Origin of "insensitive clod"

I was looking at reading the "Simpsons: Beyond Forever" book, and I think i *may* have found the origin of the phrase "insensitive clod"...

There's this one episode where Lisa takes tap dance lessons, but really sucks at dancing, so she doesn't get a part in the dance recital. Professor Frink (the geeky scientist guy) gives her a pair of self-tapping shoes, and she goes in the recital and totally brings down the house until the shoes go crazy and she scares everybody out of the recital hall. After, Lisa feels bad that she really didn't dance that well and it was only the shoes, so Professor Frink lies and says the shoes were really in the "off" position and she actually did dance all by herself, but Homer shows the shoes, clearly in the "on" position, to Lisa, and Professor Frink says to Homer:

"I was just trying to spare the little girl's feelings, you insensitive clod!"

so...i think that's where it's from. If this is common knowledge and I'm the only one just learning this now, or if I'm wrong...
don't spoil my fun, you insensitive clod ;-)

I never saw that one. It's sort of a takeoff on the Red Shoes.

I think it got started here when I called Josh an insensitive clod in a forum. Since then, it's been the default answer to most of the polls. I didn't coin the phrase, but I certainly didn't get it from the Simpsons...

look here

It's been a Slashdot poll choice for quite a while now. It probably came for the simpsons, because that's where quite a few things in geekdom come from. ;-)

I don't read slashdot

I saw that episode! it's too funny!

I think the "insensitive clod" option just happened here on a poll, or ..yeah, think it was a poll..

:D and now, to quote Prof Frink:

"Oy flaven"!

Stacey takes the prize, at least I think so. That's where I first heard it. Then Slashdot picked it up as a common poll option.

Wohoo!

I was wondering. :D I just knew it as a slashdot thing.

The one thing I knew was that someone would take credit for using it first here :-)

Heh.. yeah, exactly.

I was doing a little light reading tonight and I found an "insensitive clod" reference which is much earlier than the Simpsons episode (which first aired in 2000). Of all places, it's in Calvin and Hobbes... It's on page 45 of the first C&H book (out of print but it's probably in one of the other C&H reprint books).Copyright date on the book is 1987 so I suppose it dates from 1985-1987. I hope this counts as fair use:



-Dave

"Everybody knows I'm an insensitive clod who wouldn't know a threat to individual freedom if I saw it."

- Edward Lascher, Jan. 1982

Where'd you find that, and how come you didn't post it before now?

Because he's an insensitive clod, of course!

Being an insensitive clod aside, I thought this thread was about who started the "Insensitive Clod" thing here, not who first coined the phrase.

This was the first hit I got on Google for "insensitive clod 1982", a year picked at random.

Actually the first post was about the origin of the phrase citing the Simpsons. Not who first used it on FHDC...

Yeah, you insensitive clod! :D

oO can you feeeeeel the love tonight? Oo

heh

~J~