President-elect Donald Trump announced his pick for secretary of defense at a post-election victory rally in Cincinnati.
The Mad Dog in question was retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who for more than 40 years served in the Marine Corps. The 66-year-old general, called a "warior monk" by his peers for his depth of knowledge and lack of family - he never married - is also known to turn a memorable phrase, including: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
The nickname stuck to Mattis following the second battle of Fallujah, the hardest fight of the Iraq War. Here's the Los Angeles Times, in a profile about the "confident, jaunty" general in April 2004, a few months before the battle: "Behind his back, troops call him 'Mad Dog Mattis,' high praise in Marine culture."
As far as the Library of Congress database is concerned, the first and most famous Mad Dog was Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll. Coll, a mafia enforcer in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, was so named by New York Mayor Jimmy Walker after the hit man fatally shot a 5-year-old, struck by a wayward bullet in a mob fight.
Mad Dogs have appeared many times in fiction, in narratives as diverse as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and the Indonesian martial arts film "The Raid: Redemption"; there have been multiple in comics, including a New York police sharpshooter in the Marvel Universe and a DC Comics serial killer committed to Gotham City's Arkham Asylum.
Edgar "Mad Dog" Ross, a professional boxer with a 50-fight undefeated streak in the late 1970s, was remembered as a complicated character. "Edgar was as tough a human being as I've ever seen, and fearless," his friend Jimmy Montgomery told the Tuscaloosa News, after Ross's death in 2012. But Ross was described by others as "too mean for football," using boxing as an outlet for violence.
Join the Conversation