Where did the term "Kool-Aid" come from

[tinfoil tiaras]

As in "Congress is still drinking the Kool Aid". I was just wondering b/c I've heard it alot around here and around other places on the internets. Where exactly did it come about and how. It's interesting. Kool Aid (the real kind, not the metaphorical kind :P ) is yummy...exept when it's really watered down. But Crystal Light is better... :9

[hyphenate]

1. Jim Jones and Guyana

The cult members all died after drinking the spiked Kool-Aid.

[ComerPerro]

4. Jonestown, google search here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22jonestown%22+%22kool+aid%22

[Broken_Hero]

25. Good answer

thats where I figure the term came from, or ...thats the event I think of each time that phrase is used.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. A nut with a messiah complex named Jim Jones

Had his cult kill themselves by drinking poisoned KoolAid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

[Syncronaut Seven]

3. Jim Jones suicide cult

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

:scared:

[tinfoil tiaras]

5. Oh, i see now

Great analogy! I didn't know this b/c it was a little bit before my time...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. perfectly understandable, and commendable

for asking.

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. OUCH! That hurt!

The Guyana tragedy is one of my earliest memories of television news; I can still hear in my memory the oft broadcast tapes of Jones telling everyone to drink the Kool-Aide and everything will be all better. Two other items stand out: coverage of Vietnam and the Patty Hearst story.

I resent some wet-behind-the-ears wippersnapper dismissing these stories as "a little bit before my time." Dagnabbit, I'm gonna get that peach switch from behind the woodshed and teach you some respect!

(insert smiley with a long beard and a cane here)

[brentspeak]

10. I have a memory of the TV news cameraman recording his own death

From what I remember, the news crew and a visiting U.S. congressman were trying to get on board a helicopter to escape Jones' thugs, but were shot dead during the attempt. The camaraman's camera crashed to the ground, but it was still recording as the killers continued to shoot.

[kineneb]

18. now knock that off

I remember JFK as my early tv news memories...Jonestown was much later...I think I was in college then.

[ejbr]

11. Just in case you didn't get that

Jim Jones. :P

[swag]

6. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the mass suicide

of Jim Jones' cult of followers in Jonestown, Guyana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown

913 cult members died at Jones' behest by drinking Flavor-Aid laced with valium and cyanide.

[bananarepublican]

13. Can't we call the other side 'nut-juice' drinkers? n/t

[TahitiNut]

15. (cough!) Excuse me? "nut-juice"??

As a proud nut, member of the fruits'n'nuts coalition, I don't think so. Of all the nerve. Sheesh! :dunce:

[bananarepublican]

24. LOL!!! I was honestly thinking along the lines of RW-nutcases...

... but Jeff Gannon could well be able to shed some light on the matter as far as THe White House is concerned.

Good pick up TahitiNut (as in coconut I hope!).

[jobycom]

8. Peanuts are tasty!

I figured enough people had answered your question, but I really, really wanted to post something. :)

[Cleita]

12. The koolaid was laced with cyanide but Jim Jones

didn't drink it. He shot himself.

[killbotfactory]

14. you can listen to the cult's last moments

An audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana immediately preceding and during the mass suicide or murder of over 900 members of the cult.

http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16

[murielm99]

21. I wish I hadn't listened to that.

I have always meant to listen, but now I will have to spend the next few days thinking about Jonestown and what causes people to follow someone like Jones.

It is doubly hard, because I know someone who died there. Her name was Barbara Hoyer. RIP, Barb.

[bananas]

16. wikipedia says it comes from the 60s, long before Jonestown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid
The idiomatic expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" was originally a reference to the Merry Pranksters, a group of people associated with novelist Ken Kesey who in the early 1960's traveled around the United States and held events called "Acid Tests", where LSD-laced Kool-Aid was passed out to the public (LSD was legal at that time). Those who "drank the Kool-Aid" passed the "Acid Test." "Drinking the Kool-Aid" in that context meant accepting the LSD drug culture, and the Pranksters' "turned on" point of view.

[skids]

20. Yep. "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test

Though I am sure Jonestown helped cement the term into modern parlance.

Also this might be of interest to folks:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Jonestown_Massacre

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

22. Wikipedia nonwithstanding, I think the pejorative use of the term "Kool-

Aid Drinker" as it is used here at DU and other places has much more to do with Jonestown than Kesey.

It is the sense of one who will drink of the cup because they are true believers, despite the clear evidence before one's eyes that drinking will lead to one's destruction.

A very apt metaphor for those who would accept shrubco "ideas" and talking points despite 6 years of disastrous results and nothing to give expectation of anything different.

[skids]

23. Yeah, the perjorative connotation is Jonestown...

...though I suppose the "hippy" association is perjorative for some, too, Jonestown definitely added new meaning to the phrase. I don't think that connotation is isolated to DU either.

[Blackthorn]

17. OH YEAH!!!

[Alacrat]

19. I like to listen to what the right is saying

and orighty, with the no stir zone, was the first I heard using it in recent times. It is one of those phrases that gets under my skin.