Not just a good laugh, some gaffes are etched in history

History is laced with faux pas that have led to hilarious situations and some far-reaching consequences

I always thought that the biggest faux pas in our era was committed by The New York Times when, in 2011, it decided to send an email to people who had cancelled their subscriptions. The aim was to ask them to reconsider their decision and the deal was sweetened with an offer. Instead of it going to the 300 odd folks it was meant for, the mail was mistakenly dispatched to eight million subscribers paying the old rate.
The Oscar mess up over best picture comes pretty close to that. Through history the paper trail is a dangerous track to run on, if you are not careful. As Murphy so aptly put it in his law, if things can go wrong, they will. And speeches, documents, cue cards can conspire with the fates to cause havoc.
Legend has it that such gaffes can also change the course of history. Take the absurdly wonderful case of a little known East German politician Gunter Schabowski who was addressing a press conference on largely inconsequential relaxations in travel rules for East Germans. Since he hadn't had time to read the speech written for him and as he droned on about the easing of travel bans along the wall, the bored journalists assumed or bled through the prism of a bad speech that he meant the gates were being opened and asked him when this would happen.
Since Gunter rifled through the pages but couldn't locate the answer he said: "Now, today, immediately."
The hubbub of excitement that followed sparked a huge crowd on both sides of the wall. Gunter literally brought the wall down without realising it.
Not reading a speech and becoming familiar with it before delivering it reached a high spike when a former Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna went up to the UN and addressed it with the wrong speech having wrongly been handed to him. It was supposedly scheduled to be delivered by the Portuguese Minister. The irony was it took some time into the wordage before he figured out this was going nowhere.so much for taking the UN seriously.
It is not always the paper chase that confuses things. The need to break silence or the ice, so to say, can lead to hilarious situations. An old Indian army story never really proven but passed on over mess talk indicates that when General (later Field Marshal) Cariappa addressed the troops on Independence Day in 1947, he asked someone how you said 'free' in Hindi as he was going up to the podium. He was told the word is 'mufth' which means free as in no cost, not liberty. It is believed he said, "Today we are all mufth, you are mufth, I am mufth."
The Duke of Edinburgh, self-confessedly suffering from foot in mouth disease once tried to chat up Australian aborigines holding spears in a traditional welcome by politely asking if they still flung them at each other. In fruity Aussie tones he was told by a leading businessman Aborogine dressed traditionally for the occasion the practice had died out long ago.
Most of these incidents occur out of lack of preparation, poor communication between the boss and his team and, now and then, just one of those things. Especially when Murphy has a super day and kicks in with all his might.
You may recall the great Bay of Pigs stand off when JFK took on the Russian fleet making for Cuba. In those days, it was decided to carry out a covert op using 1,500 Cuban mercenaries who would get air support from US warplanes. The plan was set for April 1961 and it was hoped Havana would fall. The mercenaries arrived on time but the air support was missing because no one had thought to synch their watches to the one-hour time difference between Nicaragua and Cuba. Result: the mercenaries were routed by Fidel's troops and those who survived were imprisoned. Beat that for sheer snafu. A whole military operation and they got the timing wrong.
Hot mikes can directly lead to eggs on the face. President Obama was 'hot' speaking to Russian President Medevedev when he spoke of his better flexibility and options after the elections, not realising the mike was on. "Let me get re-elected first," he said, "Then I'll have a better chance of making something happen."
"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it's important for him to give me space."
George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Britney Spears, Bill Clinton, all have been caught off guard. Former British PM David Cameron was 'heard' telling the Queen how corrupt certain countries were, then naming them. Former French President Jacques Chirac commenting on English food: "After Finland, it is the country with the worst food," he said, adding: "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad."
All too often total power and the aura around that individual contribute to the tension and the ultimate gaffe because no one has the courage tell the boss he is wrong.
Lost in translation is often intrinsically dangerous. When Mao Tse Tung was unwell in his later years he would say, "I am going to receive an invitation from God," meaning his time had come. He said it to President Ford, who answered by saying, "Oh, how nice, I hope you get your invitation soon."
Interpreters have a hazardous job and have often thought on their feet to save the situation. James Robbins of the BBC relates this story to illustrate how interpreters often soften the sledgehammer. "Once, the Foreign Office plagued 10 Downing Street for Thatcher to see the visiting president of the former French Congo - a well known Marxist and Communist. The President arrived and was shown up to her drawing room and sat down opposite her, and she leant across, fixed him with a baleful glare and said, 'I hate Communists'.
"The poor French interpreter, rather shattered by this not exactly courteous introduction, rendered it something like 'Prime Minister Thatcher says that she has never been wholly supportive of the ideas of Karl Marx'."
It is not only VIPs who mess things up. Common people do it, too. The recycled gift with someone else's card, the monogrammed gift you overlooked now given to someone else and they know, the pretence of a thoughtful gift that is anything but. As for Uncle Oscar, will he ever be the same again?
Bikram Vohra is a former editor of Khaleej Times