Brad DeLong, a member of the Culture mailing list and professor of economics at UC Berkeley, is much famed for being an advisor to President Clinton. Everyone was suitably impressed by this, until Brad eventually admitted that he’d only said “eight words to the guy in my entire life.”
We couldn’t take a challenge like that lying down, for a challenge was what it was!; what, we wondered, were those eight words that he’d said to President Clinton? A flurry of suggestions were made:
“Mr. President, I advise you to take hummer.”
“Bill, Woolite will get that stain right out.”
“Hey, did you have sex with that woman?”
“You call that a cigar? A cigarrillo maybe.”
“Where do you keep the ‘fresh’ cigars, sir?”
“How do you run and not lose weight?”
and of course,
“Bill, which eight words did Brad DeLong say?”