May 17, 2006
Ears
Canon Quirk phoned the other day. I could hardly hear him. I wondered if it was his flaky wireless service, but then I remembered that ever since he’d heard about Uncle Sugar’s current and pervasive eavesdropping campaign, he’s talked in a whisper, whether on or off the phone.
He sounded like Marlon Brando doing Don Vito Corleone. I told him I couldn’t hear him very well. He said that was all right, that the way things are now, he wasn’t even sure he could trust me, his long time student and friend, to hear what he was talking about. Then he added, but needn’t have, that he never was sure whether or not I ever listened to him anyway. It was clear, though, that he wanted to know what I thought about this latest governmental patronizing. I didn’t know what to say.
I remembered back during the Great Middle War (aka WW II) all the posters in public places, especially in bars, that showed Hitler with his hand cupped behind his disproportionately enormous ear, listening. And then there were those others reminding us that loose lips sink ships. But these were more or less always in patriotic red, white, and blue and designed to warn us against our enemies listening in on us, not against our listening in on them. I never saw a poster showing Uncle Sam leaning toward you with a huge, deformed ear as if he were listening in on us of all people. But then, we hardly ever thought of him as maybe being our enemy, a little dotty, perhaps, maybe sometimes nosey, but always as our friend.
On second thought, maybe it’s different now. Maybe Quirk has a point.