Fat cat

The word was first used in the 1920s in the United States to describe rich political donors. The term's coinage for political purposes has been attributed to Frank Kent, a writer for The Baltimore Sun In the words of Ben J. Wattenberg, "The fat cats were driven from the temple". During a 1997 $1,000-per-plate dinner at the Hilton Washington for the Republican Party, which The New York Times dubbed "a lucrative display of the resilience of big-money campaign fund-raising", street protesters calling for further reform dressed in "fat cat" costumes and chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho! Corporate fat cats have to go!" In the 2008 Democratic race, a group of wealthy backers of Sen. Hillary Clinton wrote to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, warning her they might withdraw financial support for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee if Pelosi did not change her position on whether the party's superdelegates "should support the party's pledged delegate leader".{{cite news ==Use in culture and imagery==

The word has since acquired a meaning of a rich, powerful person of possibly "undeserved" wealth. It is now commonly used in editorial cartoons. In the British printed media, a fat cat is often depicted as a cat-faced, corpulent, middle-aged man clad in a pin striped suit and holding or smoking a thick cigar, representing a venal banker or a high earner executive or "captain of industry". It is also a term familiar with musicians. James Brown's 1973 song "Down and Out in New York City" includes the lyrics "All the fat cats, in the bad hats". Muse's 2009 song "Uprising" also references the term in its lyrics: "Rise up and take the power back; it's time the fat cats have a heart attack". The punk band NOFX repeatedly uses the term in their song "Perfect Government" on their album Punk in Drublic ("How did the cat get so fat?"). ==See also==