Saturday, May 24, 2003
Vice President Dick Cheney
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500
My Dear Mr. Vice President:
Will you kindly do us all an enormous service and instruct that young man under your tutelage to pronounce the word “nuclear” correctly? The last president to say “nu-cu-lar” was that dreadful Mr. Eisenhower, and at least he had an excuse. Nuclear was a relatively modern concept in those days, and perhaps he hadn’t caught up yet. But your young pupil has no such excuse; the only plausible explanation I can perceive is that his family is so steeped in oil that he has not had much exposure to other forms of energy.
It’s as though your prize student were to proclaim, “I don’t believe in Darwin’s Theory of Revolution.” Would we take him seriously then? For that matter, one must concede that his views stretch credulity even if he were to say “evolution.” After all, he may dispute that we humans share 99.4% of our DNA with chimpanzees (“sound science” and all that rubbish), but he must observe that chimps mirror the violent, territorial, warlike behavior of their human counterparts.
Which returns me to my original thesis: Your protege has a duty to pronounce “nuclear” correctly. I know you have been coaching him because I heard him accomplish this on one occasion. You must keep after him! He is bullying Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Lord knows whom else with these frightful weapons; and he is giving us all a good scare by waving bombs around and cavalierly refusing to call them by their proper name.
Most Sincerely Yours,
Virginia T. Kornpepper
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