Einstein's Tongue

He is a brand. He could stick anything out and it would sell. He chose his tongue. As tongues go, it is decent enough. Not too long, not too short, not dry, not slobbering. I wish the picture were in colour so I could ‘read’ it more clearly. The shade of the tongue tells you a lot. I wish I could see taste buds. Or little lines running across and meeting each other.

This tongue is political, though. Albert Einstein was not caught in a candid moment; he showed his tongue to photographers and later wrote that his gesture was aimed at all of humanity.

The tongue jutting out can be an apologetic gesture in some cultures or a cocking a snook in many. It is frisky and it aims at reducing others to blubbering idiots by playing a blubbering idiot.

That is why I like Einstein. It has nothing to do with his E=Eminem square or whatever. But why aim it at humanity? Humanity is about humanism. Humanism isn’t about the Red Scare or the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s, which he said was the reason he did what he did.

Old Albert, I think, was a smart fellow. He probably dropped a consonant while speaking or maybe found a button missing from a part of his clothing and in that ‘oops’ moment his tongue just pushed against his grimacing lips and hung there, desolate and wet. He had to do something about it, so he went into those explanations.

It really does not matter. Someone paid $74,324 to get a signed picture of him.


"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Einstein