Lewis Carroll, a master at teasing out the ridiculous in language, demonstrated the furthest extent of ambiguity in a poem the White Rabbit reads as evidence in the King's court in Alice in Wonderland. Following are three verses of this six verse poem:

He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.

Here Carroll has turned ambiguity into a nonsense art form, showing how pronouns can at times be quite incomprehensible. There has been little in the 140 years since he wrote this that has compared with Carroll's ingenuity. Until yesterday that is.

One of the special guests on "Larry King Live" yesterday was the former US President, William Ambiguity Clinton who, despite his amorous frolicking in the White House rose bushes, staining the special shirt Hillary had bought him for his last birthday, and then lying about it, simultaneously lent a certain aura and down-to-the-pants-earthness to the elevated office of World Bully. He is also a master of ambiguity. Who can forget his philosophical pondering on when a lie is actually a lie and when a lie is not really a lie?

At one point in the interview, Larry King asked Citizen Bill how he thought Little Bushy was handling Osama bin-Laden to which Blushing Bill, recalling silently how he handled certain other bushes, replied: "I support the President. The guy's smart. He has a lot of money and a lot of fanatic supporters around the world and he needs to be eradicated."

Who?

5 September 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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