Public Humiliation

Do you ever just wish you could crawl under a rug? I do some times. Tonight I was at a dinner attended by some of tthe nation's leading economists, including Edmund Phelps, the most recent winner of the Nobel prize in economics. These were all people I respect and admire for their work. Toward the end of the evening, I wanted to make a point about how the British seem to embrace and value the notion of entrepreneurship, at least in their public discourse, more than we do here in the U.S. So I piped up and, in front of the whole group, noted that the new prime minister of the U.K., Gordon Brown, won election in part because of his public support of entrepreneurship. Except that when the words came out of my mouth I said, for reasons unbeknownst to me, that the new prime minister was John Major. Oops. I could rationalize and blame this on jet lag. The conference was in LA and I had just flown in from New York. But I was seriously embarrassed. I think the only thing you can do in these situations is to shrug and try to exercise grace and humility. But it's no fun saying something foolish in a room of smart people.