A little Iowahawk competition: Dr Rowan Williams' 'Cat Sat On The Mat'

From Iowahawk to Craig Brown at the Telegraph (U.K.), the Archbishop of Canterbury inspires (or as Christopher Johnson at "The" MCJ says, "From Academic to Anglican Primate of Wales to Archbishop of Canterbury to punchline"):

General introduction

As I hope to suggest, the issues that arise around this seemingly simple statement, if any, might suggest to the uninitiated that, in a very real sense, a cat - or, in this case, "the" cat sat on a mat, or, rather, not just any mat, but a particular mat - particular, that is, in both time and place.

THE

"The Cat Sat On The Mat": it is the "the" in that sentence that I find intriguing. What exactly do we mean when we talk about "the"? In the course of a normal day - if there is such a thing as a normal day - men, women and children all over the country, and no less in one community than in any other, make mention of going to do "the" shopping, or reading "the" newspaper, or switching on "the" wireless, or enjoying a game of "the" Scrabble. But there is widely felt to be a growing challenge to the very notion of the certainty involved in the placing of the definite article before something as mobile, fluid and unpredictable, or, if you like as indefinite, as a cat.

ii) Beyond the specific issues that may or may not arise in relation to the practicalities of recognition or delegation concerning "the", we must inevitably look to other areas, in other frameworks of life, wherein a "the" is employed. I am, myself, widely believed to be "The" Archbishop of Canterbury. Whether this is or is not the case - and one can imagine circumstances in which it both was and, at the same time, was not - must remain a discussion beyond the confines of this disquisition. But if ever I am called upon to describe myself as "The" Archbishop of Canterbury, I do so not in the sense that I am in any way singular in comparison to other Archbishops of Canterbury, past, present or future, but rather in the sense that I am, at this precise moment in the space/time continuum, the - or more precisely "The" - Archbishop of Canterbury.

iii) But there remain large questions in the background about what we understand by "the", and these we must focus on in the years and decades to come. My aim here has been only, as I have said, to tease out some of the broader issues.

CAT . . .

Read it all (please!). This is my last comment on this debacle since, while it's funny, it's also very depressing, and can veer (for me) into an unhealthy cynicism.