Middle-school sex puns go highbrow

[Ben Zimmer]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 9:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> And just a few minutes ago, on CNN, Anderson Cooper was running a clip of
> Wolf Blitzer,  the Cronkite of the twenty-first century, looking straight
> at the camera and saying (why, I'll never fully understand):
>
> "The pussy willows  blowing on the shore of Lake Titicaca are not as
> lovely as Uranus."
>
> (Needless to say, he used the old-fashioned pronunciation of "Uranus.")

Blitzer (filling in on "Anderson Cooper 360") was mocking Cooper's
propensity to crack up over suggestive lines on the teleprompter. See
the transcript:

---
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1209/20/acd.01.html
BLITZER: All right, so this is where I can easily surpass Anderson
Cooper. Go ahead, put whatever they want in a teleprompter and I will
say it without laughing, without flinching, maybe even without even
blinking. Here we go. All right, here we go. The pussy willows blowing
in the wind on the shores of the Lake Titekaka are almost as magical
as Uranus. See Anderson Cooper could never have gotten through those
words.
---

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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