ESSAY

By MARGARET CARLSON

The practice may have begun at a private school in Washington on Jan. 18, when a group of tenth-graders did poorly on a math test. When the results came back, the class asked the teacher for a makeup exam, explaining how unfair it was to quiz them on the morning after the first missile attack of the war. They had lost too much sleep watching CNN the night before.

Children were among the first to sense the possibilities in blaming Saddam. They were encouraged by Mr. Rogers, who left his beautiful neighborhood to reassure the young during prime time that it was okay -- indeed, it showed a certain precocious sensitivity -- to be upset about the bombing in Baghdad. All this hand-wringing makes it seem that children have not managed to get through wars before and that death is something that can be understood, if only enough network anchors and child psychologists take to the airwaves to explain it. Fortunately, the average child, who sees more explicit violence viewing Saturday-morning cartoons, is not likely to remain alarmed too long over anything that justifies increased television-watching privileges and provides air cover for a variety of mischief.

Soon, the possibilities in "the Scud ate my homework" spread to those old enough to know better. True, war is hell for those who fight it but can be a handy excuse for those who don't, and adults began invoking it with an ingenuity and appetite that their offspring could only dream about. The situation in the Persian Gulf was invoked as a cause of the recession -- or as President Bush is fond of calling it, the temporary interruption in the longest economic expansion in history. Likewise for the two-week closing of the Folies-Bergere in Paris, John McEnroe's dropping out of a tennis match in Milan, the pricing of the video release of Ghosts at $100 instead of $19.95, and the New York Giants' refusal to take part in Mayor David Dinkins' Super Bowl victory celebration.

The widespread appeal of blaming Saddam for everything is partly explained by its one-size-fits-all quality. But it also has other attributes prized by veteran excuse makers: it's simple, requiring no complicated, tongue-tying explanation, universally understood, vaguely virtuous and hard to check. War, as the talking heads point out, has unintended consequences, and having to pay almost twice as much since late January to fly from Chicago to Miami may be one of them. What corporation worth its public relations department would want to be heard temporizing with an old saw like "The check is in the mail" when a fresh, Desert Storm excuse is handy? Trans World Airlines, plagued by high debt and slow traffic since it was purchased in 1986 by Carl Icahn, cited the Persian Gulf in announcing that it would not be making $75.5 million in scheduled payments to bondholders in February. As for the dismal performance of retailers over Christmas, who would imagine that thigh-high hemlines or sticker shock over $100 cotton sweaters and $200 tennis shoes rather than combat jitters could have held consumers back.

Certain linkage is now predictable. Whichever direction the stock market goes and whether it gets there in light, heavy or moderate trading, it does so because of the situation in the Middle East. And the weatherman can hardly get to the local forecast, he's so busy reporting the barometric pressure in Dhahran. But there is still some admirable originality at work: On the day before he was to make a $2.5 million payment to promoters of the George Foreman-Evander Holyfield heavyweight championship, Donald Trump artfully invoked a boilerplate "war clause" in his contract to host the event at one of his Atlantic City casinos. The ploy is unlikely to succeed unless Saddam bombs the boardwalk. Similarly, Sugar Ray Leonard dragged the troops in Saudi Arabia into an interview last Tuesday about why only 4,000 of the 18,000 tickets to last Saturday's championship bout at Madison Square Garden had been sold. He neglected to mention his age (34), string of phony retirements and the obscurity of his opponent, who wears an earring.

If an over-the-hill fighter can make hay out of the war, imagine what the archetypal villains of '80s excess could have done had hostilities broken out a few years earlier. Leona Helmsley and Michael Milken might have escaped being sentenced to hard time in the Big House. Where was the Persian Gulf when the Keating Five needed it, when Laura Palmer was killed, when the Boston Red Sox lost the American League play-offs in four straight games?

Only the oil companies are at pains to avoid linkage. Since Saddam invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the industry has had a huge surge in earnings. Chevron, which made 2 1/2 times as much in last year's fourth quarter as in 1989's, attributed the uptick to an "aberration."

If America is lucky it won't have the war to hide behind much longer. In the meantime, certain rules of engagement in the blame game are being codified. As long as there are men and women serving in the gulf, no one in government, the military, CNN or the take-out pizza business has to apologize for being late, leaving early or canceling out altogether on any nonwork-related event, and that includes cocktail-party fund raisers, rehearsal dinners and dental surgery. As for print journalists, well, a Scud ate the last three lines of this story.