GUNFIGHT AT THE OBAMA CORRAL

I keep saying this isn’t a political blog, but somehow the politicians keep getting into it. especially Joe Biden. I called him Senator Malarkey a few weeks ago, but instead of taking warning that his sins had found him out, he kept recurring to the use of his favorite word, which will eventually be identified with him and used against him. His latest outburst came yesterday in Virginia where he made a speech reassuring gun owners that even his own running mate Mr. Obama “ain’t” about to take his shotguns away from him and he better not try. So don’t buy that malarkey.

Biden’s known for his foot-in-mouth trouble, so what he probably meant was that Obama hadn’t any plans for seizing his shotguns rather than that he’d better not try. There are plenty of people that are ready to believe that both Obama and Biden are going to try and all the forthcoming denials and explanations aren’t going to change that. I can almost hear Obama now “Thanks, Joe, now everybody thinks you’re ready to fight me over your lousy guns. Talk about malarkey…”

A vice president threatening to make hash of a president is something new even in this campaign, but that’s Joe. God knows what he’ll come up with next. A bailout for the steroids industry? Everybody else is getting one. It could happen.

All this brings up the subject of famous flubs of the past. There were also not-so-famous ones not reported by the media but encountered by me in the course of my work in the police department. One of them was perpetrated by a chap who later became police commissioner. He tried to be eloquent in his pronouncements to the troops, but unfortunately I haven’t preserved his flights of fancy and can only come up with one which has lodged in my memory. This was his announcement that it was now “bell weather” to put into effect some brainstorm of his for the salvation of New York from undesirable elements threatening its existence. Probably there are still ex-cops puzzling over what may have been meant by this neologism, but not reaching any conclusion.

I knew and I treasured it at the time, but failed to safeguard the document introducing it along with some other lulus, so that they have now been lost to posterity. Another gem I’ve lost came from an inspector who wrote us that some figures he was receiving from the field would not withstand veracity. Really it was not advisable for some of our leaders to attempt innovations in their work product. Plenty of cliche's could be had.

If Biden doesn’t watch out he could find himself cast as the new Sam Goldwyn or Yogi Berra. These were the two victims who got themselves credited with an almost unlimited number of “gaffes” (new word) mostly dreamed up by joke writers, some of them allegedly working for Goldwyn, but all of them interested in giving newspaper columnists some material to fill their spaces with and ready to use a well-known name to alert the public that a joke was intended. So we had Goldwyn shouting “Bon Voyage” to an incoming ship, announcing that an oral contract wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, using two words, “im” “possible” to describe a movie script he didn’t like.

When Goldwyn jokes stopped, Yogi Berra became a natural to hang broken English stories on. He brought it on himself by saying to a crowd in his native St. Louis who gave him a “night” in 1947 that he wanted to thank everyone “who made this night necessary.”

That was all the hint the sportswriters need that here was a new Goldwyn to whom any possible misuse of the English language could be attributed without fear of reprisal since Yogi was one of the most forbearing people existing in America. If he had enemies he didn’t know it. His favorite pastime when he became a catcher after coming up as an outfielder was talking to the opposing batters as they came to the plate against the Yankees. Most of them enjoyed it even though sometimes it ruined their concentration and cost them a hit.

They ragged him of course. I remember pictures in Life magazine of Dizzy Trout, the Detroit pitcher, hanging by one arm from the rafters of the dugout while inquiring from Yogi how his wife liked living in a tree. I had an English cousin visiting me who saw her first baseball on TV and asked “Who is that funny little man?” He was made for the gags, so the gags kept coming:

“Bill Dickey learned me all his experience.” (Not a gag).
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
“I didn’t really say all the things I said.”

There were lots of other words of wisdom, some real and some invented. I like “It’s déjà vu all over again,“ but people say it’s unlikely Yogi knew enough French for that. So we’ll never know. It’s happened to great men as well as ballplayers. There are many who doubt that Calvin Coolidge ever said “When a lot of people are out of work unemployment results.” I heard remarks attributed to Mario Procaccino, a mayoral candidate in 1969, that I knew from reading had first been hung on Mayor John P. O’Brien in 1933. He was alleged to have told a Harlem crowd “My face may be white, but my heart is black.” So was Mario thirty-six years later.

If I were an unscrupulous Republican I would get to work now dreaming up Yogiisms to hang on Biden. Doonesbury the other day quoted Newt Gingrich as creating a lexicon of abuse for Republicans to use. So what else is new? I remember the Demos from my earliest days. Their favorite phrases were “economic royalists,” “princes of privilege,” “reactionaries,” “neo-Nazis,” “pro-Nazis,” “fifth columnists,” “isolationists,” “xenophobes,” “anti-Semites,” “union-busters,” “war profiteers,” (after Pearl Harbor), “native fascists,” “book-burners,“ and other such terms of endearment. The fat is in the fire. I’m afraid there will be quite a bit of name-calling this year too. Biden will be shouting “Malarkey!” at all and sundry and, what the hell, if Yogi and Goldwyn could stand for a few funny expressions being attributed to them at their expense, why should he mind? I kind of expect to hear some “Bidenisms” soon. I can’t wait.