Tail wags dog?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Tail wags dog?

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.