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`A hot metaphor emerges
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`By William Satire
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`Jan. 6, 2008
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`LANGUAGE
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`'The most difficult aspect of developing a weapons program," said President George W.
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`Bush, trying to counter the CIA's NIE—jerk relaxation response to Iran's nuclear
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`ambitions, "or as some would say, the long pole in the tent, is enriching uranium."
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`Who are the "some" who would so say?
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`One of the long pole-vaulters is the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, who said
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`the day before, "Weapons-grade uranium is the long pole in the tent for a nuclear
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`weapon."
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`Their point was that the CIA's "high confidence" in its intelligence that Iran had
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`stopped its secret weapons development soon after the roof fell in on Saddam Hussein
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`was strictly short-pole stuff: that Tehran's continued enrichment of uranium,
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`ostensibly for peaceful civilian use, could - when enough was churned out by its
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`thousands of centrifuges in a few years - easily provide the material for military use in
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`a matter of months.
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`As Bush picked up on Hadley's trope, Vice President Dick Cheney swung the same old
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`pole with two different senses. The first was the Hadley-Bush meaning, directed at
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`Iran's way of making the fissionable material that can be used for either peaceful
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`energy or warlike bombs. The second was applied by Cheney as a metaphor to define
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`America's primary enemy, a more immediate threat than Iran: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq has
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`been sort of the long pole in the tent, if you will, in terms of the opposition we face."
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`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
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`Exhibit 1026 - Page 1 of 3
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`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 1 of 3
`
`

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`The long tent pole is an aviation term, with engineering origins. Fred Shapiro, editor of
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`"The Yale Book of Quotations," finds a use of the phrase in a 1970 technical review by
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`the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. "The phrase is not in quotation marks,
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`suggesting it had already become a term that would be known to their readers," says
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`Shapiro, adding that the meaning seems to be "the thing that must be dealt with first or
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`most crucially for a larger project to be successful."
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`"In the early 1900s," the lexicographer Barbara Ann Kipfer informs me, "the striptease
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`dance was added to burlesque shows to entice men to return. Traveling tent shows had
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`striptease acts. The smaller tent dancers started to dance around the central pole in
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`the tent. These tents became known as the dance-pole tents."
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`But the aviators outstripped the strippers.
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`Joan Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), finds a
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`usage in a 1947 report of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and reports the
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`phrase has two senses: One, "the most important aspect of whatever problem is being
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`addressed (the main pole in the center of the tent)" and a more recent sense, "the most
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`intractable part of a given problem, where a person who seems to be holding this up is
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`called the long pole in the tent."
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`In January 1979, Aviation Week reported that an Air Force source noted "propulsion
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`would be the 'long pole in the tent' if U.S.A.F. decides to develop an advanced cruise
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`missile for earlier than the mid-19905." The current editor of that magazine, Tony
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`Velocci, informs me that "it's the thing among a list of tasks for a project that will take
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`the longest to do, or alternatively, the thing that will 'hold everything up.’ " In 1987,
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`when a youthful Jim Lehrer inquired about a future shuttle flight during an interview
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`on the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," James Fletcher of NASA replied: "The solid-
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`rocket-motor test is what we call the long pole in the tent. That is the thing that is
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`determining the first launch."
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`Meanwhile, the trope was picked up in the army and used mainly in its sense of "core
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`of the problem"; in 1990, General Norman Schwarzkopf, trained in engineering and
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`briefing his Desert Storm commanders, said, "Logistics is the long pole in the tent." But
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`it can also specify timing: in May 2007, General David Petraeus, chief of US. forces in
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`Iraq, told The Washington Post's David Ignatius: "How long does reconciliation take?
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`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 2 of 3
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 2 of 3
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`

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`That's the long pole in the tent."
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`It's a phrase with two meanings, overlapping but still distinct. I define one of its
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`meanings as "the central determinant, the pole bearing the most weight of the tent
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`structure." The second meaning, rapidly becoming predominant because of its use
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`recently by the two highest elected officials in the land, is "the source of delay, in the
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`sense of 'holding everything else up.’ "
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`Get the delicious duality?
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`The polemical pole not only holds up the tent (in space), it holds up the tent-making (in
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`time). Personally, I go for the temporal metaphoric sense, but you can teach it, if you
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`will, either way.
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`safireonlanguage@nytimes.com
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`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 3 of 3
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 3 of 3
`
`