OPINION:
Moving rapidly along from the sublime to the ridiculous, Canadian Member of Parliament Ya’ara Saks said that when truckers in the recent demonstration signaled one another with a brief “honk honk” of their horns, it actually meant “heil Hitler” (“Canadian lawmaker says ’honk honk’ is code for ’heil Hitler,’” Web, Feb. 22).
Sound absurd? Yet this alerts us to seemingly innocent dangers lurking all around us. For example, you probably never considered how a “shave and a haircut” was a clarion call for the Bund. And for years, reruns of “Green Acres” have been delivering subversive subliminal messages to clueless late-night viewers.
There’s more. The letter H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. The number 88 must thus be a cryptic reference to “heil Hitler,” no? What, then, to make of Oldsmobile having had several car models with “88” in their names? And what message does your piano, with 88 keys, convey?
Remember, a friendly “honk honk” may be something far more sinister. Think of that the next time you hear a Canada goose.
ROGER JOHNSON
Kensington, Maryland
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