Latin

The unthinkable has happened.  Olli Rehn, of the European Union has managed to steal limelight from Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and appears today on the first page of the Business Day section in the NYT. Big centered photo, above the fold.

I have to wonder if it had anything to do with the quote that is featured as part of the caption.  Mr. Rehn is pictured in front of a projected graph depicting either something financially Europeon, or the fluctuating Las Vegas line on Saturday's Penn State-Nebraska football game.

Mr. Rehn inserts a Latin phrase, 'sine qua non" to describe what is needed for restoring confidence in the Italian economy.  Gracie Allen once quite famously ran for president against FDR on the Surprise Party ticket. Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi is just running on Party.

I just missed Latin. My friend George, who lived upstairs and was just a little bit older (think Wally and Beaver) had to take Latin in Catholic school. Not that I was destined for Catholic school, but I always considered myself lucky that declining verbs was not going to ever be something I would be concerned with.

Of course in those days, Catholic masses were said in Latin, just like Greek masses were said in Greek.  Give me Greek any day. It wasn't all Greek to me.

No one other than Bill Buckley and Catholic priests ever really spoke Latin, but people were always inserting phrases like Mr. Rehn's into their conversation. You could hear the italics in their voices. 'Quid pro quo' was another.

I always got a kick out of Robert Stack when he and the other guys in bad suits on "The Untoucables" tried to figure out the 'M.O.' When I learned it stood for 'modus operendi' I felt probably as good as my friend George when he got a passing grade on a Friday Latin test.

Tempus fugit, caveat emptor, e pluribus unun, no problemo. But I do confess, I did have to look up 'sine qua non.'  In a BIG dictionary I found it means: 'without which not.' So, what Mr. Behn was saying is that restoring confidence in the Italian economy won't occur without 'structual changes' in the European Union. 

Mr. Berlusconi's hold on the top political office in Italy might well be as tenuous as it is because he might have been out at the Party and not taking Latin.

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