indian tribe. I'm not sure where they were located, but the Tonto tribe was part of the Apache Nation. I think there is even a Tonto National Forest in Arizona. Since the Lone Ranger story was supposed to start in Texas, it would be interesting to find out why the author of the original book chose a Native American who wouldn't normally have been anywhere near there, but the white man had a knack for messing up facts when these "Sage Brush Romances" became popular around the turn of the 19th Century. More BTW: Apaches never wore the kind of buckskin outfit that Tonto traditionally wears in the movies, that garb was more like what Kit Carson and the Fremont Scouts wore in the 1840's. Jay Silverheels is also using a hairstyle which is distinctly Navajo; Apaches wore their hair straight and long.

As to why the tribe ended up with the name "tonto" in the first place, we can only imagine that some administrator for New Spain or a mission padre who was exasperated with trying to get more work out of the Indians they essentially enslaved remarked "Mirad a esos tontos!" when some of the people shuffled by, and the derogatory comment stuck.

Your privilege. But American Heritage Dictionary of the English language has this to say:

This only make senses if part of the phrase implies punishment.

How many of those dictionary writers even saw a donkey, let alone try to move one. They've taken a perfectly logical expression and corrupted it.
Good luck trying to bribe that juvenile offender with a stinkin carrot. :p

Good luck disciplining one with a stick, either. Not that I'm in favor of child abuse, but most of them seem to get off with a light rap across the knuckles these days.

For a hilarious take from an Indian on Tonto, try here

In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I've seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I'm constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.

I am always aware of how my whole life is shaped by my hatred of Tonto. Whenever I think of Tonto, I hear ominous music.

Interesting. Almost all sites returned from a google search agreed with you, except that many of them also involved the riding-the-donkey origins...

From Merriam-Webster:

"Etymology: from the traditional alternatives of driving a donkey on by either holding out a carrot or whipping it with a stick: characterized by the use of both reward and punishment to induce cooperation."

But what do you hold the carrot out with, if not a stick? You have to carry two sticks to ride a donkey? They must be damn stubborn. ;)

"happy as a lark"
Lark as in: harmless prank or merry spree. From Old Norse leika (play)

With the carrot you stand IN FRONT of the donkey. With the stick, you are BEHIND him.

Well, you might have a point there...
And you got me to thinking...
Thank God for early TV, giving us a boy and his dog.
Always a good thing to teach children about beastiality early.

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I'll fuck you sideways and scream Easter Sunday! - Yeah... Huh... What?

Robert Blake did appear in one Rin-Tin-Tin movie as "Paul the Refugee Lad" around the same time he was in the Red Ryder films (1947).

Lee Aaker played Rusty in the Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin TV Show.

OK, so much for IMDB ;)

One of my father's Army buddies (in the early '60s) later became a high-profile PI in LA. He told me in '78 that Robert Blake had once asked him for help in getting a handgun. Apparenty, such requests (from clients) were commonplace but he uncharacteristically decined to help Blake and explained to me at the time that he thought that people "like Blake" should never be allowed to own a weapon. It was not a decision he struggled with.

I called him during Blake's murder trial and reminded him of what he had told me 20+ years ago. He paused for a time before changing the subject.

The 'cutting the cheese' incident reminds me that I read that 'breaking wind' means 'farting' (anyone know the origin) in Britain. So if you were to go into a London store, you probably don't want to ask for a 'windbreaker'. I think they use a slightly different term.

I used to love the phrases used on "McCloud".

'Rode hard and put away wet'.
I'm not sure about this one - "Wherever you go, there you are".

To my mind the carrot and stick refers originally to the two methods of getting results out of a horse/mule/donkey, the first being to encourage by way of motivation or reward (the bribe offer of a carrot) the second being the punitive method (strike with a stick).

The method is easily transferrable to describe any other situation where a result is required - you can either try to win the person round by reward or motrivation, or you can make them produce by threat of or even application of violence. 'Carrot and stick' is also used over here to describe the police tactic employed to get a confession out of a subject. Two police officers, one offering the kind approach ('come on Charlie, what's the point of holding out, it's you they've left holding the baby, fat lot they think of you, tell us who put you up to it...') and the ther the hard-nosed approach (' you're going go down for this, the only chance you've got is to tell us who set this up, hold back and I'll make sure you won't see the light of day for ten years minimum - and that's a promise...) :stickpoke