Dread Game: Comparing Aesop and Time Magazine

This is a fable by Aesop.

A Lion once fell in love with a beautiful maiden and proposed marriage to her parents. The old people did not know what to say. They did not like to give their daughter to the Lion, yet they did not wish to enrage the King of Beasts. At last the father said:

"We feel highly honoured by your Majesty's proposal, but you see our daughter is a tender young thing, and we fear that in the vehemence of your affection you might possibly do her some injury. Might I venture to suggest that your Majesty should have your claws removed, and your teeth extracted, then we would gladly consider your proposal again."

The Lion was so much in love that he had his claws trimmed and his big teeth taken out. But when he came again to the parents of the young girl they simply laughed in his face, and bade him do his worst.

The modern, politically correct, version can be found in Time magazine, November 2012, P.50

“The Awesome Column” is by one Joel Stein who says a propos David Petraeus, a man who ran into some trouble by sleeping with his biographer, things like:

  1. “I would never ever sleep with my biographer. How can I be so sure? Because as a married man I would never, ever tell my life story to a woman I found even remotely attractive”

  2. “I spend much of my day avoiding sexual situations. I set my GPS to a male voice…”

He goes on in this vein for half a page and then:

“I don’t even fully trust the cold-state me. When I was on Dr Phil three years ago, I sat next to hot, 21-year-old identical-twin former nannies named Pam and Deja. When Dr. Phil asked me if I’d hire them, I told him I wouldn’t even let my friends hire them. “If I’m dieting, I’m not putting chocolate in the house,” I said.

So does his wife appreciate his over-the-top refusal of dread game? The second half of the paragraph tells us the answer to that one:

“When I got home, proud of my wisdom, my lovely wife Cassandra screamed, “I’m the diet?” I explained that she was the diet only because she was my wife and because, unlike Pam and Deja, there is only one of her. We did not have sex that night.