I Don't Know Peanuts

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By Andrew Rice

June 27, 2007 | 4:52 p.m

This morning, in the course of writing the morning read, I strugged to summon up a pithy way to describe Gordon Brown's ascension to the office of Prime Minister. Brown, as Tony Blair's number 2, has waited for this moment for so long, in such transparent suffering, that the whole saga has taken on the qualities of a long-running television comedy, with the dour chancellor playing the Endora/Major Burns/Rosco P. Coltrane role. Anyway, what I came up with was:

"The meek inherit the earth. Linus bags Sally. Gordon Brown is finally Prime Minister."

That caused one very prominent Politicker reader to fire off the following email:

I object to your juxtaposition of the holy Beatitude "the meek shall inherit the earth" with the mundane "Linus bags Sally."

My objection stems from the fact that Sally called Linus her "Sweet Babooo." She luuuuuuuuuuved him. Her affections were, shall we say, very much Linus' for the taking. Had he "bag(ged)" her, it would the abstemious partaking of what had been repeatedly offered, not the meek inheriting the earth.

The truth is, I had my Peanuts mixed up. I thought it was Linus who was hot for Sally. I stand corrected, dear readers.