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When I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1990, my paper mill co-workers used to call Portland the “plumber’s butt of America.” Since their combined IQ was probably lower than the average number of tats on a Portland bartender, I doubt they coined the phrase, but I’ve never heard it anywhere else. Can you help me out with the etymology? —Rummy
I assume most readers will be familiar with the concept of “plumber’s butt,” though I’m not sure why your colleagues didn’t use the more common term “plumber’s crack.” (I suppose that, to some, the latter might suggest some trade-specific, rocky concoction smoked by plumbers to provide the boost they need to snake drains, vanquish clogs, and lay pipe till the wee small hours.)
Either way, we’re talking about the tendency of men’s pants to ride ever lower during prolonged crouching, eventually exposing that waxing moon the Brits call “tradesman’s cleavage.” This gluteal décolletage provides endless amusement to middle schoolers, newspaper humor columnists, and other feces-flinging degenerates, and its unsightly ignominy provides ample grist for unflattering comparisons. Calling Portland “the plumber’s butt of America” is functionally the same as calling New Jersey “the armpit of the nation.”
But if your brain-dead co-workers didn’t make it up, who did? For once, we actually know: The unfortunate epithet originated with Nanci Donnellan, better known to aficionados of ’90s talk radio as The Fabulous Sports Babe. From 1994 to 2001, Donnellan’s call-in show was heard in some 500 cities across North America.
At a cultural moment when Andrew Dice Clay was considered cutting-edge comedy, the Sports Babe reached the pinnacle of her profession largely by abusing her audience, like a sports-talk version of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. She often underlined her contempt for callers by abruptly hanging up on them, with an explosion sound effect added for emphasis.
Portland wasn’t her only target. She habitually called Seattle “Hooterville” (after the podunk setting of TV’s Green Acres, not because of the city’s amazing boobs), and was briefly pulled off the air in Salt Lake City after telling a caller to “go home to one of [his] wives.”
There’s more, but you get the idea. Today, the Sports Babe seems like a quaint relic of a simpler time, when being abused and belittled by media personalities was a bracing novelty rather than a grim fact of life, and authority figures degraded one’s city by hurling insults rather than tear gas canisters. Oh, well, live and learn!
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
