#KICK IT WITH YOU FREE#

And I think they know that the Congress will continue to kick this can down the road and that they've got to act. The average American knows what's going on, I think.

#KICK IT WITH YOU FREE#

Instead, it implies “just walkin' along, kickin' the can ahead, watchin' it roll, kickin' it again, until you get to your destination or just get bored, at which point you let the next guy who comes along kick it farther down the road.”īut who ever kicked a can down the road with the intent of someone else coming along and kicking it the rest of the way? And the rest of the way to where, exactly? Lacking any definitive interpretation, the rest of us were free to come up with our own: Maybe the can is a piece of trash that you play with while intending to pick it up later (thank you), or one that you toy with idly with no further intentions at all. This time he conceded that the metaphor not only has little to do with the game but may not have much to do with definite progress either. Something was evidently gnawing at Safire as well, because fifteen years later he would return for a reconsideration. arms control adviser, said Wednesday night the United States should work out an explicit agreement with the Soviet Union to go ahead with the Star Wars program and not 'kick the can down the road.' And some standard reference books came to agree: Kicking the can down the road signifies nothing but postponement.Įdward Rowny, a senior U. Who has not, as a kid, played kick-the-can, or in less organized fashion kicked a can or other nonbiodegradable container ahead?” For Safire the metaphor “effectively summarizes desultory but definite progress.” The phrase soon was showing up in his own prose.īut Safire’s interpretation wasn’t universally approved, especially as it became evident that the phrase hardly ever seemed to connote progress of any kind. Just put it in the recycling bin, already.īy 1988 the phrase had come to the attention of William Safire, who in his New York Times language column proclaimed the image “a superb use of metaphor.

Kick it with you