But Enough About You: Essays (49 page)

Ismail bin Aziz.
Director, Coalition of Very Good Iraqis. Soft-spoken, moderate, a favorite of Colin Powell, but viewed suspiciously by Pentagon “neoconservatives”—the Zionist cabal directing U.S. foreign policy on behalf of Ariel Sharon—for admitting to the
Financial Times
that he still has to look up “Sunni” and “Shiite” in his copy of
Jane’s Inter-Denominational Hatreds
. But, with his contacts, he might be given a second-tier government department to run, such as the Ministry of Dromedary Emissions.

Mansour al-Shazz.
Director, Association of Excellent Iraqis. Favored by the CIA director George Tenet, who in 1997 had an electronic bug and tracking device secretly implanted in al-Shazz’s lower GI during a routine colonoscopy at the Mayo Clinic. Attracted considerable following among expatriate Iraqis after promising each of them 10 percent of the country’s oil revenues once he is installed as leader.

Mohammad bin Bashir.
Executive director, Coalition of Perfectly Fine Iraqis. Favored by the Defense Policy Board member Richard
Perle, whom he met in 1993 at a French cooking school in Provence. Popular among gastronomically sophisticated Iraqi expatriates, but could face U.S. congressional opposition for his support of Strom Thurmond for president in 1948.

Anwar Karam.
President, Friends of Anwar Karam. Favored by Exxon Mobil for his “Whatever” attitude to U.S. investment in post-Saddam Iraq. Gave a widely noticed speech at the Council on Foreign Relations denouncing President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin of France as “despicable amphibians who have seen their last drop of Iraqi oil.”

Omar bad Karmah.
President, Coalition of Recovering Bad Iraqis. Favored by no one, really, but has made himself useful by acting as liaison to the very worst elements of the former regime, who, though truly awful, may be needed to perform some of the unpleasant work of nation rebuilding, such as WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) disposal and replacing the heads on the statues of Saddam Hussein with likenesses of the new leader.

Said Hassan.
Executive director, League of Rapidly Improving Iraqis. Charismatic. Nicknamed “Scooter” for his habit of driving a Vespa from table to table at Pan-Arab conferences. Well liked by Powell and Tenet, but may have damaged his chances of being taken seriously again by referring to Geraldo Rivera during an on-camera interview as “a latter-day Alexander the Great.”

Salim al-Wolfowitz.
Chairman, Association of Iraqis Who Have Changed Their Last Names, formerly the Association of Could Be Much Worse Iraqis. Widely viewed as opportunistic and self-promoting but seen as “inflexible” for waiting too long to change his previous name, Salim al-Gore.

Omar Sharif.
Honorary chairman, Association of Still Dashing Egyptian Actors Who Look Iraqi Enough to Play the Part. Commands strong following pretty much everywhere, though Wolfowitz, stung by recent celebrity protests against the war, is said to harbor reservations about putting an actor, no matter how Middle Eastern–looking, in charge of the new Iraq. Rumored to be the top candidate of Laura, Barbara, and Lauren Bush.

—
The New Yorker
, April 2003

TOKYO, April 5—The Education Ministry on Tuesday approved a controversial new series of school textbooks that critics say whitewash Japan’s militaristic past . . . Some schoolbook publishers and government officials have argued that it is time to remove “self-deprecating” historical references.

—THE WASHINGTON POST

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. What historically significant event occurred on December 7?

A. Woodrow Wilson declared war on Austria, in 1917.

B. Admiral William Bligh, of HMS
Bounty
fame, died in 1817, regretting that he never had the opportunity to visit Japan.

C. Charles Brooks, Jr., became the first American to be executed by lethal injection, in Texas, in 1982.

D. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull flouted diplomatic protocol by speaking in a rude and disrespectful manner to Japanese imperial ambassadors in Washington, in 1941.

2. The cry “Tora! Tora! Tora!” is heard at:

A. Pamplona, Spain, to warn runners that a female bull is approaching.

B. Ascot, England, to compliment ladies on their hats.

C. Synagogues during bat- and bar-mitzvah ceremonies.

D. Japanese baseball games when Toshimura Tora (no. 39) steps up to bat.

3. Which of the following statements most accurately describes America’s President Franklin Roosevelt?

A. A fanatical, Supreme Court–packing bigot intent on ending the Depression by fomenting war with Japan.

B. A philandering, wheelchair-bound, stamp-collecting tyrant.

C. Invited Imperial Japanese Navy to participate in a “friendship mission” by flying over Hawaii, and then perfidiously ordered U.S. Navy to open fire.

D. All of the above.

4. What was the main objective of the Divine Wind squadron in 1944 and 1945?

A. To bring oboe and clarinet concerti to remote areas of the Pacific.

B. To entertain the emperor and his court with works by the French fin-de-siècle performance artist Le Petomane.

C. To win the America’s Cup for Japan, despite the New York Yacht Club’s disqualifying Japan’s boat for allegedly concealing a Kaiten-type “human torpedo” in its keel.

D. Parts of all of the above.

5. Historians agree that Japan’s doctrine of “preemption” in Hawaii was directly responsible for:

A. The long-overdue emergence of America as a benign hegemon.

B. The development of nuclear power as a promising new energy source.

C. The story line of the award-winning
Snow Falling on Cedars
.

D. The drafting of Hideki Matsui by the New York Yankees.

6. The term “comfort women” refers to:

A. 200,000 Chinese and Korean females invited to Japan between 1939 and 1945, as honored guests with all expenses paid, for the purpose of experiencing Japanese culture and customs and promoting friendship and understanding.

B. Prostitutes in the southern United States.

C. Female interns in the White House.

D. Wives of Donald Trump.

7. “Bataan Death March” refers to:

A. A Seattle grunge band.

B. Hole no. 5 at Osaka Golf and Country Club.

C. A badly maintained highway west of Manila Bay.

D. A lesser-known funereal composition by F. Chopin.

8. What took place at Los Alamos?

A. A handful of Americans briefly held off the entire Mexican Army.

B. American scientists unearthed prehistoric winged monsters with which to attack an unsuspecting Japan.

C. American scientists devised an inexpensive car-rental agency.

D. The “good” American Robert Oppenheimer was overcome with remorse after unleashing supernatural evil and was persecuted by the U.S. government for the rest of his life.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT

1. Hirohito : Roosevelt ~

A. Jupiter : Pluto

B. Joan of Arc : Joan Collins

C. Gold : Lead

D. Chrysanthemum : Ragweed

—
The Atlantic Monthly
, November 2005

Q. What exactly is a Higgs boson, and why all this fuss?

A Essentially, it’s an eentsy-teensy-weensy particle—we’re talking
small
here—that contains the answers to how the universe came about, including whether God was involved. As for the “fuss,” the CERN laboratory in Geneva, where the particle was discovered, spent $10 billion on its Large Hadron Collider. Over the last two years, 800 trillion (give or take) proton-proton collisions have been performed, which works out to—what?—maybe not so much per collision, but $10 billion is still $10 billion. For that kind of dough, you expect more bang for your buck than, “Ja, ja, we’re working on it, go away!” Physicists—spare me.

Q. How did they discover it?

A. It’s not rocket science. Basically, two guys with Ph.D.s, one Swiss and one from some other country—they don’t have to speak the same language or even get along—stand in this really long tunnel near
Geneva and fire protons at each other. When the little bell on top of the Large Hadron Collider goes
ding-a-ling
, presto, there’s your Higgs boson in the in-box. But then you need this totally ginormous magnifying glass to find the little bugger. Anyway, they did.
Finally
.

Q. Why is it so expensive?

A. The bell is handmade. And the magnifying glass must be made out of melted diamonds or something. They nearly fainted when they got the bill for that. Then there’s the tunnel, which wasn’t cheap. Then there’s the tanning salon bills for the Ph.D.s, who have to spend their lives in tunnels, like moles. Then there was this huge kerfuffle a few years ago, with these whack-job groups suing CERN, saying it was going to create a black hole that would suck the entire solar system into it. Endo-finito, human life, as we know it. (What jerks.) So CERN had to go to court to get that thrown out, and if you think lawyers in the United States are expensive, try Swiss particle-physics lawyers. Talk about black holes. So it all adds up, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Q. According to the news reports, all the scientists involved were drinking champagne when the Higgs boson particle was found, leading to jokes that it should be called the “Hic boson.” Does drinking help in particle physics?

A. Up to a point. CERN was embarrassed a while back by news reports that the two Ph.D. dudes were firing champagne corks at each other instead of protons. Some scientists defended the practice, saying that champagne corks are a lot more practical—and more fun—to shoot than protons. But who knows? Who cares? Bottom line—they found the sucker. Everyone’s happy.

Q. Will there be “spin-offs” from the discovery, as there were with the space program?

A. CERN will soon announce a Higgs boson–flavored powdered breakfast drink. But historically, the Food and Drug Administration has been wary of drinks derived from the debris of primordial fireballs
left after proton collisions, so don’t expect it at a supermarket near you anytime soon.

Q. Will the discovery affect everyday life?

A. Well, duh.

Q. Hey, I’m not a science-y person, okay?

A. Sorry. The answer is absolutely. Sort of. Well, yes and no.

Q. Can you be like a little more specific?

A. For starters, you’re going to be hearing the phrase “Higgs boson” about 800 trillion times. You’ll be at a cocktail party talking about the Kardashians and someone will say, “OMG, Higgs boson!” and you’ll go, “No, no, no—
please
no more with the Higgs boson.” So there’s that. Plus this Halloween, every other trick-or-treater is going to be dressed as—guess what? So yes, it’s going to affect your everyday life. My advice? Deal with it.

—
The New York Times
, July 2012

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

—ROBERT BENCHLEY

“Good to see you again,” I greeted the gentleman, a family friend, important businessman and former cabinet secretary. “How’s Carol?” The friendly grin remained, but I caught the suppressed wince.

“She died three years ago,” he said.

Where
does
one go from there? “Gosh, well . . . seen any good movies, lately?” I made my way to the men’s room to bash my head against the wall in private. The Japanese are so much more efficient about this: you chop off the little finger and present it neatly wrapped in a pocket handkerchief to the offended party. If you really screw up, use a bigger knife and disembowel yourself. You have to admire a culture that has ritualized shame into performance art.

Our own phrase for these horrible moments is
faux pas
, “the false step,” from the French, language of courtiers, diplomats, and arbiters of elegance
par excellence
. The phrase first turns up in English literature in 1676, in Wycherley’s satirical Restoration play
The Plain-Dealer
. The
Oxford English Dictionary
defines it as “a slip, a trip; an act which compromises one’s reputation, esp. a woman’s lapse from virtue.”

It’s not a phrase one hears much anymore, and the more’s the pity. “I made a faux pas” sounds better than “Man, did I just step in it.”

The word
gaffe
gets a pretty good workout. The
OED
cites modern French—
une gaffe
, “a remark by which one ‘puts one’s foot into it.’ ” (In screwup etymology, the French seem to rule.) But “gaffe” covers only the spoken word; and who’s to say what constitutes a gaffe, in our mendacious age? Pundit Michael Kinsley’s lapidary definition of a gaffe is “when a politician accidentally speaks the truth.”

During Watergate, the president’s men were constantly having to announce that he had “misspoke himself,” an odd neologism that somehow made it sound as though Nixon had wet his pants. Just
once it would be nice to hear a White House press secretary say, “The president made a faux pas.”

There’s Dr. Freud’s eponymous “slip of the tongue,” that awkward moment when the id crawls up your esophagus, grabs you by the uvula, and shouts your secret out your mouth and onto the dinner table. When this happens all the time, it’s called Tourette’s syndrome. I have a mild case of Tourette’s that causes me to blink; on more than one occasion this has been embarrassingly misinterpreted by various women as making a pass.

American presidents have kept us entertained with tongue slips. Jimmy Carter perhaps set the standard at the 1980 Democratic Convention when he extolled the former vice president as “Hubert Horatio Hornblower.” Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey made a beaut of a slip himself when he remarked, “No sane person in the country likes the war in Vietnam, and neither does President Johnson.” Ronald Reagan said in a speech, “Facts are stupid things.” (He meant “stubborn.”)