I was on an AM radio show this a.m., early drive-time show. I have 4 minutes, total, including the hosts' questions. Brief, pithy, witty. Brief, pithy, witty. Brief...
With 7 seconds left, one of the hosts asks me about Hillary Clinton: "What are Hillary's chances for the Presidency?"
I check the clock, realize that there is no way to give a serious answer, and say: "Her main problem is that the First Man would spend all his time down at Denny's, trying to get the waitresses to play 'Prez and Intern'." Big laugh from hosts, promises to talk again soon, etc.
So, score one for me. How clever.
I relate this to my older son, rather proudly (being a narcissist, I am mostly proud of EVERYTHING). He stares at me.
He says, "So, you crack on Jon Stewart, who is a comedian, for ridiculing public figures. But you, a college professor, are allowed to make crude jokes about an ex-President?"
I really didn't have an answer.
He continued: "Dad, you are just LIKE Jon Stewart, only fatter and not as funny."
Ouch.
Reminded me of H.L. Mencken's law of self-awareness: No man can be a fool, and not know it, if he is married.
Munger's corollary to Mencken's law: No man can be a pompous ass, and not know it, if he has a teenage son.
2 comments:
here's a related Mencken quote:
""A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition."
works for me.
I read once that Calvin Coolidge said, "It looks like the American people want a pompous ass for president, and I won't disappoint them."
I also read that the wife of the British PM Gladstone once said to him, "If you weren't such a great man, I'd think you were an awful bore." (from Reykr,r a LiveJournal blogger.)
My friend Sherm McNeal just told me that there's a band that's named LaMont Cranston. Why? The Shadow knows.
Post a Comment