A New Yorker writer recently called Iran’s president “Chauncey Gardinerish.” In the 1979 movie Being There, Peter Sellers played a dim-bulb gardener named Chance who is, when dressed in the well-tailored suits of his late employer, is taken to be an upper-crust executive named Chauncey Gardiner (because he introduces himself as “Chance . . . the gardener”). His inane observations are confused with genuine profundity and he becomes a media star. Eventually Gardiner is touted as a possible U.S. president. Chauncey Gardiner is still a common way to refer to pseudo-profound figures of limited intellect.
