'Where's the beef?'

Well, we're in a crisis again, a small crisis I must admit, of Anglo-American understanding which I'm told it is my duty to pacify.

It's of the sort I mentioned many years ago when there was a strike of the fishing fleet out of New York and the salmon wasn't coming in. This was a serious matter to a large part of the population of New York City to those millions of Jews to whom the combination of the salt smoked salmon known as lox, with the hard ring-shaped roll known as a bagel, a sort of cement doughnut, is as inseparable as a Briton's bacon and eggs. So, while the salmon failed to appear in the fish markets, the bakers naturally went on every night baking their bagels.

In a whimsical moment, I cabled my editor in Manchester and said I proposed writing a piece that might well carry the headline, 'Lox Lag Brings Bagel Boom'. My editor, although a lifelong resident of Manchester and, I should have guessed, well acquainted with local folk ways, cabled back, 'Your message hopelessly scrambled. Reads Loch Slag Brings Bagel Boom'. We decided to kill the piece.

Now I'm told not only the entire British population, but also the astute and knowledgeable news editors of the BBC, have been baffled this past week by a simple American phrase which Mr Mondale, one of the two leading Democratic contenders for the presidency, uses before large audiences as a sort of mockery of the pretensions of his chief rival, Senator Gary Hart. In case any listener begins to feel uncomfortable about a gap in his knowledge of American slang, let me say that six months ago, or even less, his ignorance would have been shared not only by Mr Mondale, but by the entire American population because the phrase didn't exist then, except possibly in the mind of some advertising writer.

Mr Mondale, then, has very lately acquired the habit of appearing before large crowds, throwing up his arms in despair and shouting, 'Where's the beef? Where's the beef?' It gets a laugh and a large cheer from his supporters. The origin of the phrase is, unlike that of most slang phrases, quite simple and certain. There has been, in the past year or two, a trend in American television commercials which is now almost a compulsory habit. Time was, for many decades, when somebody advertising a detergent, say, proclaimed the merits of the product without invidious comparisons with some other manufacturer of a similar product. They simply said, 'Washes whiter than white' or, in my favourite ad for cockroach powder, proclaimed that it 'kills roaches dead'.

But for some time now it's been the practice of the maker of one soap or vacuum cleaner or indigestion tablet to boost his own product by sneering at the claims of another particular soap maker or vacuum cleaner or indigestion tablet. They don't merely say that Foam-o produces more foam than Gush-o. They imply, sometimes actually declare, that Gush-o is practically useless.

This technique is most ruthlessly applied nowadays by one fast-food chain against another fast-food chain, showing in impressive graphs that, say, the Kid Burger Houses – and you realise I'm faking the true names in the interest of staying out of court – that the Kid Burger Houses produce hamburgers with 25 per cent less beef than our splendid chain Macho Burgers.

You'd expect, would you not, that Kid Burgers would sue? And, in fact, about a year ago, one of the burger chains did sue, producing months of litigation, billowing lawyers' fees and, I suspect, little change in the prejudices of the opposing armies of customers. Since then, it's become the style to promote your own product by swiping at the claims of a competitor.

Well, the latest joust in this competition is between two hamburger houses. The television ad shows three old ladies, two large ladies and one tiny one. The two large ones gurgle and gape at two giant buns, the product of a competitor, and marvel at their size and grandeur, when up pipes the tiny one, in a tiny voice, saying, 'Where's the beef?' The two others hesitate for an instant, repeat their alleluias, but the little one keeps saying, 'Where's the beef?' The others are given pause.

That small complaint has been catchy enough to echo round the country and no doubt to induce rage and high blood pressure among the manufacturers of the burger with the big bun but the barely visible beef.

Now, I suppose you've heard that in the so-called race for the Democratic nomination – a race we've promised to follow closely only when it begins to end a little over four months from now – four of the early contenders have been knocked out. Just for the record, they are Senator Cranston of California, Senator Hollings of South Carolina, Governor Askew of Florida and, last week, former Senator McGovern of South Dakota who was the Democratic choice for President in 1972 and was buried in the unprecedented Nixon landslide of that year.

Well, that's left four runners. The first American astronaut, Senator John Glenn, who's been straggling miserably and is expected to quit pretty soon. The Reverend Jesse Jackson who, also, trails badly but is soldiering on in the correct conviction that if he fights all the primaries, all the way to the Democrats convention in San Francisco in July, whatever else he doesn't establish, he will certainly establish himself as the leading black politician of the country and, therefore, a man who must be listened to when the chosen nominee comes to write his programme, his platform.

The two leaders way out front are Mr, former vice president, Mondale and the crackling newcomer, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado who broke out of the pack with a shocking victory – shocking to his opponents – in New Hampshire. After that, he took preferential primaries in Vermont and Maine, a minute number of people pledged to him, but still the popular preference, and overnight he went rocketing on to the covers of the news magazines and the Sunday supplements.

For a couple of weeks, his explosion from obscurity to stardom had everybody talking and writing as if he were a sudden Galahad or Daniel come to judgement or, at least, John Kennedy reborn. He has a compact, though flowing, young hairdo, he has candid blue eyes, splendid teeth, a resolute chin and a so far successful insistence that he stands for new ideas against old ideas and the future against the past. Now that sounds like very little to go on but, at the moment, it's fair to say that a majority of Americans have only the vaguest idea how he stands on the nuclear problem, on the economy, on welfare, housing, job training, the Middle East – pick your own urgent problem.

He's also the youngest of the contenders, 46 or 47, according to which entry you care to believe in various forms, when he ran for the Senate, when he put his name in the congressional register. In the latest United States Congress handbook, it says he won't be 47 till November but his birth certificate says he'll be 48. So, Oedipus Fledipus, what's it matter if he is as he is easily the youngest of the lot? He doesn't look a day over 46 and that seems to be his big appeal to the young.

In all the primaries so far, he's taken an impressive majority of the young voters. They feel they know, if anybody does, the champion of the new against the old, the future against the past.

This powerful hunch that a younger man will necessarily have younger ideas than an older man, needless to say, incenses Mr Mondale. In the first shock of discovering that he has, that he was, no longer the front runner and the inevitable nominee, Mr Mondale grew, understandably, irritable. After the Southern primaries, they are now neck-and-neck.

Let me remind you though that two-thirds of all the delegates who will go to San Francisco in July will be chosen in the coming weeks or months in the big states that can, together, swamp the representatives from the states that have made their preliminary choice so far. And the big states are Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, California.

Well, as I say, Mr Mondale – who has insistently declared his stand on every issue of policy that a president will have to deal with – was chagrined, to put it mildly at this Johnny, this Gary Come Lately, who hypnotises the country or the young, or half a dozen states, by showing off the giant bun of his promises to represent the new against the old. Where, many people wondered, was the substance behind Senator Hart's style? Where is the beef? We wait and wonder.

I don't remember, by the way, an advertising catchphrase that so quickly caught on around the entire country as, 'Where's the beef?' except one, several years ago, which was an ad for an anti-acid pill. Indigestion does seem to be the chronic daily affliction of the Western world and there was a memorable television ad showing a fat man, lapping up a huge and succulent dinner, then feeling queasy and distended and then plopping two anti-acid tablets into a glass and then, after they dissolved, the picture dissolved into a happy man who said, as much in wonder as relief, 'I ate the whole thing'.

And more recently, a distinguished producer/actor, Mr John Houseman has acquired national fame which his 50-year contribution to the American theatre had never given him. He represents on television an investment firm and with patrician disdain, Mr Houseman implies contempt for other investment houses with the final line about his sponsor, 'They make their money the old-fashioned way. They earn it!'

And to this firm, I suppose, he must now be their favourite idol since little boys on street corners, from Alaska to the Florida Keys, jeer at each other, 'We earn our money the old-fashioned way. We earn it!'

I suppose 'Where's the beef?' sums up a universal suspicion about all flashy people. It's already replaced the ancient nitty-gritty and the bottom line. Even financiers now look at audits and say, 'Yes, but where's the beef?'

Not until July in San Francisco, however, will Mr Mondale or Senator Hart be able to announce, 'I ate the whole thing!'

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.