Self-licking ice cream cone
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
In political jargon, a self-licking ice cream cone is a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself. The phrase appears to have been first used in 1992, in On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones, a paper by Pete Worden about NASA's bureaucracy.
The phrase has come to be used as a metaphor for any similar system, particularly in contexts such as the War on Terror and the military-industrial complex.
[edit]
See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Self-licking ice cream cone" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.