admin @ Thu, 2006-09-21 08:00
The homespun cowboy philosopher was THE star of stage, screen and radio between World Wars I and II, but he also wrote a column, like mine, except he used smaller words and hickory-flavored Oklahoma charm. "Charm" is not a word usually associated with my work.
I was going to write today about Pope Benedict XVI's excursion into Christian-Islamic relations, but my boss thought saying how too many Muslims throw tantrums like 2-year-olds is maybe, I don't know, stale? So I decided to go with fresher topics ripped from today's headlines (as they say on TV about shows that have nothing else to recommend them).
Page One of the Inquirer reported a study that among U.S. and Canadian graduate students, candidates for business degrees are the biggest cheats. Fifty-six percent of MBA students said they had cheated during the previous year, as opposed to a mere 47 percent of non-business students.
A keen student of human nature, Will Rogers might observe that since most cheaters are liars, you can double the number. That would total more than 100 percent, but that sounds about right anyway.
The most common explanation of why they cheated was their belief that their peers were cheating too, which we can call the "defensive cheating" defense. It's also the one used by pro athletes who take steroids.
I think Will Rogers would be glum about the massive cheating among our young. I know I am (but I also know I occasionally cheated my way to the solid C- average I enjoyed in college, and look how I turned out).
Then in the Daily News, Jenice Armstrong spilled the beans about how some black American men "vacation" in Brazil by having plenty o' sex with Rio hos.
To Will Rogers, "down low" meant a cowboy thrown from a horse. To us - in the same day's paper - it means someone like political horndog James McGreevey, a seemingly straight guy who had sex with other men.
McGreevey called himself a "gay American" and Will Rogers would understand that - wrongly. The humorist would think a "gay American" is one who drinks bathtub gin and puts a lampshade on his head at parties.
Back in the Daily News there was a story about ward leader Carol Campbell. She got the Democratic Party nod to run for Michael Nutter's Council seat despite the annoying fact that she has unpaid fines and missing reports from her 1999 City Council campaign, which some see as cheating.
This is cache, read story here