Burp

I’m alive! The salad dressing didn’t kill me!

I refer to Wednesday’s column about American Express and my six-year-old blue cheese dressing, knowing that only a handful among you will recall the famous salad oil swindle of the 1960s that brought American Express to its knees. (It turned out that those tanks filled with millions of gallons of salad oil, collateral for an Amex unit’s loans, were . . . empty! Trusting souls, no one had actually looked inside.)

You see? These things are connected. And the connection between American Express and salad dressing, however tenuous, gives me an opportunity to make a point. Rather, to reiterate a point that far smarter souls have made for years — namely, the wisdom of investing in great companies when a grave but surmountable disaster, like an earthquake in Taiwan or a salad oil swindle in New Jersey, lays them low.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving again. Shouldn’t you be outside playing touch football? Or at the movies? You know, this Internet thing is really beginning to take over your life.

(I know. Look who’s talking.)