Half-Way Measures

In his New York Times blog, Dick Cavett tells a Groucho Marx story about the swimming pool at a restricted country club.

“My daughter’s only half-Jewish,” Groucho said. “Can she go in up to her waist?”

Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, must have been stealing from The Master when he told of asking an Arizona golf club, “Can I play nine holes? I’m only half-Jewish.”

In any case, it may or may not have been Groucho who first said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that takes people like me as members.”