Word: aesop
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...have the point of Aesop's mice-belling-the-cat fable [Nov. 29] exactly backwards, I think. If the fable really offered "the best put-down of the narrow-gauge expert," as you suggest, the mice would have to be narrow-gauge experts at something. But what? Certainly not cats, bells, belling nor, on the evidence, any other form of mouse defense Far from being "assembled experts," the young mice are obviously ill-informed brainstorm-ers-generalists of the most shallow kind-glibly tossing out solutions to a problem they don't begin to understand. The old grey...
...Aesop offers perhaps the best comment-and the best put-down of the narrow-gauge expert. Once, he relates, a group of mice held a council to determine what they should do about a voracious cat. Finally one young mouse came up with a proposal to put a bell around the cat's neck, providing the mice with an early warning system. But with their tunnel vision, none of the assembled specialists thought to ask the most crucial question until a grey old mouse-a generalist, no doubt-rose. Who, he asked quietly, would put the bell around...
...Lyndon Johnson thumbed through his Father's Day gift from Daughter Lynda Bird last week-F.D.R.'s old copy of Aesop's Fables-he might have come upon the tale about the dying lion. As the King of Beasts declined in strength, the story goes, the lesser animals trooped up to his cave, no longer subservient. The boar attacked him with his tusks; the bull gored him; even the ass, feeling quite safe, kicked up his heels and brayed. "Ah," sighed the failing King, "thus dies majesty." In the waning months of the Johnson Administration, TIME...
...moment. But as soon as the tense times passed, he would fade again. Perhaps he can move back to center stage with travel and a series of talks on America's future. But even then, the old luster would be missing. He is a lame duck-or as Aesop would have it, a declining lion-and that condition is as inescapable...
...Aesop's fable the tortoise plodded along the course while the hare slept at the starting line thinking he could win with a late dash. Your cover [March 8] has mismounted your politicians...