User:Kephir/lexicon/asylum

• 1990, Gordon B. Baty, Michael Blake, Entrepreneurship, Beard Books (→ISBN), page 285

  In the end, investors were competing for deals—completely upending the more natural state where projects should compete for capital. The result: the inmates were running the asylum.

• 1992, Peter Filichia, New American Plays: Starting Monday, Heinemann Drama (→ISBN)

  Once a report points out it's "unlikely he would be a serious threat," Dennis becomes more threatening; when the way he dresses is criticized, well, that and only that gets him to turn in his supervisor — who also turns out to be a bug in the computer. You've heard of inmates running the asylum?

• 1996, Ann Rule, A Fever In The Heart, Simon and Schuster (→ISBN), page 383

  Many ex-convicts reverted to type when they found no walls around them and no eyes watching. Too many innocents died. It seemed that the inmates were running the asylum. While some argued for mercy for convicted killers, particularly since Washington executions harkened back to the days of the Old West and murderers would be hanged, […]

• 1998, Peter B. Vaill (edited by Suresh Srivastva, David L. Cooperrider), Organizational Wisdom and Executive Courage, Lexington Books (→ISBN), page 35

  Where others perceive only "the blind leading the blind," "the train leaving the tracks," "things spinning out of control," "the patients running the asylum," or " rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" (all expressions one routinely hears in situations of high turbulence, uncertainty, and rapid change), […]

• 1998, DryDrunk, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, alt.recovery.from-12-steps, Usenet

  By and large, we as a Nation have abandoned our task of teaching our people how to quit their addiction, and turned the whole thing over to practitioners of peculiar 12 Step religion. In this regard, the inmates ARE running the asylum.

• 2000, Sarah Gordon, Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination, University of Georgia Press (→ISBN), page 123

  In Wise Blood Hazel Motes may seem the "mad" character in the secular world of Taulkinham, but O'Connor would have us recognize that in this city and in our society the inmates have taken over the asylum.

• 2001, Cribsheet, LOONIES RUNNING THE ASYLUM, alt.conspiracy, Usenet

  Politicians who encouraged mass immigration and porous borders have placed the entire nation at risk. Let's hope the American people wake up for the 2002 election and realize the loonies are running the asylum. They are the same loonies that cobbled together thousands upon thousands of pages of incomprehensible income tax law.

• 2002, James, Inmates are Running the Asylum, alt.global-warming, Usenet

  The inmates are running the asylum! And they are getting paid handsomely to do it.

• 2005, Steve Salerno, Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, Random House LLC (→ISBN), page 227

  Another mentalhealth activist, Selina Glater of Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers, has written that “empowerment," in a mental-health setting, is about "clearly stating what it is you need in order to feel whole again." Inmates running the asylum indeed.

• 2008, More Proof The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, alt.politics.republicans, Usenet

  It's like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" meets "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Except that Mr. Smith is in a straight jacket in a rubber room while the loons run the asylum.

• 2008, Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Random House LLC (→ISBN), page 168

  The students wanted to run the universities, which to traditional academics was akin to inmates running the asylum. Meanwhile, most of the progressive professors, at least those who weren't Jews or Bolsheviks, gamely went along. Indeed.

• 2009, Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel, Penguin (→ISBN), page 21

  She was in her eighth month, and for the last few weeks her hormones were the inmates running the asylum. I had learned the hard way that it was best to pretty much agree with everything she said.

• 2011, Radiohead, "The Daily Mail", Ticker Tape Ltd. (XL Recordings)

  The moon is a rock on a mountain / The lunatics have taken over the asylum / Waiting on the rapture

• 2012, Mary Higgins Clark, We'll Meet Again, Simon and Schuster (→ISBN), page 51

  “ […] I think you would be rendering a great service if you used the power of your program to wake up the public to this increasingly callous and alarming situation. Too many people are unaware of the fact that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

• 2014, MarkA, Re: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ; Did It Really Happen? - 3, alt.atheism, Usenet

  If you ever need an example of the lunatics running the asylum, look no further than the Mormons. At least the Scientologists are up front about the fact that they are in it for the money.

• 2014, Did technology bypass and cause the demise of the NWA?, rec.sport.pro-wrestling, Usenet

  NWA and the Crocketts had their cronies running things (Inmates running the asylum), and yes, they didn't invest in Technology that made things look more flashy and smooth.