Men with feet of clay

I WONDER who's Kissinger now? — is not putting the Castle bar Song contest on notice of my entry for next year, but a more or less genuine question.
Once upon a time, we knew where we were with this globestriding American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The world was in awe at his jet-propelled missions to flashpoints and at his secret whispers that seemed constantly to be calling back people from thoughts or war to peace. Thirty-three cheers for Mr Kiss inger. '
Now he has written a book called White House Years, which has got to make fascinating reading even if he had written it sideways in broken English. But something else seems to be happening. He walks out on David Frost or David Frost walks out on him.
The mighty American television company NBC seemed to be ready to give him the privileges of a President when it came to censoring an interview. Time magazine, which serialised the book, preceded extract one with a craw-thumping editorial that climaxed with a coy "Guess-whohelped-us" in refining and condensing the excerpts ... an authoritative source who proved to be a fast, able and understanding editorial aide: Henry Kissinger himself! Yuck.
What's going on? Do they expect him to be the next President? And why am I suddenly feeling so biased towards a man I have admired for so long?
I think, maybe, it goes back to Ambassador Daniel Moynihan's recent autobiographical disclosures regarding Mr Kissinger's monumental ego. The final pin-puncturing disillusionment came when he disclosed that, before disembarking from a plane with ex-President Nixon, protocol or no protocol, Kissinger would sidestep, shuffle or elbow to make certain he came out of that plane second and not third.
Why am I always disillusioned when my great men turn out to have feet of clay after all? It is as if someone told me Archbishop Ryan, out of sight of the TV cameras, tripped Cardinal O'Fiach, so that he, and not his eminence, would be the second smiling face out of the Popemobile or the sleeping Jumbo Jet.
Oh. and by the way, if anyone writes and tells me that Frost has a bigger ego than Henry Kissinger, I am not going to argue. For that matter. I suspect Frost isn't either. Egomania? Everyone suffers from it except me.
Papal quiz
KING ol American chat shows, Johnny Carson, had a big anniversary programme the night His Holiness arrived in the United States. Carson opened the show with a snappy quiz: "What have the Pope and President Carter got in common'?" The quick as a flash answer was: "They'll both be succeeded by Catholics."
On the programme itself tributes to the comedian turned chat man and millionnaire flashed in from all over the United States. It reminded me of his predecessor Jack Paar's farewell many years ago. Everybody who was anbody in show business sent him a greet The next morning television critic Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune described the whole sumptuous affair as "the greatest electronic wake in history".
Post script
English readers who feel they have no shoes when it comes to postal services should. in the words of the old proverb, feel less sorry for themselves when they behold their Irish brethren, who have no feet in these matters.
Nevertheless, it was England that provided the story of a school catering manager who lost her claim for unfair dismissal, The tribunal found — and I add not a jot — that she was dismissed because "she was intolerant. quarrelsome and quite unapproachable • , She now works for the Post Office",