Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuxa!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!mcnc!ncsu!mauney From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP Newsgroups: net.jokes.d Subject: JFK == jelly doughnut Message-ID: <2238@ncsu.UUCP> Date: Fri, 15-Jul-83 12:01:58 EDT Article-I.D.: ncsu.2238 Posted: Fri Jul 15 12:01:58 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jul-83 01:17:49 EDT Lines: 22 The preferred phrasing of "I am a citizen of Berlin" in German is "Ich bin Berliner." That's the idiom. (There was a good segment in the educational show "Guten Tag" in which the young protagonist takes a bus tour, and every time he sees a sign falling down, he whips out his shiny new screwdriver and fixes it, announcing to onlookers: "Ich bin Spezialist.") Since JFK missed the idiom, it is conceivable that the first reaction of a native speaker was that he was not declaring membership in a class, but that he was a single object, and that Berliner was short for Berliner Pfannkuchen, or jelly doughnut. If so, however, I'd bet that 99 and 44/100 percent of the audience quickly realized that he was not making an obscure metaphoric reference (sugar-coated on the outside, sticky and yucky on the inside) but that he had simply chosen an awkward phrasing. Certainly the reaction was more positive than might be expected if he had announced he had jam for brains. There is a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was traumatized as a child by a pedantic German teacher. The fact that Oswald would have been ridiculed for uttering the same sentence that made JFK popular is what drove him to assassination. Jack Ruby, on the other hand, was working for the German government, to prevent diplomatic embarrassment.