let’s cut to the chase on the cause of crime everywhere

Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

SO IT’S NOT BIG CITIES and big city folk; it’s NOT the ex­plo­sion of post-WWII births, many un­planned if not ac­tu­ally un­wanted (that is, the ‘baby boom’); it’s NOT crack co­caine; it’s NOT the pen­chant for blacks to just go on out there and be a hood in the hood; and it’s def­i­nitely NOT Sa­tanic mes­sages back­masked into heavy metal record­ings, vi­o­lent video games, down-and-dirty porn, or reading comic books as a child.

The above de­duced from an ar­ticle ti­tled “Amer­i­ca’s Real Crim­inal El­e­ment: Lead” by Kevin Drum for Mother Jones (Jan­uary 2013 issue). If this ar­ticle ap­pears too long (as many on­line ar­ti­cles due due to the large type but they re­ally ain’t) and you want to cut to the chase, scroll down about half way through the ar­ticle where the para­graph be­gins: “In 1994, Rick Nevin Was A Con­sul­tant” and read from there. If that keeps your in­terest, go back to the be­gin­ning and read the rest. It is an amazing theory and may ex­plain soooo much.

And this is NOT gonna be pop­ular with racists . . .

(Re­mind be to post a blog on Dr. Fred­eric Wertham and his as­tounding, in­flu­en­tial, crackpot book, Se­duc­tion Of The In­no­cent, which al­most single-handedly brought the en­tire Amer­ican comic book in­dustry to its knees in the 1950s.)

 

To end “Let’s cut to the chase on the cause of crime every­where,” I want to ad­dress the phrase cut to the chase—its meaning and origin. During the early days of movie-making, in­ex­pe­ri­enced screen­writers or di­rec­tors, un­cer­tain of how to get to the climax or lacking enough of a script to meet time re­quire­ments, would just make an abrupt tran­si­tion, known as a ‘cut.’

These movies, par­tic­u­larly come­dies, often cli­maxed in chase scenes, which were hugely pop­ular with au­di­ences and which added time to the film. So, when the di­rector com­manded, “Cut to the chase,” the ed­itor lit­er­ally cut out sec­tions of the film to bring the chase scene on sooner!

Hence, the phrase “cut to the chase” means to get to the point without wasting time. (The on­line Free Dic­tio­nary is a bit more dictionary-like: “to focus on what is im­por­tant; to abandon the pre­lim­i­naries and deal with the major points.”)


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