Essay: Saddam Made Me Do It

(2 of 2)

Certain linkage is now predictable. Whichever direction the stock market goes and whether it gets there in light, heavy or moderate trading, it does so because of the situation in the Middle East. And the weatherman can hardly get to the local forecast, he's so busy reporting the barometric pressure in Dhahran. But there is still some admirable originality at work: On the day before he was to make a $2.5 million payment to promoters of the George Foreman-Evander Holyfield heavyweight championship, Donald Trump artfully invoked a boilerplate "war clause" in his contract to host the event at one of his Atlantic City casinos. The ploy is unlikely to succeed unless Saddam bombs the boardwalk. Similarly, Sugar Ray Leonard dragged the troops in Saudi Arabia into an interview last Tuesday about why only 4,000 of the 18,000 tickets to last Saturday's championship bout at Madison Square Garden had been sold. He neglected to mention his age (34), string of phony retirements and the obscurity of his opponent, who wears an earring.

If an over-the-hill fighter can make hay out of the war, imagine what the archetypal villains of '80s excess could have done had hostilities broken out a few years earlier. Leona Helmsley and Michael Milken might have escaped being sentenced to hard time in the Big House. Where was the Persian Gulf when the Keating Five needed it, when Laura Palmer was killed, when the Boston Red Sox lost the American League play-offs in four straight games?

Only the oil companies are at pains to avoid linkage. Since Saddam invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the industry has had a huge surge in earnings. Chevron, which made 2 1/2 times as much in last year's fourth quarter as in 1989's, attributed the uptick to an "aberration."

If America is lucky it won't have the war to hide behind much longer. In the meantime, certain rules of engagement in the blame game are being codified. As long as there are men and women serving in the gulf, no one in government, the military, CNN or the take-out pizza business has to apologize for being late, leaving early or canceling out altogether on any nonwork-related event, and that includes cocktail-party fund raisers, rehearsal dinners and dental surgery. As for print journalists, well, a Scud ate the last three lines of this story.