There was a young man in
my Harvard College class ['54] who really got on everyone's nerves. His name was David Shapiro. He was absolutely brilliant, and picture book
handsome. But what really got under our
skins was the fact that he was really, really a nice guy. It didn't seem fair, somehow. Sort of like Angelina Jolie, who in addition
to being the most gorgeous woman in the world is also a committed activist for
humanitarian causes. I mean, why couldn't
she just marry famous men, like Marilyn Monroe?
The French have a lovely
phrase for this phenomenon. They call it
an embarras de richesses. That must be the way the Obama campaign feels
this morning. The video of Mitt Romney's
despicable comments to a closed door meeting of rich donors, coming on top of
his ill-considered comments about the violence in Libya and Egypt, which in
turn followed Clint Eastwood's world-class comedy routine at the Republican
Convention, must leave the Obama campaign ad planners at a loss to know which disaster
to feature in their thirty second spots.
Truly, an embarras de richesses.
Shapiro, by the way,
after marrying a lovely woman whom I dated briefly, went on to become a
distinguished Harvard Law professor, a leading expert on Civil Procedure who
has, on occasion, generously offered support and encouragement to my son,
Tobias, whose field is also Civil Procedure.
For that, I can forgive him anything.
The translation, "embarrassment of riches", is surely an English phrase too, no?
ReplyDeleteP.S. You will see that I have learned how to attach my name to my comments. I am too young to be proud of this, but yet.
It is just my pathetic attempt to appropriate to myslf a patina of sophistication that I do not genuinely possess.
ReplyDeleteYou must be American.
ReplyDeleteI feel like that might be mean, even though it was meant in jest. I'll make up for it by mentioning that I read your blog even when you worry that no-one is reading it, and that I may not be alone in this because I use a subscription manager thing (Google Reader, you know, one of those RSS feed things) to do so, and that these RSS whatsits are actually common and I'm sure plenty others do the same thing; and that I wouldn't be surprised if your blog engine doesn't have the sophistication to realise that your blog's being read via RSS feeds as well as directly; in which case your readership will be higher than it appears.
ReplyDeleteFolks have mentioned these RSS feed things, but so far as I can make out, Google does not, or cannot, record them. [It must be "does not," since I suspect they know every breath that anyone anywhere takes.] Anyway, I am delighted that you read the blog.
ReplyDeleteThis is beside your point of course, but maybe it will dampen your crush on Ms. Jolie. It seems she's an Ayn Rand fan:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/07/im-rand
Now that was just downright mean, Kent. [ :) ] I am an old man, with few enough pleasures left. Let me keep my secret fantasies of Ms. Jolie. Susan Sarandon is still a progressive, right? She is more my age bracket anyway. I just saw her in ARBITRAGE and she was great.
ReplyDelete