(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
                      Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
                           Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
                                    PO BOX 1031
                                Mesquite, TX 75150

                                  March 14, 1991

                                   MOTHEROF.ASC
       --------------------------------------------------------------------
                         Saddam's words hit the Motherlode
                                by Patrick Ercolano
                             The Baltimore Evening Sun

       While the leaders  of  the  anti-Iraq  coalition  discuss  a postwar
       agenda, one permanent fixture of  the  New  World  Order already has
       been set.  It is a metaphor.  The mother of all metaphors.

                     The metaphor is, "The mother of all...."

       Saddam Hussein - remember him? - first brought it to  our  attention
       before the Persian  Gulf  War  when  he  predicted that Iraq and the
       coalition would clash in "the mother of all battles."

       This was the  start  of  the singularly  gruseome  poetry  of  Iraqi
       threats made before and during the fighting.

       I recall driving  home  one night early in the war  and  hearing  an
       Iraqi statement on  the car radio, something about how the coalition
       forces would become food for jackals.   Or  maybe  it  was buzzards.
       Whatever, it had  a  lot  more  pizzaz  than  anyting  our  military
       briefers were saying.  You have to hand one thing to Hussein and his
       gang: They may not have been military whizbangs, but they could dish
       out the scary rhetoric with the best of them.

       Even U.S. Secretary  of  Defense  Dick  Cheney borrowed the metaphor
       when he sneeringly called the fall-back  of Iraqi forces "the mother
       of all retreats."

       Then there was  the  recent  news  report of a huge  fireball  being
       sighted over a   northeastern   U.S.  and  labeled  by  a  pilot  in
       Pennsylvania "the mother of all meteors."   And  a  returning Desert
       Strom soldier reportedly yelled, "The mother of all parties is about
       to begin."

       Well, why not?  Once you find a good, meaty metaphor, you can't help
       but sink your  teeth  into  it.   For  instance, when  a  torrential
       downpour comes this  summer,  we  can  call  it  "the  mother of all
       rainstorms."

       Or if Jim Palmer had made the Orioles'  starting  rotation, we could
       have  talked about "the mother of all comebacks."

       Or when some  clergyman wins the Priest of the Year  Award,  we  can
       hail him as "the mother of all Fathers."

       The possibilities are  limitless.   Make  up  your  own  "mother-of-
       all..." phrases.  Swap them and trade 'em with your friends.

       It's the mother of all fun...