One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
Just yesterday I asked myself a question for which I had no answer, so I did some quick research and produced a list, which I then re-jigged into a form of a question. The question is for your entertainment and instruction.
In the world of Substack, I am exactly like a kindergarten teacher. You are my charges, my sacred responsibility. It is my job to educate you, and to do so while retaining your interest and, where possible, also to protect you from knowledge of the evils of the world until you are old enough to bear them. Like a kindergarten teacher, I am no longer permitted to discipline you by whapping you on the rump with a yardstick, so I can only wield emotional humiliation from time to time, such as informing you that good children don’t go pee-pee in the goldfish bowl. Also, like a kindergarten teacher, my salary is embarrassingly low. Still, I persist.
Anyway in noodling over my lesson plans for today, I came up with this list.
Australia
Brazil
Denmark
England
Finland
Germany
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Mexico
New Zealand
Pakistan
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Now, here is the question: In what single, significant way do all of these westernized nations differ from the United States? The answer involves a common element about their histories and ours.
So. I’’ll give you the illuminating answer in a minute. Think about it.
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But first, unrelatedly, this is from a recent story in The New Yorker:
A few weeks ago, Trump weighed succeeding Maduro as President himself. “I’m polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela,” Trump said. “I will quickly learn Spanish—it won’t take too long, I’m good at language—and I will go to Venezuela, and I am going to run for President.”
I mention this because, of all the pathetic, preposterous egotistical vainglorious lies Trump has excreted in recent months, this one might be the most pathetic and preposterous: “I’m good at language.”
This may be the most foreign-language impaired adult person in the world. He is the guy who found it necessary to proclaim that English is the “official language” of America. He is the guy who was amused to learn — and delighted to share with the American people — that Puerto Ricans speak with a Spanish accent. “We love Pwerrto Rrico,” he drawled, ineptly, with a big, condescending smile. Then, he added even more condescendingly, “And we also love Porto Rico.”
Trump has said to a room full of Latin American leaders, “I’m not learning your damn language.” When an Indian reporter asked him a question in perfect, Indian-lilted English, Trump declined to take the question, telling the room “I can’t understand a word he’s saying. It’s the accent, it’s a little bit tough for me to hear that.”
He also once referenced the two Asian countries “Button and Nipple.” He meant Bhutan and Nepal.
He always relies on interpreters, and even that sometimes isn’t enough. Instances have occurred where translators at international events had to further translate their English translation into simpler English, just for him.
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Okay, the list. Have you locked in your answer? Do you even have an answer?
Okay, here comes the answer, after I show you this photograph:
Answer: All the other countries in the list have at least once elected a female head of government. That’s Julia Gillard, above, who served as the 27th Prime Minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013.
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As you know, this is the Weekend Gene Pool, so you have a challenge. Come up with a similar list of things that might have an illuminating and interesting answer. The list need not be political. Any group of things — hey, it could be vegetables or animals — where one stands out among the others for an interesting reason, or where the entire list differs from one other similar thing in an interesting way. As always, send your lists (with the answer) to the Mailbag. Your key goal is “interesting,” “unexpected” and/or “funny.”
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Good.
From today’s Mailbag:
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Q: A thing about which I am inordinately proud: I can aim a shopping cart across the parking lot at the cart corral with unerring accuracy. I’m a 78 year-old woman and the crowds go wild!
A: I can throw a filled dog-poop bag (usually) unerringly into the street trashcan at 20 feet. I call this semi-Olympic event the “shit put.”
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Q: Regarding your challenge to come clean about something for which I am obnoxiously proud, here is my contribution. When I was 10 (I am 74 now), I jumped without falling 6,521 times on a pogo stick, that is until I got bored and my mother told me if I went to 10,000 she would take the pogo stick away. It was a neighborhood record. —Dan Gillman
A: At your advanced age (mine, too), are you currently suffering any form of residual CTE?
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Q: Once after interviewing George Clooney at his house, he asked if I wanted to continue over dinner. I told him I couldn’t because I was escorting his aunt Rosemary to Bob Hope’s 90th birthday at Hope’s house that night. Clooney was a little pissed that she hadn’t asked him. Hope drooled and wasn’t really all there. Michael Feinstein played the grand. I flirted with Swoozie Kurtz.
A: I believe this but HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE INCLUDED YOUR NAME?
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Okay, that’s it for the day. Please don’t make me get out the yardstick: