FOOT IN MOUTH
We have all had moments we would rather not remember.
Anyone who has said anything at all, is sure to have said something at one time or another which they now wish they could un-say.
This is not “show-and-tell-time” at all, because, I usually feel sorry for the victim who who's loose lips, disconnected brain or plain old big-mouth tendencies take over. I've done some doozies in my own time and cannot point to things others might have said and are forced to claim as their own faux pas collection. For example, this past week I placed our President George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Pacific.. I can say “Thank you” to those who have not told me about it, as well as to those who did so.
I feel that most offenders do not mean what they find others seem to have said. There are occasions when things come out like ketchup from a the narrow, mouth of a bottle. It was not intended to do that. It just “came out that way.”
I think we have been very unfair to people in the political area, in particular, where so much depends on what is “said” as compared to, or contrasted with, what they are really thinking and have been so careful top avoid saying. Dan Quayle has been much maligned in print and on radio and TV more than any other human being in modern history, and accused of saying things Joe Miller must have left out of his celebrated joke books books as being too commonly used to quote.
Few escape. People pointed French-frying fingers at General Charles de Gaulle when he was supposed to have said: “China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
Jason Kidd, when he was drafted by the Dallas “Mavericks” announced:”We are going to turn this team around 360 degrees!”
Bob Dole is reported to have said that “The Internet is a great way to get on the net” We assume he was making reference to the Internet Al Gore had said he invented when he was nine year of age or so down there on the tobacco farm in old Tennessee.
Some quote these saying because they think they see little seeds of wisdom within them.:
George Stephanapolis ,in the Larry King Show, said: “The President (Clinton) has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.”
Hillary Clinton raise a few hackles when she voiced her opinion related to a search for missing papers in the White House. “I 'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers .We are the President!”
Ike irked some with: “ Things are more like they are now than they every were were before.” And, there was one by Mayor Daley in Chicago years ago: “The police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder.”
Each and every one of them ,no doubt, regretted saying what they did, if they, indeed, said it at all.
I have recognized more than one old clinker attributed to to a famous personality of recent times, some of which my Granddaddy used when he wanted to make someone appear silly or mis-informed. Ears, it seems, can be fine-tuned by incompetents so listeners can think they hear pretty much what that want the hear rather than what was really said.
A.L.M. May 3, 2003 [c846wds]
