In John Hughes’ 1986 classic film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Principal Ed Rooney’s secretary, Grace (played by Edie McClurg), establishes Ferris’ popularity in school by reciting the wide-ranging list of high school cliques who think Ferris is a “Righteous Dude.”
Oh, he's very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
Quotes.net - https://www.quotes.net/mquote/31454
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHa1zTLrXO8
But Ferris was not the first “Dude” to be described as “righteous” – he missed that honor by more than a century. And although Ferris’ status as a “righteous dude” was apparently a positive evaluation of his character, the earliest examples are snarky jibes aimed at wealthy, young Republicans.
In June 1884 during the early days of the Presidential campaign that would pit the Democrat candidate, Grover Cleveland, against the Republican James G. Blaine, a Democratic Congressman from (appropriately for Ferry) Chicago predicted that if Blaine ran as a Democrat, he would attract Democratic support as well, losing the votes of only a few uptight New York and Boston Republicans.
“Were Blaine the Democratic standard-bearer, the Democrats would adore this brilliant man,” and he predicts that Blaine will receive the votes of a dozen Irish-Americans for every vote lost through the bolt of the swallow-tailed, white-chokered, super-righteous dudes of New York and Boston who style themselves Independent Republicans.
Wood River Times (Hailey, Idaho), June 26, 1884, page 2.
Blaine had been stained by a corruption scandal eight years earlier, after the discovery of letters implicating him in an influence-peddling scandal. He proclaimed his innocence, and some of his supporters insisted the letters were forged. But the scandal still haunted Blaine in 1884, with a coalition of “Independent” voters opposing him on moral grounds, using the so-called “Mulligan Letters” as their primary point attack. An article in support of Blaine predicted their attacks would fail, and listed “self-righteous dudes” (presumably Independent Republicans) among Blaine’s critics.
For the grand combination party of all the talents, copperheads and Pharisees, self-righteous dudes and Tammany Hall men, forged-letter mongers, and holy political perfectionists, this mouse brought forth by the laboring mountain, this popgun that was to have been a columbiad, this tempest in a teapot which their united genius has evolved, must be a bitter disappointment.
Buffalo Commercial, September 20, 1884, page 1.
An “extra righteous Dude” made headlines in a more honest style of contest a half-century later – professional wrestling. But whereas “super righteous” or “self-righteous” appear to have been intended as sarcastic insults in 1884, “extra righteous” in the context of professional wrestling was intended to suggest that it would be an honest match – “as clean as the driven snow” (or nearly so; OK, so perhaps also sarcastically).
Virtuous mat virtuosos take the spotlight in tonight’s armory tiffs, with extra righteous Dude Chick meeting super efficacious Herb Parks in the one-hour main event.
“It’ll be almost as clean as the driven snow,” said Promoter Herb Owen, waxing poetical in his announcement of the match.
Chick, erstwhile cowboy from Colorado[i], is an ardent exponent of the airplane spin, while Parks, Portlander, is rated as one of the most versatile straight-away middleweight grapplers in the game.
Statesman Journal (Salem, Oregon), March 5, 1940, page 7.
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"Dude Chick (second from the left), The Klamath News (Klamath Falls, Oregon), May 14, 1941, page 6. |
A few decades later, “Chicks” and “Dudes” would be linked together again, although this time in a more peaceful (“Peace, Man”), and more seriously positive light.
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"The Back Alley, Behind the Man Store, for groovy chicks & righteous dudes," Asheville Citizen-Times (North Carolina), August 3, 1970, page 17. |
Right On, Man!!!
[i] Duward Belmont Chick wrestled under the names “Cowboy Chick,” “Dude Chick” and the “Masked Cowboy,” and sometimes wrestled in tag-team events with his brother, Bobby Chick.
