Word: watt
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...late as the end of September, White House aides were predicting that Watt would ride out the storm, then quietly resign in early 1984. Now they doubt he will last the month. Reagan is exceedingly reluctant to fire Watt under pressure. The President remarked last week that the Secretary had "done a fine job" and did not deserve to be ousted for "a stupid remark." White House Spokesman Larry Speakes said that Reagan would not feel bound by a Senate vote on whether Watt should go, however it might come...
...Watt said nothing, but Reagan's aides believe he will resign rather than face Senate condemnation, and they would like to delay the vote in order to permit additional time for a more graceful exit. Watt is said to have given his top aides at Interior the green light to look for new jobs. Indeed, presidential aides are already speculating about a new job for Watt on Reagan's re-election committee...
...seriously, folks: What about James Watt? Is it simply a matter of a fellow with poor comic delivery? That most recent remark, the one about the new coal-leasing review commission consisting of "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple." It nearly got Watt ousted a few weeks ago. It might yet. Why? Surely the substance of his remark is not taboo. In the right hands, with the right tone, a joke about the overexacting demands of affirmative action could result in genuine, harmless hilarity. But not with Watt. When he tells a joke, the prisoners start...
...part this is due to Watt's choice of language-the word cripple in this instance, which has the sound of a flat slap in the face. Yet a few days after Watt's remark, in a bizarre protest demonstration in his defense, a man on crutches supported the usage, citing other contexts where "cripple" is benign. True enough. Former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz forced himself out of the Ford Administration by telling a cruel and tasteless joke about "coloreds"; yet Dick Gregory could title his autobiography Nigger, and Flip Wilson won love and fortune by creating...
Something more seems to lie behind Watt's spectacular comic failures, however. Something connected to Watt as a character and to the audience (i.e., the citizenry) he haplessly addresses. His employer, after all, addresses the same audience quite successfully, except for the time he decided to endear himself to a group of professional women: "If it weren't for women, us men would be walking around in skin suits carrying clubs." Usually he does better. Unlike Watt, the President generally prefers humor to comedy, humor being the warmer and more companionable exercise. Comedy cuts off human feeling, humor...