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Show 'Lorraine Nelson A Biography.. " 117 expediency pertaining to "real" men, limits I might employ to demonstrate my "raz/-ness" and "wa«-ness." The one thing I no longer wondered after was the light gold plume which appeared on the crotch of Mr. Benmen's Wednesday trousers, the pale yellow bloom and oversweet badge of his manhood. \gSL^ Yogi Berra once advised, "when you come to a fork in the road, take it." Berra has been for many years the sage bumbler of our common tongue. His quips are legend, now compiled into at least two different volumes. A few of his truisms (for example, "It ain't over till it's over") have found their way into our lexicon, managing to outstrip the irony of even Berra's linguistic tomfoolery. What is so fascinating about these quotables is their ability to feign reason all the while flouting Language's logic. They are beautifully crippled imposters that demonstrate the fragility of this tongue, the way it often hitches and snags in our attempts to shape it. Berra's popularity is at least semi-dependent on his uncommon charm and his winning smile. But equally important is his station; it's endearing when a former ball player and fifteen-time all star declares, "it's dejavu allover again," but quite another thing when our chief executive is the bungler. When President Bush announces that he "recognizes the fallacy of humans" or lectures us with the irrefutable, "if you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything," we cringe before the crudity of his logic. Rhetorical cogency seems to fly below his radar; he can't-for all his too-obvious effort-get a fix on it. Most distressing is the picture he paints of us, his constituency. For the rest of the world, this backwater Texas rube is the envoi of our collective character. He is our cross to bear-our executive Yogi. In the winter of 2001 Takako Konishi, a twenty-nine year old office clerk entranced by the darkly comic film, Fargo, booked a flight bound from Tokyo to Minneapolis. She then boarded a bus for North Dakota, and-armed only with her barely serviceable English and a crudely drawn |