Freudian Slip?

On The Today Show Weekend Edition, Lester Holt (who is in SC covering the primary elections) made a comment while talking about Barack Obama. Mister Holt said something to the effect of, "...Barack Obama has been sort of the 800 pound elephant in the room that no one wants to deal with...".

"800 pound ELEPHANT"? Isn't the euphemism, "800 pound GORILLA"?

After hearing this I started thinking, "Is this a Freudian slip or was it done on purpose?" So as I usually do I hit the web and started searching for "800 elephant" and found a couple of hits on message boards and they were followed up by someone who stated that two euphemisms were being merged.

With that in mind, I googled "elephant in the room" and found a great entry on wikipedia that helped me understand. It seems that an "elephant in the room" is "an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed." I had not heard that one in before, but then again, I try not to keep up with many "old sayings".

So where does that leave us? Well it appears that the reporter, Mr Lester Holt has fused to euphemisms...or did he? If he meant to call Barack Obama the "elephant in the room", he is not being a reporter, he is giving us he personal opinion by saying that Obama is "the truth".

Now if Mister Holt was using the euphemism that I am familiar with, the "800 pound gorilla" ("one that is dominating or uncontrollable because of great size or power" - Mirriam-Webster Online), then he could be accused of using a racial slur towards a black candidate...something that he would not want to do.

Of course those who want to make a far stretch could say that he was picking Republicans since the elephant is the symbol of the Republican party and an 800 lb one would be very small. However I doubt that was the reason since the reporter, Mr Holt, was speaking complimentary of Mr. Obama, who is a Democrat.

Bottom line? I think Lester Holt merged two well known (to many) euphemisms and made a mistake. However it is still very obvious he supports Barack Obama. The media should be REPORTING the news, not commenting on it. Leave that to the people.