Well Thank Goodness It Wasn't a Mammoth

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 21, 1998 | by John Elvin

With all the delicate and ticklish situations causing the world body so much torment, now the United Nations has to deal with a very large problem involving anatomical correctness. The problem reportedly surfaced at U.N. headquarters in New York recently when various dignitaries and celebrities gathered for the unveiling of a 7,000-pound bronze statue of a bull elephant, a gift from Kenya, Namibia and Nepal.

The cause of the disturbance was that rather than being the product of airbrush-armed Disney animation artists, who have shaped so many modern ideas about nature, the big fella came right out of the wild -- complete not only with trunk and tail, but also other major appendages. The, situation was described in a news report as one of "panic" as officials taking their first peek at the sculpture wondered if it might "upset children visiting the United Nations."

Too bad, isn't it, that some free-thinking pollster such as Dick Morris wasn't on hand to canvas the crowd and come up with consensus solution. Those assembled included some very creative sorts, such as Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Isaac Hayes, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Lama Gangchen of the Lama Gangchen World Peace Foundation, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations A. Peter Burleigh, Australian Arts Minister Elizabeth Gehrer and lots of others. Suggestions offered, though tended toward the pedestrian and trendy, perhaps influenced by the radical surgical techniques of Lorena Bobbitt.