Our friend Gary Shteyngart, author and hamburger aficionado, is having a ball familiarizing himself with his exotic new surroundings, the Upper East Side of New York City. As you can see from this recent Facebook post, his new acquaintances are provoking new generations of bad jokes told with good humor.
It got us to thinking about that fascinating phrase “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - you’ve got a duck.” This tantalizing piece of inductive reasoning has gotten us into serious trouble more than once.
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| Dan Rather doing a duck thing, we think. |
Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather was fond of the phrase and used it in a slander suit, testifying that ''if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you've got a duck.'' He was accusing a doctor of fraud. We cannot find the transcript, but we've heard that the response of the other side was, "So if he looks like a doctor, walks like a doctor and talks like a doctor - he's actually a doctor!"
In 1952, Senator Joseph McCarthy used the phrase in a speech instructing Americans how to spot the dreaded Communists:
If it “looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then we can safely assume that it is a duck.”
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| McCarthy swam like a demagogue. |
It's another case where the laws of grammar are mistaken for the laws of the universe. In the spirit of our ongoing series "You Can't Believe Your Lying Eyes," here's scientific proof that the differences in how beings walk are in fact extremely subtle. Click on the link for an interactive animation that illustrates.
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[Images via Google.]
This is subtle?
ReplyDeleteWell, the way I saw it, it all depends on the central focus point of the entire movement. If it rotates around the tailbone, it walks like a man. If its center of gravity is a bit higher, a woman. Would like to see the animation for samba.
ReplyDeleteDan's tongue is not subtle, that's for sure.
ReplyDelete