Witticisms and Crazy One-Liners - 28 May 1999

I knew it would happen and quite right. Somebody asks, in a slightly hurt tone: whatever happened to the Roman senator and the other notable comedians?

I should know by now it's always dangerous to begin a talk by promising a story or a suddenly-remembered anecdote and then find that you're deep in a school shooting or a Balkan war, so that any whimsical or humorous interruption would be jarring at best, at worst tasteless - if that word "tasteless" still has any meaning for a world in which, this week, the dean of a famous university's divinity school has been rested for having his university-owned computer stacked with a mass of hardcore pornography.

The question of taste comes in when you consider the reaction of several students, one of whom thought it was a cute discovery. One young woman said it was a harmless joke like getting caught with Playboy under the mattress.

So there's no reason it seems why the dean shouldn't go on running the centre that he established - Centre for the Study of Values in Public Life. I'm sure that the supervisor or praecentor of public morals in Rome kept on lecturing under the reign of Tiberius.

Which brings us back to the Roman senator. He's coming up but not before I've mentioned - in single sentences in the form of questions - three or four themes, any one of which in serener times would constitute the crisis of the week. In other words what, in a phrase or two, is most bothering serious Americans.

Is Senator McCain right that the fatal first error in the conduct of the war was the gorgeous present President Clinton gave to Milosevic on a platter - the positive promise that he would not send in ground troops?

Is the bombing of power plants and depots in the centre of Belgrade worth the accidental destruction of an embassy and a hospital and the innocent civilians that those errors entail?

To move cold bloodedly away from the war and ask the question that haunts probably more Americans than even the huge stealth of nuclear technology by the Chinese was Mr Alan Greenspan - the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the true master of the American Treasury, some say the Moses of the American economy - was he right not to raise the basic interest rate this week?

For the first time in years there is severe criticism of him at home and abroad. Throughout his term Mr Greenspan has been justly praised for his role as an alert watchdog of inflation. He has himself said that the stock market is dense with overpriced shares. So many with only slim earnings to back them. He fears that inflation could come peeping if not bounding over the horizon.

The most influential, in this country, of English magazines practically accuses Mr Greenspan of encouraging "the dangerous and flawed notion that the Federal Reserve has abolished the business cycle" and that too many American investors are coming to believe that onwards and upwards forever is a law of nature.

I must say that more and more of the middle-aged and old people on Wall Street, as distinct from Tom Wolfe's 1980s Masters of the Universe, believe that the correction or fall is coming soon and will sound more like an earthquake than a broken ankle.

So, so much for the grave and reverend signors among us. The Roman senator who died a few weeks ago was from Nebraska and I doubt his obituary would have run to more than a paragraph or two had it not been that in 1970 he got off a single sentence before the Senate that made him immortal.

From the recollection of that I got to thinking of some other men and one woman whose names have reverberated down the years because of one memorable line.

Let's begin with the man whom, more than any other, most Americans would recall for one sentence and one only. The incomparable Willie Sutton - the perennial, the chronic bank robber. Always small amounts, enough to keep him going till his wants needed to be taken care of again.

Time and again he came up before the same judge. Finally before a more severe sentence the judge said: "Willie why is it always banks?"

"Because, your honour, that's where the money is."

Another man who's gone into the language all on account of a five-word sentence was the long gone, famous baseball manager of the New York Yankees, one Casey Stengel. A craggy-faced, gravel-voiced giant who went to extraordinary lengths by way of grammar and syntax to explain, well, practically any play that had happened.

He would fight his way through his mother tongue and come up with a word nobody had ever heard.

"It was," he'd say, "the player what saw the conlikliest of a bunt and derenigayed the pitcher."

"Casey - just what do you mean by derenigayed?"

Casey Stengel: "Er, you could look it up." That was always his way out - you could look it up.

There was another ball player - a black man of remarkable stamina - who pitched his last game when I believe he was 60. He was also notable for stealing bases.

He had one piece of advice, not only for baseball players but for any of us wanting good advice for what he called the race of life. His name was Satchel Paige.

"Never look behind," he said, "you may see somebody catchin' up on you."

When he retired, and like all men who've gone beyond the normal span as a professional ball player, was asked what had kept him so active, so healthy, so long, said Satchel gravely: "Stay away from fat foods - they rumble the stummick."

The shambling, beloved Satchel Paige reminds me at once of Woody Allen. Woody Allen revered him so much he named a son after him - Satchel Allen.

Of course Woody Allen is a fountain of witticisms and crazy one-liners, but one I recall more than any other because it came out so spontaneously. Since, after half an hour's discussion of a distinguished panel of television talkers, the host finally turned to Woody - in fact it seemed odd he was included at all in this group which was composed of famous divines, distinguished theologians, all brought together to address the question which just then - about 20 odd years ago - was racking the country. Remember? "Is God dead?"

Much learned and profound stuff and also much verbose gasbaggery had been aired by the divines when the MC suddenly noticed Woody Allen sitting forlorn, uncalled on, at the end of the row.

"Oh, Mr Allen," he said, "I'm afraid - I'm afraid we more or less left you out. Tell us Mr Allen how do you stand? Is God dead?"

Woody Allen looked glummer than ever. He said: "Not only is God dead, you can't get a dentist at the weekend."

Of the women who come to mind inevitably anyone over 50 will surely say it's got to be the late lamented Dorothy Parker, of course. Dorothy Parker musing in her cubicle at the New Yorker magazine while, in the next cubicle, Robert Benchley sat and began to write such immortals as his confession of murder.

"Let's have an end to all this shilly-shallying - I killed Rasputin."

Dorothy Parker had top competition at her elbow but as a wit if not a humorist she could hold her own with the best in the country.

At one time everybody in England knew Dorothy Parker for the couplet: "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." A truth no longer true, I'm told.

I remember, though, when a young woman who'd been in love for years with a man in the office went off to England on a prolonged holiday and while there, to everybody's astonishment, gave birth to a baby.

She had a cable of congratulation from Dorothy Parker: "Well done, we didn't know you had it in you."

I mustn't forget perhaps the most forgotten politician in American history of this century anyway. A droll man who didn't much care for high office but happened, in 1912, to suit the progressive reform ticket of the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

He was Wilson's vice-presidential running mate, Thomas Marshall - and a godsend to the campaign. For whatever wonderful human qualities President Wilson possessed humour was not one of them.

Thomas Marshall had two campaign slogans which he could repeat everywhere, before television and radio. One was at a time when every campaign speech began: "What this country needs is ..." - Marshall's went: "What this country needs is a good five cent cigar."

His other got a bigger reception though today it would probably cost his party a couple of million votes. Marshall: "A woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke."

Finally Senator Roman L. Hruska - senator from the prairie, from the state of Nebraska. A thorough-going conservative Republican who stormed and speechified and sweated against gun control, against pornography, against decriminalising marijuana, against violent movies.

One day President Nixon nominated a circuit court judge from Florida for the Supreme Court. The Senate, as you know, has to approve all presidential nominees for federal judges and ambassadors. There was much Democratic opposition to Judge Carswell because, well, he seemed shaky even on Constitutional law.

When it came Senator Hruska's time to speak up in the Senate he did on behalf of the failing, the besieged Judge Carswell.

Senator Hruska said: "It has been held against this nominee that he's mediocre. Well there are a lot of mediocre judges and lawyers and people. Most of the American people are mediocre. And they have a right to be represented on the Supreme Court."

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