"Proxy Interview"

       The death of General Norman Schwarzkopf yesterday, he of Gulf War fame, reminds me the name Schwarzkopf had been a part of my childhood.

       I was an ardent listener to the radio "Gangbusters" show, which dramatized stories of America's criminals.  At show's end, Colonel J. Norman Schwarzkopf of the New Jersey State Police (the general's father) would come on for a "proxy interview" about law enforcement.

       I didn't know what "proxy" meant.   Did all my elders, let alone other kids, realize a proxy was "a person authorized to act for another"?  Was it an actor reading the colonel's words, or did writers, perhaps, womp up the words which the colonel "authorized" and maybe even read himself?

       Sometimes language is chosen to inform and obscure at the same time.