Reader question:

In this quote – "No player is above the team. You run into a lot of problems when the tail wags the dog" – what does "the tail wags the dog" mean?

My comments:

What the quoted lines mean to convey is the idea that players should cater to team interests instead of the other way around, or problems arise. Obviously a team has a lot of players each with their own individuality. If players all follow team rules, then you have a team and order. If the team tries to cater to each player's idiosyncrasies, well, chaos ensues.

We all know that dogs wag their tails. Tails can't wag dogs. Dogs wagging tails is the normal order of things and events. Hence, when "the tail wags the dog", things are out of order.

"The tail wags the dog" is an American idiom, usually referring to the manipulation of a chain of events in order to divert attention from another – more important – chain of events.

I once watched "Wag the Dog", a movie starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. It begins with these words: "Why does a dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail is smarter, the tail would wag the dog."

You get the picture. In fact, that movie presents a perfect case of the tail wagging the dog. In it, political advisers to the administration forge a case for war against Albania, of all places. Horrific pictures and so forth whip up public euphoria which eventually leads to military intervention.

Only to divert public attention from a sex scandal involving the President, of all people. Ring a bell? Well, some people thought Bill Clinton might have "wagged the dog" in his time as President letting NATO bomb Kosovo. Wag the Dog the film might have helped spawn that theory. It has certainly helped popularize the phrase.

As demonstrated in the movie, the White House spin doctors are able to manipulate the media because they understand what makes the American public, er, lick. They feed the public something tasty to hold onto while they get on with their own business, whatever that is. Like, there's a guard dog on duty in front of a house. A burglar can not get in without risking suffering dog bites. But a well-trained burglar who brings a bone with him might be able to get in without a fuss from the dog, that is, if the dog is less than well trained. The burglar understands that dogs love to chew on bones and so he hands the dog a bone to play with while he goes about his business, scot-free.

Enough dogs and politics. Here are media examples for you to see more of this phrase in action.

1. 'Wag the Dog' Back In Spotlight

A president embroiled in a sex scandal in the Oval Office tries to save his presidency by distracting the nation with a made-for-TV war far from American soil in an obscure country.

It's not the latest news out of Washington, but the plot of the movie "Wag the Dog." In the 1997 movie, a shadowy spin doctor played by Robert De Niro recruits a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to invent a war against Albania.

The film came out just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke – and no doubt benefited at the box office and then at the video store from the publicity. Now, the film is all the buzz again because of President Clinton's announcement – three days after admitting for the first time an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky – that he ordered military strikes in two countries.

- CNN.com, August 21, 1998.

2. Jewish Liberals Say The Dog Wags the Tail (I Say the Tail Wags the Dog)

Doni Remba, a peace activist, disputes my claim that the progressive voice in Jewish life has been marginalized by the neocons. He has some evidence: he says he's getting traction in the Jewish press for his view that there has to be a progressive lobby, to push for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. His post follows, below.

I have one important quibble, ahead of time. Remba reflects the conventional leftish pro-Israel view that the dog wags the tail. i.e., that Israel is a client that does as the imperial U.S. wants it to do. The U.S. doesn't want Israel to talk to Syria; so it doesn't. His view of the Israel lobby is that it is merely seconding rightwing choices that the U.S. government is making. And so he says:

American choices heavily constrain the Jewish state, eliminating options and creating the environment in which Israel must make its own now far more limited and difficult choices.

- New York Observer, January 30, 2007    

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.