Meme of the Simpsons character Krusty the Klown saying, “Oops! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud.” From a 5 March 1995 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons.
8 July 2022
Since it began airing in 1989, the television show The Simpsons has had a huge impact on global, and especially American, culture. The show has contributed a number of words and phrases to the lexicon, one of them being saying the quiet part loud (often out loud). The phrase is deployed when someone accidentally utters their actual motivation for doing something as opposed to the approved or politic pretext for doing so.
A good example is this exchange between to commentators on the cable news show CNN Newsroom on 31 January 2019:
Poppy Harlow: But why is Mitch McConnell so opposed to something that would on the surface—this part of it, you know, make it possible for more Americans to vote?
Sabrina Siddiqui: Well, many people saw this as Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell saying the quiet part out loud. You have several states across the country where there have been Republican-backed efforts to restrict voting rights.
But the phrase originated on the Simpsons, in the season six episode “A Star is Burns,” which first aired on 5 March 1995. In the episode, the character Krusty the Klown, voiced by actor Dan Castellaneta, is on a film festival jury and when asked why he voted for a film directed by the evil, local nuclear power plant owner Mr. Burns replies:
Let’s just say it moved me…to a bigger house! Oops! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud.
Fans of the show picked up the phrase. The earliest record I have seen of someone using it is in a 16 September 1997 post to the Usenet newsgroup alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants:
> Reinsdorf: "Forty seven hockey fans in Canada say they like the radical
> realignment plan better than any other. We must listen to them, for the
> good of the game!"“... about which I give nary a shit. Oops! I did it again: I said the loud part quiet, and the quiet part loud. Damn!”
28 October 2008 tweet that reads, “said the quiet part loud again, at least i'm wearing pants this time”
The phrase appears in several hundred Usenet posts during the ensuing decade, many of them directly referencing the Simpsons episode. And the Wisconsin State Journal of 22 July 2007 includes Krusty’s line in a listicle of favorite Simpson quotes. With the demise of Usenet (it still exists, but is a vestige of its former glory), use of the phrase started to appear on Twitter in 2008. A tweet from 28 October 2008 says the following (this Twitter account seems to consist mainly of random and uncontextualized comments, so exactly what the phrase here is referring to is inscrutable):
said the quiet part loud again, at least i'm wearing pants this time
17 November 2008 tweet that reads, “Dougie honey, I think you just said the quiet part loud :-)”
And less than a month later, on 17 November 2008, a Twitter user replied to a comment with the following:
Dougie honey, I think you just said the quiet part loud :-)
But the earliest use in print outside of the context of the Simpsons that I have found is in relation to Manitoba politics. The Winnipeg Sun includes this line in its 7 March 2010 issue relating to the then provincial Conservative party leader Hugh McFadyen:
McFadyen, by the way, raised eyebrows when he conceded defeat in the Concordia byelection several hours before the polls closed last Tuesday. Uh, pretty sure you said the quiet part loud again, Hugh.
But it was Trump’s election and presidency that opened the floodgates for the phrase to be used. Starting in 2016, the phrase became a regular commentary on politicians, usually but not exclusively Republican, accidentally speaking the truth (cf. gaffe). MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes began using the phrase that year. For example, there is this from his show All In with Chris Hayes from 20 September 2016:
(Video clip) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up. And now we have photo ID. And I think photo ID is going to will make a little bit of a difference as well. (End video clip)
HAYES: He said the quiet part loud. That was a Republican congressman from Wisconsin basically admitting the state's new voter ID law was intentionally put in place to get Republicans elected.
And there is this from the Washington Examiner on 13 October 2017:
"Reminder that the main difference between Trump and other Republicans is that he says the quiet part loud," said columnist Scott Tobias.
Over time, the wording saying the quiet part out loud became the most common form.
And with that, the phrase became a staple of the lexicon. It started out as a trickle of mostly ephemeral uses by Simpsons fans, but with the coming to power of a radical wing of the Republican party that didn’t feel the need to be coy about their motivations, the phrase was catapulted into common use.
Sources:
@icicle. Twitter, 28 October 2008.
@NilsMenten. Twitter, 17 November 2008.
Adams, Becket. “Another Day, Another Trashy, Misleading News Headline.” Washington Examiner (Washington, DC), 13 October 2017. ProQuest.
CNN Newsroom, CNN, 31 January 2019. Corpus of Contemporary American English.
Engstrom, Kevin. “Disastrous Interpretation.” Winnipeg Sun, 7 March 2010, 8. ProQuest.
Hayes, Chris. All In with Christ Hayes. MSNBC, 30 September 2016. CQ Roll Call (transcript). ProQuest.
Pearlman, Gregg. “CCT (N.Hayes): Magowan vows to fight...” Usenet: alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants, 16 September 1997.
“The Quiet Part Loud.” Know Your Meme, 2021.
Rogers, Nicole E. “Talk the Talk, If You’re a Fan of ‘The Simpsons.” Wisconsin State Journal, 22 July 2007, G10. ProQuest.
“A Star is Burns.” The Simpsons, aired 5 March 1995. Susie Dietter, dir. James L. Brooks, Sam Simon, and Ken Keeler, writers. Gracie Films and 20th Television.