Harelip The Judge

Q: Where does the phrase "harelip the Judge" come from, and what does it mean?

A: Geez Bernat, where the Cripes do you get these?

Ok, being the anal retentive, I've been sneaking about in various sources....the librarian even raised eyebrows at me when I asked...!!

The best I can come up with for you, is what the Dictionary of Slang told us, and that the use of "harelip" in this figure of speech{of course outside the standard use of the disorder for which young children have surgery}, is to "discomfit, destroy, or disfigure" ==== as in to 'harelip the governor", it said...

{A good word to define harelip as a verb in your figure of speech is Discomfit, which now means, to make uneasy or perplexed or disconcert because we've confused it in English with 'discomfort' in its use - it originally is derived from the Old French "decomfit or descumfire" which means to defeat or to overcome.}

So I guess you're doing something like discrediting, taking down the judge, or in a less severe sense, making him/her uneasy, vexed, etc.

Does that work?

Bernat writes back:

That is incredible investigative work on your part! Thanks so much for sticking with it. Where did I get it? I don’t know. One day, while idly considering my lack of professional future, the phrase entered my mind and stuck there…sort of like one of those tunes you cannot get out of your head.

Example: When you hear the words, “Double your pleasure, double your fun, with doublemint, doublemint, doublemint gum,” does a melody get stuck in your head?

We picked ____ up from Princeton last week and stayed at a Princeton, NJ Holiday Inn. Suddenly, from the TV set, came, “588-2300, Empire,” song and all. We thought it was only in Chicago but, I swear, this was in the New York local TV market. Tunes we cannot shake loose from…