1995 | The American Pile

A national outcry arose from liberals and the national media last fall when a South Carolina mother told police a black man had commandeered her car at gunpoint and driven off with her two children inside the vehicle, which was later found at the bottom of a lake--the youngsters, one three years old, the other 14 months, dead inside. The woman later admitted her story about the black man was a lie. She was arrested and charged with murdering her children. The wailers had a field day, claiming the woman's story was typical of the ongoing lousy deal blacks get in a still malevolently racist America. Now comes Anthony Avent, a black and a 6-9 forward on the Orlando Magic professional basketball team, with a tale of his own. Avent was stabbed New Year's Eve, the wounds to his arms and hands requiring 22 stitches. He told police he was confronted and attacked by three white men on a downtown Orlando street. The honkies called him "conceited and rude," Avent said. A few days later, though, Avent recanted, saying it wasn't whitey at all, but rather a "friend" who stabbed him in his home. He made up the story to protect his friend, and "If I had to do it over again, I'd do the same thing, knowing I was protecting a friend." Fair enough. It is a free country, after all, and we're all free to make up lies to protect our friends if we want to. But will Time, Newsweek and the rest devote equivalent space to exploring this episode of reverse racism? Will Pat Schroeder, Michael Kinsley, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, Vic Fazio, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephart, and the rest of the liberal crowd hold press conferences to denounce the viciousness and racism implicit in Avent's fabrications? No, they won't. That street runs only one way in America. (January 7, 1995)

O.J. Simpson has been named winner of the 1994 Cover Story Crown by Advertising Age, a trade weekly covering media and marketing developments. It carefully tracks thirty different magazine and tabloid covers and, using a complicated "point" system, announces winners annually to a breathless and waiting world. The Juice knocked 'em dead in 1994 with 54 covers worth 61 points (he also won a subcategory devoted only to monthly magazine covers, with a blockbuster five consecutive covers, July through November), easily outgunning (and here's a point worth exploring by one of the big foundations--why was a double murder worth almost triple the points earned by a runnerup who, so far as we know, had no murders in her year's activities?) second-place finisher Oprah Winfrey, who generated her 21 covers and 28.5 points chiefly by "losing weight, running a marathon, and continued marriage rumors." Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis landed on 19 covers worth 25 points mainly by becoming ill and dying. The Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan drama earned 21 covers and 23 points, and Julia Roberts was fifth with 15 covers and 19 points. It was noted (with a certain sadness, I thought) that 1993's winners, those battling divorcees, Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, didn't even make the top 10 in 1994. If I know my celebrities, strategists and handlers are already huddled in secret conferences all across the country developing action plans to get their people back on top for '95. Newsday, which provided the national wire story about the Advertising Age competition, speculates that since his murder trial is to start early in the new year, Simpson is the odds-on favorite to cop an unprecedented second consecutive Cover Story Crown in 1995.

Best New Name I've Seen in a While: Alfred Lindeman (no relation to IU's Judah-ben Lindeman) an administrative law judge from Greenbrae, California, offered this one in a letter to The American Spectator (December, 1994 edition): President Clinocchio.

Sounds Like The Girl I Took To The High School Prom

"It haunts the Amazon jungle with a giant bear's body and a monkey's face, clad in dark red fur and trailing a cloud of flying beetles. Its stench is disabling. Its upright bulk disconcertingly humanlike and its roar like endless thunder. . .with backward-turned clawed feet, skin capable of withstanding shotgun blasts." --Laurie Goering, a Chicago Tribune staff writer, describing, in the January 8 Tribune, accounts of scientists on an expedition searching for a gigantic South American tree sloth called Mapinguari, believed to have been extinct for 8,500 years but reported alive and roaming in the remote western Brazilian province of Acre.

Las Vegas mainstay Wayne Newton filed for bankruptcy in 1994. A judge approved a plan last December for Newton to pay his creditors about 10 percent of the $22 million he owed. It has just been announced that Newton begins a 12-week gig in Las Vegas January 16 at $325,000 a week, or $3.9 million in total. Can anyone tell me why someone who earns an annual income in the double-figure millions is allowed to weasel out of $22 million in debts for 10 cents on the dollar? Is this what The Founding Fathers had in mind? No wonder Scottie Pippen is mad as hell about only being paid $2.8 million a year, and Black Jack McDowell will demand that whatever contract he signs must be renegotiated within hours of the ink's drying! No wonder!

Some astounding facts just released by Capital Research Center, a philanthropic watchdog group based in Wonderland, D.C., which surveys corporate charitable giving each year and publishes the results in its monograph, Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy: 1) for every dollar American corporations gave in 1992 (the most recent year surveyed) to organizations supporting pro-business policies, free-market economies and limited government, they gave $3.42 to anti-business, left-leaning groups advocating higher taxes, increased government control of the economy and business; 2) twenty-one large U.S. corporations which reported for 1992 combined losses of $15 billion gave away $97 million the same year in charitable contributions, the bulk of it again going to anti-business organizations. CRC has been reporting this same trend for years. On the face of it, there's an utter contradiction here: business supporting its enemies. What to make of it? Are our boys, our corporate titans, hedging, covering their bets by throwing cash at everybody? Has business been flim-flamming us, posing as conservatve when it really isn't? Just one more thing to confound Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch.

Here's a product none of us should be without: Ozium, a spray bottle of "brand new car" scent you can use to restore that special aroma new cars come with. It's made by Blue Coral, Inc., 5300 Harvard Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44105, at $2.99 a pop. Great stocking-stuffers at Christmas!

Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road. God's Little Acre. Remember? A new biography on Caldwell, who in the 1930s and 1940s was the world's biggest-selling author, explores the tangled mess of Caldwell's life and concludes that numerous personal problems overlaid by the demon of alcohol were major factors in Caldwell's downward spiral over the last 40 years of his life. . .and reveals, too, that Caldwell was truly a man ahead of his time. The Chicago Tribune's review of Erskine Caldwell: The Journey from Tobacco Road (Dan B. Miller, Knopf, $30) unearths an anecdote we didn't encounter in high school or college literature classes, at least not in The Ancient Times. Seems that when Tobacco Road was dramatized on Broadway, the show opened "with a harelipped teen-age girl masturbating in the front yard of her falling down homestead while her family watched," and this, the author speculates, may have had something to do with its notoriety and huge financial success. If we didn't know better, we'd swear he was scripting a Joycelyn Elders speech, an MTV video or the season kickoff for a Madonna or Roseanne Barr special. If the smut market hadn't been so limited then, Caldwell would have become a billionaire with such antics.

A few days ago a 16-year-old boy was chased by several other young men into a convenience store parking lot about a block from Indianapolis Washington High School and kicked and beaten to death, in another of these apparently senseless vicious crimes which so typify and plague our age. Witnesses described the assailants and their chauffeurs (two did the beating, two waited nearby in the getaway car) as people of color. The dead lad was white. This information has been verified by photographs of the deceased and the one assailee who's so far been arrested, and by police reports. The Indianapolis Star's coverage, however, has not yet mentioned the whiteness of the dead youth, and I've not seen or heard a public peep from any group or individual charging racism or any other outrage in this matter. Does anyone believe the streets wouldn't be full of howling protesters and the media swarmed by hand-wringing activists stamping their feet and roaring for justice had the races been reversed and the dead person an aggrieved minority? This is why hypocrisy and selective indignation are this nation's major growth industries. (January 17, 1995)

Guns, Crime and Freedom, by Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association, has vaulted onto the New York Times bestseller list, but the Times continues to refuse to review it. LaPierre's dangerous views thus join books by such as William Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Pope John Paul II, P.J. O'Rourke, Charles Murray and Barbara Bush which are national best sellers currently driving the liberal elite, the handwringing snivelers in the groves of academe, and the Trash America Firsters crazy. (January 22, 1995)

Another Reason to Go On Living

Richard "Digger" Phelps, former Notre Dame basketball coach, has announced he wants to run for President in the year 2004.

Mark Fuhrman, the Lost Angeles detective expected to be a key prosecution witness in the O.J. Simpson trial, became a bit testy January 25 when he encountered an eager press photographer at the Spokane International Airport. The Associated Press story about the incident reveals just a hint of whose side it's on, too. Fuhrman, pursued by reporters and cameras at the airport, struck a Spokane Spokesman-Review photographer in the chest, pushed him down, and shouted, "Get out of my face!", according to press reports. The photographer was uninjured but four buttons were torn off his shirt in the fracas. AP's lead paragraph about the incident opened like this: "Detective Mark Fuhrman, portrayed by O. J. Simpson's lawyers as a racist capable of framing their client, did his reputation no good Wednesday when he bashed a photographer at a Washington state airport." We're none of us seasoned journalists, of course, so who's to say this isn't a perfect lead paragraph? In the realm of f-e-e-e-e-l-i-n-g-s where most of us live, though, many Americans would debate the comment about Fuhrman "doing his reputation no good." Those who've spent their lives watching the press raise rudeness and insipidity to an art form in such settings would cheer Fuhrman and consider his reputation enhanced by his reaction. Fuhrman may turn out to be the flamer, here; Simpson' lawyers will soon get a chance to goad him and find out. (January 27, 1995)

Bumper stickers seen on a flatbed semi-trailer at the corner of N. Tibbs and W. 16th Street in Indianapolis, January 31, 1995: My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Roll Student. . . Save The Planet: Kill Yourself.

Go Ahead, Make Our Day, Try To Have Shareholder Input

Included in a required notice to Franklin Custodian Funds shareholders of an annual board of directors meeting was this paragraph,under the heading Shareholder Proposals: The Fund is not required to, nor does it intend to, hold regular annual meetings of shareholders. Any shareholder who wishes to submit a proposal for consideration at the next meeting of shareholders, when and if such a meeting is called, should submit such proposal promptly to the Fund.

My wife, Mogo, and I have first-class tickets on the Concorde to London and we can't leave soon enough. We're joining SRO crowds of glitterati jamming the Royal Court Theater in West London's chic Chelsea district to see the latest blockbuster attack on human decency, a play called Blasted, which blends fellatio, defecation, homosexual rape, and cannibalism--all on one stage!!! Critics warned of the play's "toxicity," according to U.S. News and World Report (Feb. 6, 1995), but cheering, chattering mobs of theater-goers won't be denied. We plan to bring home as much of the ancillary merchandise as we can carry: T-shirts, blazers, tridents, jogging suits, sweatshirts, memo pads, anything with the Blasted logo and art work on it. We wouldn't miss this for the world!

Make Ready The Rubber Room. . .

The mother of an 8th grade student in an Indianapolis suburb entered her daughter's classroom unannounced and uninvited Tuesday afternoon, February 2, and ordered her daughter to get up and leave the room. She approached the male teacher in a storm of anger, jabbed the air with her finger and said, "I am a Native American and I have power over you. I am clairvoyant and I have been present in this room (in spirit) and watched you abuse my daughter. You are an asshole and you need to hear it." The teacher sent a janitor to find the principal. The woman continued her tirade. She and the daughter stormed out of the room and went to the principal's office, where the girl was officially withdrawn from school. This is a true story.

The New York Zoological Society, concerned that the word "zoo" has developed negative connotations, has announced it's changing the names of the Bronx Zoo and the Central Park Zoo to Wildlife Conservation parks. There, that feels better, doesn't it?

How ironic that the ideas for which liberals viciously mocked Dan Quayle as Vice President--morality, responsibility--have now found credibility as Newsweek's February 6, 1995, cover story ("Shame: How Do We Bring Back A Sense of Right and Wrong?").

U.S. News & World Report (Feb. 6, 1995) printed a small photograph of an outdoor storage yard for Russia's gargantuan SS-18 intercontinental missiles. A Soviet soldier is standing near one of the monsters, the blastport of which looks to be two to three times the man's height--about 14-15 feet across. An awe-inspiring sight. Made me wish I had a couple.

Non-Confidence Builder Department: I notified the Internal Revenue Service in early September, 1994, of our change of address and received an IRS confirmation of that fact, dated Sept. 26, 1994. My 1994 federal tax return packet, mailed three months later, arrived in early January, 1995, bearing our old address. I notified the Indiana Department of Revenue at the same time as the IRS, and received neither a confirmation nor a 1994 state tax package.

He's Toast! He's Outta Here!

Part of the official mustering-out process for manager-level people at Price Waterhouse involves the employee's signing a legal letter acknowledging the termination of the employment contract. Mine came in the mail late in the year and I couldn't resist a minor alteration to its text. The firm's letter began: "We have mutually agreed that my employment contract, dated July 1, 1981, as amended, shall be considered terminated--and here I hand-wrote this insertion--"and the employee declared in a permanent state of Toast." I cheerfully affixed an "ATB" (All The Best) and my best soaring signature at the bottom and mailed it off.

Some Things You Just Know. . .

Help Wanted Department: In an attempt to sanitize my prose, I need a (non-profane) synonym for one of the English language's choicest words: "asshole." This is not so simple a task as it appears at first glance. This critter's a special blend of qualities devilishly difficult to pin down. Much as the famed jurist grappled with a definition of pornography, so may we not quite know what an asshole is, but know one when we see one. A central characteristic, for me, is the joyousness with which the asshole pursues his activities; a true asshole is never accidental, nor indifferent or oblivious to what he is--he consciously revels in it! Examples come easily to mind--just for fun, let's make them non-Indiana residents: Buddy Ryan, Sean Penn, John Thompson, Norman Mailer, Frank Sinatra, Bo Schembechler, Jeff George, Mike Ditka, Jack Nicholson, Victor Kiam, Rickey Henderson, Alexander Haig, Howard Stern, Roseanne Barr, Rob Dibble, and rock stars, tennis players, and glitterati piled high enough to blot out the sun. Are we getting a sense here, feeling a common beat? I'm tempted to use "flamer." I solicit and welcome help on this.

WIBC Radio in Indianapolis has canceled the city's only liberal talk show, The Dick Wolfsie Program, because of poor ratings. General manager Tom Severino said WIBC liked Wolfsie "a lot," but was trying to become "the top-rated station for listeners 12 and older" and needs the "best entertainers" it can get if it's going to succeed at that. Program director Bobby Hatfield, who fired Wolfsie, said he was listening to the Wolfsie show a week ago when a caller and Wolfsie actually got in an argument and the caller hung up! "That's mean-spirited talk," Hatfield told Indianapolis Star television writer Steve Hall, "and that's not what WIBC represents." You can almost see Hatfield wringing his hands, his face puckered in angst. Meantime, WIBC's afternoon kingpin, the Rush Limbaugh Show, continues to blow the competition out of the water. Life is very, very complex in that 12-and-older market. (February 14, 1995)

Brand Touts Revolutionary Concept: Four-Year Degree

Newly-anointed executives love to put their stamp on things right away, to let everybody know the old era's gone and a new big cheese is on the throne. Policy changes, bold new initiatives, personnel shakeups, downsizings, rightsizings, those sorts of things typically mark the ascension. Indiana University's new president, Myles Brand, seems to have caught the bug. One of his first presidential acts was to announce a "Four-Year Path" plan he seemed to think was a fairly revolutionary idea. It entails the university's guaranteeing that a student will finish his degree work in four years if he meets certain requirements along the way (typically, this involves attending classes, taking enough credit hours to meet degree requirements, that sort of thing), and if he doesn't, then the University will let him make up the shortfall free of charge. Brand said the university has an obligation to do this for its students. Well, there have been critics. A faculty group saw the idea as a seashells-and-balloons frivolity that detracted from the university's real mission. Brand, taking his cue from Slick Willie's government-by-mood-ring modus operandi, commissioned a public opinion poll to see how everybody feels about it. The wrangling continues, to the amusement of many of us who can remember when it was a given that you finished college in four years and those who didn't were generally viewed as dolts and slackers. I know, I know, things are much tougher now, much tougher.

Journalist (and former Ronald Reagan speechwriter) Peggy Noonan produced a PBS three-part series on values in February, and offered this observation on the Feb. 21st segment: "Parents have two jobs: parenting, and protecting their children from our culture." I think that about nails it.

Colin and Clarence Somehow Lack The 'Necessities'

Rush Limbaugh got a call on his show Friday (February 24) from a father whose daughter is enrolled in a public school system somewhere in North America. The daughter was in a multicultural diversity module at school and her teacher had assigned the youngsters to research and write a paper on a black American and come to school dressed up as that person on "report day." The subject had to be chosen from a list of blacks the teacher passed out. The list, said the father, included Nelson Mandela and Angela Davis (both linked to the Communist Party and in Davis's case openly), rock star and world class bizarre-o Michael Jackson, and others. General Colin Powell and U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were not on the list. The man wondered why. (February 26, 1995)

Say "See Ya" To 'Moon' Flanders

Actor Ed Flanders, best known for his Emmy award-winning portrayal of kind-hearted Dr. Donald Westphal on NBC's St. Elsewhere in the 1980s and President Harry Truman in a 1977 TV special, died February 22 at age 60 at his California home. He was on St. Elsewhere from 1982-87 and departed the program in a distinctly offbeat fashion. In his final 1987 episode, Flanders' character gave a ferocious upbraiding to a fictional money-grubbing hospital chain executive about corporate control of hospitals, then dropped his pants and mooned him. Flanders returned a year later for the show's farewell program and instead of sticking to his lines about the hospital's closing he delivered an unscripted soliloquy on death, which the surprised producers decided to leave in. This is a guy I wish I'd known. It's only a coincidence, I suppose, that he won a 1974 Tony award and a 1976 Emmy for his Broadway performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten.

U.S. News & World Report devoted its February 27, 1995, cover story to the theme "Why Fathers Count," wherein it set out the compelling case that fathers are crucial to successful families and play a vital role in child rearing. Study after study shows it. Those with abnormally long attention spans can recall how the liberals, Murphy Brown Brigades, and feminazis screeched when then-Vice President Dan Quayle tried to make these same points just a few short years ago. Times change. Life is strange.

The Larry King Live show just called wanting my list of favorite words. Here they are: Steatopygia, Insipid, Rapturous, Aperture, Orifice, Eerie, Blue Darter, Bilge, Grotesque, Rite, Bulbous, Flak, Tuberous, Hobgoblin, Slam, Balloon, Scrofulous, Spittle, Sump, Egregious, Massive, Absurd, Hermetically, Ridiculous, Cackle, Buffoon, Lunatic, Evanescent, Bilious, Babble, Flak, Turgid, Scuttle, Pneumatic, Billowing, Mandrill, Oboe, Chimpanzee, Babboonlike, Gibbon, Cretin, Mongoloid, Simian, Xylem, Phloem, Mufti, Mangy, Grapple, Shards, Scramble, Gobbets, Shroud, Moronic, Barff, Abominable, Jowls, Livid, Dyspeptic, Deviant, Abusive, Hostile, Apoplectic, Twaddle, Treacle, Tuna, Yo Yo, Hawnyock (sp?), Fungible, Scumbag, Festooned, Akimbo, Bovine, Unctuous, Silo, Mongrel, Wheedle, Highfalutin, Hog, Burly, Throw-Weight, Twit, Twinkle, Wazoo.

It's hard to know how to take Professor Charles Owen, director of the Design Processes Laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The February 19, 1995, London Sunday Times reports, in apparent straight face, on Owen's work designing an Earth Mother dirigible that's bigger than Bob Knight's ego and the late Orson Wells's belly combined. Named AeroCarrier, this big baby will be 1.5 miles long, carry 3400 passengers and crew at up to 100 miles an hour, and have a runway on its top for helicopters and jet planes. One potential catch Owens has already thought of: AeroCarrier will be too big to dock or land on Earth, so it will remain aloft permanently as a mother ship (six smaller airships would serve to transport cargo and humans from the ground). Professor Owens has designed huge display screens--aerial billboards--which will be display "information, entertainment, and advertisements to the towns and cities below, some of which will be thrown into shadow as the AeroCarrier eclipses the sun." AeroCarrier recently won a bronze prize at the sixth international design competition in Osaka, Japan, and Owens is writing a book about this and his other award-winning designs, according to the Sunday Times, which quoted the professor saying, "There is great interest in bringing back dirigibles. I've had calls from. . .Russia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Korean, and Japan. . .many people would like to invest." Where do I get in line to buy tickets?

Talk erupts from time to time about the suffering of the O. J. Simpson trial jurors, the disruption of their lives, the stress, the strain. All true, but a spot on that jury is a ticket to a front row seat at America's Instant Celebrity trough, to instant riches for books, talk show appearances, movies, world tours, symposia, Larry King Live appearances (dead or alive, it won't matter). Isn't that what every last red-blooded American one of us wants, to get in there, snorting and rooting, and get our share, get what's rightfully ours? They'll all make out like bandits. I could do with a good bit less of their whining.

By Golly, He IS Going to Run for President

Former Notre Dame basketball coach Richard "Digger" Phelps appeared on ESPN Sports March 16 in either multicolored hair or toupee. The hair on the top and center of The Digster's gourd was reddish-brown, the rest grey-black. Or could it have been just an optical delusion, the subtle play of studio lights? Best keep watch on this evolving story. (March 18, 1995).

Smut-O-Rama

Holed up temporarily in a seedy Days Inn along I-69 at Fort Wayne and channel-slaloming across television's sewage lagoon, I chanced across something called The Larry Sanders Show featuring comedian Garry Shandling on HBO. I paused to watch. In the approximately eight minutes from 10:48 p.m. to 10:56 p.m. the cast offered these bits of dialogue: "Fuck me," "you worthless piece of shit," "nobody fuckin' cares abour your fuckin' ear," "put up with such shit," "this is fuckin' nuts," "damn right," "you bastard," "your ass doesn't look fat in pants," and "a lot of fucking plants," In addition, there was a reference to a TV show called "Cousins Who Fuck," "that stuck-up little shit," "that butthole buddy of yours," and "pissing in your good ear." One character told another that wearing an earring low in your left ear "means you are pitching, not catching." While this uplifting dialogue was spewed about, in and out of the offices roamed three cantaloupe-breasted women in short skirts (just there for intellectual content, of course). They bent over frequently. All was offered in the name of freedom of artistic expression and the eternal quest for meaning in the human condition, be sure. Please do not kill me. I am only a wretched scrivener, recording the pageant as it unfolds.

Michael Lives! He Lives! He Lives!

I'll confess. I tuned in to watch Michael Jordan's Return to NBA action in Indianapolis, U.S.A. NBC's Bob Costas and Marv Albert were hyperventilating well before tipoff, informing us that scalpers were charging $1,000 for courtside tickets and $400-$500 for seats miles deep in the nosebleed frontier sections of Market Square Arena. Mere mention of the money alone was enough to captivate most of the America tuned in. Marv said that what His Airness was trying to do was "truly remarkable." Costas and others called it "historic." My wife, Mogo, joining me in our twin green naugahyde BarcaLoungers parked and drooling courtside in front of our big-screen TV, felt it was far more than that--she recognized it as a religious experience. We learned that Michael gets his entire $4 million contract for playing just the remaining 17 regular season games and the playoffs. What's more, no wacko Religious Left liberal bleeders had flown into the city to march in protest over the unfairness and injustice of this. NBC's broadcast team had spread out all over the world for this event. Other coaches, opposing players, even NBC broadcasters reacted via quick cuts to other NBA cities where games were being played. Costas in particular seemed deeply moved, stating in reverential tones that Michael's attempted comeback was "truly unprecedented." He noted that the group singing the national anthem in Indianapolis was called "Promise" and hailed from Olivet Nazarene College and that "you can read any kind of symbolism into this that you want. . ." As Mogo and I keened and swayed in rapture, our faces bathed in a living tableaux from the big screen's frenzied reflections, NBC cut away to the pre-game ceremonies. The arena went pitch black. Pacers blue and gold spotlights panned the crowd and a rotating mirror ball high in the night spangled the arena with swirling points of light. The taped sound of roaring Indianapolis 500 race cars exploded. The huge glaring spotlight eye illuminated a man inside an animal suit--it was Boomer, the team's blue panther mascot, who'd dropped from the rafters on a long cable--sprinting wildly around the playing floor waving a huge Pacers flag. Rock music thundered at ear-shattering levels. A spotlight stabbed to center court where a dozen or so provocatively-clad young women writhed and undulated around the Pacers centercourt logo, pounding pompons toward the arena's darkened reaches. The music crashed on, spotlights stampeded crazily over the walls and ceiling. The public address announcer erupted in a gravelly scream, shrieking the names of our beloved Pacers one by one by one. Another spotlight flared at courtside, illuminating a small group of Pacers dancing, jiving, high-fiving. It was about this time that we, utterly overcome by excitement, lost consciousness. (March 19, 1995)

Humble, Awed, Trying To Do Our Part. . .

Mogo and I got up extra early March 25 and drove over to the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield to witness Mike Tyson's release from prison. The mob was so great that it was impossible to get up really close. Helicopters hovered over the scene. Fans and admirers jostled. Authorities and numerous unidentified burly people kept order, shielded the icon, Tyson, from contamination. The press swarmed about, mothlike, bringing, as the Indianapolis Star proudly trumpeted in its front-page banner headline story the next day, "his release to viewers and readers throughout the world." Promoter Don King, America's reigning bad hair champion, hovered close to his protege. Word spead quickly that the great Muhammad Ali was present. So was Monica Turner, a Georgetown University medical student who, according to the Star's breathless coverage, "reportedly has visited Tyson (in prison) about every two weeks." When Tyson walked out the prison's front door at 6:15 a.m. camera flashes exploded, reminding us, and the Star's reporters as well, of "a brief burst of fireflies." Limousines and other vehicles whisked the entourage away to the nearby Islamic Center of America and later to the airport where a private jet waited. Mogo and I chased them all the way, but our wheezing Probe quickly fell off the 110-mile per hour pace set by the police escorts. It was enough just to be there, to be a part of it, to see Mike. The Star reported that admirers came from as far as 200 miles away for the occasion. This was an experience we wouldn't have missed for the world. Getting to see Don King's hair made it even more special. This summer, as soon as Mogo is off for summer vacation, we'll be making the pilgrimage to Mike's 66-acre mansion and farm east of Cleveland. It's the least we can do. (March 26, 1995)

I'll Trade You My Dick Speck and Charlie Manson Dolls for Your O. J. Simpson, But Only While The Trial's Still In Progress

Antiques and collectibles expert Lynn Hopper, writing in the April 2 Indianapolis Star, predicts the value of an O.J. Simpson doll (from Shindana Toys in Lost Angeles) will soar to over $100 if Simpson is convicted. A Simpson model in excellent condition today is worth $50-$75, she said. They sold for $6-12 when first issued in 1975. Ever the canny investor, I have a thousand of them in a Hard Cheese, Indiana, vault, waiting, waiting, waiting. (April 2, 1995)

Cable TV companies, long a plague upon the citizenry, are now running ads touting butt-busting service, telling us they'll be on time for their service calls or give you a $20 refund, and on time for a scheduled installation or give it to you free. Isn't it wonderful what a little competition from direct satellite TV systems will do?

Some Things You Just Know in Your Heart

Any nation that elevates Brian "Kato" Kaelin to icon status has already begun its descent into The Final Darkness.

Hamburg Loony Tunes, Part II

Judge Gertraut Goering has freed for the second time the man who stabbed tennis star Monica Seles in the back during a televised tournament in Hamburg, Germany, April 30, 1993. The assailant, Guenter Parche, was given a suspended two-year sentence in his first trial before Judge Goering, on a conviction of causing grievous bodily harm. The judge accepted testimony from two psychiatrists who said that, aside from his "fixation" on Seles's chief rival, fellow tennis star Stefi Graf, Parche was "harmless." Seles wrote a letter to the court saying the 1993 attack was responsible for her not resuming her career. Judge Goering ruled that Seles herself would have to testify to that effect, that her letter was not enough. Parche claimed he only wanted to disable Seles by stabbing her, so that Graf could regain the No. 1 tennis ranking, an argument the judge accepted. "We can't rule out that he meant to do more than he did to Miss Seles," said the judge, "but we also can't prove this." The knife left a half-inch deep wound that has since healed, but Seles has not resumed her career, saying she can't overcome the emotional trauma of the attack. (April 6, 1995)

Four white male Indianapolis police officers have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming they've victims of reverse discrimination in the department's promotion process. The four claim they were passed over for promotion and a lower-ranked white female and black male were promoted ahead of them. The department, they allege, has an elaborate testing and scoring procedure all candidates for promotion must go through, but that the police chief ignores the rankings in order to promote minorities. Their action approaches the utmost in political incorrectness. Still, you've got to admire their spunk in dragging this dirty little secret into the scalding light of day.

Task No. 1: Be Casual

Good News! General Motors has announced the company's dress code has been changed to "casual every day."

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

My nominee for the week's most overlooked nugget would be the last paragraph of a front-page story in USA Today April 14 about the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into a December, 1994, commuter airline crash at Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The story focused on the release of documents which showed the pilot of the American Eagle plane which crashed had such a poor record with his previous employer that he was allowed to resign rather than be fired. The pilot, Michael Hillis, resigned Jan. 3, 1991, and a few days later was hired by Flagship Airlines, which operates as American Eagle. The story quoted a Flagship spokesman, Mitch Baranowski, saying that Flagship had indeed followed its corporate policy for reference checks for new employees and that policy produced no clue that Hillis was recommended for dismissal at his last job. The story's last paragraph read: "We did check with Comair per our policy and they didn't give us any information that would have led us to question this pilot," said Flagship spokesman Mitch Baranowski. This precisely sums up the paralyzing cloud of fear which overhangs all employee reference-checking in our society today and well illustrates the inevitable consequence for an excessively litigious society. The fear of lawsuits and legal liability is so great that employers are afraid to reveal any information related to work performance. When I worked at Price Waterhouse, human resource people were explicitly instructed to answer only four questions when reference checks were made by outsiders: we could verify the dates of employment, the last position or rank held, and the individual's Social Security number and final salary (but only if those last two items had been provided by the former employee). The firm's lawyers stressed over and over that to give any other information--even when true--about a former employee created a legal liability and opened the company to legal action. There can be no doubt that that's exactly what prevented Comair from revealing the truth to Flagship about Hillis's poor record. Thirteen people died in the crash. Five survived, and will have a field day winning damage suits against all concerned.

Little snapshots of America: Number of lawsuits for civil rights violations filed by U.S. prison inmates last year: 37,419; Number of Veterans Administration employes whose salaries exceed $100,000 per year: 7,367; Percent of all U.S. corporate sponsorship that goes to the arts: 6; Percent that goes to sports: 65; Number of the 29 divorced members of the U.S.House of Representatives who are Democrats: 21. (Harpers, February, 1995)

The rise of talk radio is one of the most significant developments of our age, with vast implications for all of us. For the elites, those who've been in control of the flow of information and knowledge, talk radio is a nightmare. It breaks their grip, their control of information and the culture, undermines their ability to set the nation's agenda. For the first time in our history, the rabble have an outlet, a voice, a way to express and to hear their opinions. It has the look of a wave that can't be stopped. Few more appalling prospects could confront the cognoscenti.

Liddy Barks Comma Bites

Rob McDonald of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel interviewed the legendary "G-Man," G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate and talk radio fame, in advance of Liddy's April 29 speaking engagement in Fort Wayne. This truly beautiful exchange was printed as part of their telephone interview: McDonald: "Newt Gingrich spearheaded the Contract (with America). What are his strengths and weaknesses?" Liddy: "He can organize, deploy, inspire his colleagues, and he is particularly articulate in debate. He's a master of his facts. His weakness: he tends not to suffer fools sufficiently gladly to be considered diplomatic." McDonald: "What do you mean?" Liddy: "I mean exactly that. When you ask me a question, I respond. That's my answer. Some of the press folks say, "In other words, you mean. . ." No, not in other words. It's just what I said. If the listener is not sufficiently literate to understand it, it is not my problem. . .I consider myself capable fully of explaining myself well the first time around." (April 30, 1995)

Indiana University announced May 5 that tuition is going up by six percent next year, about double the rate of inflation. IU President Myles Brand said he wished tuition could be lower but that it couldn't. He blamed the increase on the state legislature's appropriation and said Indiana actually needed an 8 percent tuition increase to cover the gap created by inadequate state funding of campus needs. He said the university was able to get by on only a six percent tuition hike by "internal reallocation," which is bureaucratese for there's plenty of fat in IU's operation. Most undergraduate and graduate programs are raising credit hour rates by about 6 percent, but the graduate business program decided to hike rates by 29.5 percent. Defending the increases, Brand said, "If you're going to continue to build a great university you need that level of tuition. You get what you pay for: Indiana University will be of higher quality as a result." Three IU trustees who voted against the 6 percent hike felt the school should be cutting its costs and operating more efficiently and making do with less. That idea was hooted offstage when the matter came to a vote. And so this great university, along with most of its brethren, continues to remain oblivious to the tidal changes--cost-cutting, greater efficiency, downsizing, rightsizing, rationalizing, and all the rest we've been reading about for a decade--sweeping American business and the world economy. Brand's claim that IU just couldn't get by with less is pure poppycock.

Street Of Dreams

A subdivision just off West Coliseum Boulevard on Fort Wayne, Indiana's northwest side, just inside Interstate 69 and hard by a Seyfert's potato chip factory, features streets named Investment Drive, Directors Row, Production Road, Executive Boulevard, Progress Road, Dividend Road, and Profit Drive. I'll not rest easy till I can own a home on a street with a name like that. And if I have to sell out and move to Fort Wayne to do it, I will.

Lillian Glass, identified in USA Today as a "communications expert," has written a book Glass says will help us weed out the bad people in our lives. Toxic People (Simon & Schuster) hit the nation's bookstores this week. Glass identifies traits and characteristics of 30 types of "toxic" people, and offers her Top 10 list of world-class. . .well, Nolan Richardson's grandmother would call them. . .turds. The legendary Kato Kaelin makes the list at No. 9 (The Opportunistic User). Howard Stern is No. 8; Rush Limbaugh as "The Arrogant Know-It-All" is No. 7; New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as "The Ultimate Competitor" is No. 6. Hate groups earn Glass's No. 1 spot. Donald Trump is No. 2, the baseball duo of Donald Fehr and Bud Selig is No. 3, Britain's Prince Charles is No. 4. Your spouse's divorce attorney is No. 10. In Glass's fifth-most-noxious spot is "The Bully". . .Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight.

The name of the Republican leader of the Georgia State Senate is: Skin Edge (USA Today, May 11, 1995). I did not make this up.

Boffo Combo--Moms And Mike!

Weirdest little story. A brief note in the May 10 USA Today said former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson had been invited to speak at a Mother's Day benefit dinner sponsored by a Fresno, California, women's civic group. Next day a denial circulated. Radio silence since. Strange. Mogo and I had our air tickets to Fresno reserved. We'd go anywhere to support Iron Mike.

USA Today devoted nearly a full page in its May 8 issue to probing the mystery of fizzling new car sales. Industry experts, marketing and consumer research gurus, Wall Street analysts, even--of all things--a token customer or two were asked for their insights. It's a real puzzler: car loan rates are moderate (9.77%), inflation is low, disposable income is deemed to be "healthy," and consumer confidence "robust." But 1995 sales are running at a projected one million fewer vehicles than 1994. And ominously, the average age of the nation's registered automobiles exceeds 8 years, the highest since the late 1940s. Psychologist Stanley Plog weighed in with the mantra of our age, complaining that 1990s cars are boring. A CNW Marketing/Research consumer study shows that buying a new car--once the defining status symbol in America--now ranks ninth on a list of the top 10 big ticket items people want (remodeling a kitchen ranks No. 1, buying or starting a business is No. 2, buying a used car is No. 3). Wall Street analyst Jack Kirkman noted that personal computer technology now soaks up a growing chunk of discretionary funds. CNW also reported that only 15.6 percent of its 1994 survey group felt that driving a two- or three-year-old used car would "hurt their image," versus 33 percent who felt that way in 1985. Yet in 66 column-inches devoted to this story, nobody mentioned what's obvious to Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch: cars cost too much. The average price of a new car is over $20,000 (ten years ago the average was $11,500), well beyond the reach of increasing numbers of Americans, millions of whom have seen their jobs sacrificed as American business has downsized its way to record profits in recent years. (The same day's Indianapolis Star offered a neat postscript to USA Today's agonizing: an Indianapolis Lexus dealer ran a full-page ad offering its 1995 beauty "starting at $51,900.") The real mystery is why the "experts" can't see this.

IBM's chief executive officer, Louis Gerstner, brought in several years ago to rescue the computer giant's sagging fortunes, cut thousands of jobs and millions in costs getting Big Blue shaped up. But a brief note in the May 16 USA Today suggests the spirit of sacrifice needed to save this great American institution doesn't extend all the way into the executive suites. Gerstner, some troublemaking reporter has learned, has hired an executive chef for about $117,500. Lisa Lobasso, 37, gets to cook for the corporate Cheese Whizzes at a salary of $87,500 plus a $30,000 signing bonus. She last worked at RJR Nabisco where, coincidentally, Gerstner was CEO before taking the IBM post. Lobasso declined comment on the story, as did IBM, though a spokesman for IBM did say that executive dining rooms are a "necessary cost" for companies trying to woo big customers. Funny, I thought that's what expensive restaurants were for. (May 16, 1995)

You might have noticed a flurry of media sniggering in late April when research about the size of American male private parts--you know, our wangs--was presented at the annual American Urological Association meeting in Las Vegas. They talked about circumferences, lengths, flaccid conditions and turgid conditions--I hearkened back to my days in junior high school biology class when we'd twitter about xylem and phloem, cloacas, pores, orifices, things like that. Bloomington Herald-Times columnist Mike Leonard, who has never encountered a depth he wouldn't stoop to in journalism's ceaseless questing for truth, devoted a whole column to the matter April 27, and doubtless other courageous writers around the country expounded, too. It was headlined "At Last, White Men Get Some News They Can Celebrate," and, so far as I can tell, not a single peep of protest or outrage has been registered by the local liberal cognoscenti over Leonard's outrageous slur against our nation's honkies. The HT's usually exquisitely sensitive editors somehow let this one slip past. There was once a time, of course, when no self-respecting "family" newspaper would have printed such a story. Those days are obviously gone, and we're all the poorer for it, no matter what the freedom-of-the-press boys and the apologists say.

Rush Limbaugh has launched a new product line of neckties. He mentioned it on his radio show May 17 and described them as being "moderately priced" and "costing about what an average tie costs," then mentioned a figure of "about $40." Rush, a champion of the common man, seems a bit out of touch on this. Or I am. Do you know anybody who spends $40 on a necktie? If you did, would you want to be caught in their company? Next time Rush and his main squeeze weekend with us, we'll take him up to the Dollar General Store in Enema Falls, where we can load up on $3 and $4 ties imported straight from Paris, New York, Milan, Rome. That's what it says on the labels of mine, anyway. (May 17, 1995)

Fodor's, the famous publisher of travel guides, asked 600 U.S. travelers their least desirable travel destination. First--the last place they'd want to visit--were Iran and Iraq. Second? New York City. I'd have said Ross-Ade Stadium. And what activity do Americans value the most when traveling? Eating, said 84 percent.

The Indianapolis Star's hard-hitting business section reported May 23 that Indiana Attorney General Pam Carter has released a "Buyer Beware" list citing 82 companies and individuals her office says have cheated, misled, or fleeced consumers. Great, I muttered over my breakfast gruel. These crooks ought to be exposed. I eagerly read on, looking for the single most important thing the Star could have provided me: the list of culprits. But I'll be danged if the Star chose not to reveal the names, though it did mention near the end of its story that readers could get the list by calling Carter's office (where the line is usually busy and most readers will give up in despair after a few fruitless attempts to get through). Why didn't the Star try to hit a home run in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch by naming names, giving us that list? I'd guess they didn't want to be judgmental. It wouldn't have been fair, and it's far too complicated for ordinary mortals to understand. I did get through after six calls and someone named Laura in the Consumer Protection Office said she'd send the list right out to me.

The Horror, The Shrieking Nothingness of. . .Boring Hamburgers

The Indianapolis Star has an uncanny knack for zeroing in on the burning angsts of our times. This morning's food section comforted me with a headline and story assuring me that I could, if I were willing to be creative, escape the horror--indeed, the worldwide plague--of boring hamburgers. (May 25, 1995)

A New York judge May 22 dismissed a $75 million lawsuit filed by comedian Jackie Mason against the Tony Award organization. Mason was aggrieved because his show, Jackie Mason: Politically Incorrect, wasn't considered for a Tony award. The judge ruled--and this is the astonishing part--that the 24-member Tony committee actually has the right to decide who will be considered for a Tony award and who will receive one. A revolutionary idea, indeed, in the late 20th century Age of Whine and Victimhood we inhabit. Of course this matter isn't over. There has to be an appeals judge out there somewhere who'll look more favorably upon Mason's grievance. Let's not give up on this.

A Dream Worth Keeping Alive

The Jackie Mason story revived a concept I wrote about years ago when I suggested that what this great nation needed was a small but dedicated group of counter-suers who would travel the countryside in search of stories like Mason's and who would, wherever they found them, immediately file grotesquely huge--seeking, say, a minimum of $500 million in damages--countersuits against the original filers of such nonsense. In this daydream I imagined myself as both the richest man in the world, with virtually unlimited funds at my disposal, and the first to volunteer for this noble service. The countersuits would make one simple accusation: the defendant is an asshole. Winning them would be beside the point. The point--and with limitless funds you could effectively make it--would be to tie them up in court for the rest of their natural lives, to exact punishment for their insult to the bodkin politic. Good dreams never die.

GM To Bury Top Dog

General Motors Corporation announced this month it is discontinuing production of the most aggressively ugly automobile of my lifetime, the Chevrolet Caprice.

No Lefties Weeping For Shawn Nelson

Be honest, now. When you saw last week's story about the fella in San Diego who commandeered a 58-ton Army tank and went on a rampage, smashing over cars and fire hydrants and anything else in his way, and eventually blasting onto a major highway, driving with his head sticking out of the tank, laughing as he roared along, didn't you think: Boy, I'd love to do that, just once? Of course we wouldn't want the ending: police finally leaped aboard, cut open the tank hatch with bolt cutters, and fatally wounded Shawn Nelson. Funniest thing, too: we haven't seen Pat Schroeder, Eleanor Holmes-Norton, Ted Kennedy, Al Sharpton, Michael Kinsley, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley-Braun, Tom Harkin, Ron Dellums, Eleanor Clift, Jesse Jackson, Al Hunt, Richard Gephardt, Barbra Streisand, Slick Hillie, or any others of the wacko religious left crowd on national television protesting the brutality, the outrage of this unprovoked police violence against an innocent citizen.

We Know The Answer, And So Does Genevieve Wells

Genevieve Wells wrote to the editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times May 24 to ask the discomforting question: why does the newspaper proudly proclaim its learning-through-the newspaper program for elementary school kids while regularly rubbing our (and their) faces in articles and advertisements about female "oil wrestling," wet T-shirt contests, glow-in-the-dark condoms, surveys of penis lengths and girths, "adult" lingerie, pictures of string bikini-clad women, and other salacious tidbits? Wells had the temerity to suggest there is something hypocritical in this, and that perhaps "the kids" the H-T claims to adore deserve a better lesson than the thin gruel which increasingly saturates the news media. This is certainly not a question the H-T or any media outlet wants to address. The editor chose not to reply to her letter, and doubtless next day resumed ladling out its ration of smut to the reading faithful. Who does Genevieve Wells think she is, anyway? Is she suggesting the freedom of the press includes the freedom to decide not to print something? Dangerous notion. Someone better investigate this. (May 24, 1995)

Stalking Evil, Disproportionalism Along I-65

The state of Georgia's return to chain gangs has liberals riled up over how cruel it is to chain prisoners and have them work. USA Today sent two correspondents to cover the story May 3 along I-65 near the Georgia-Tennessee border. Felix Walton, a chain gang member, was allowed to sound off and did. "It's humiliating," he said. "When they put those chains on me it made me feel like an animal. This ain't no way to treat a human being." USA Today's two scribes, Lori Sharn and Shannon Tangonan, were so eager to quote the anti-chain gang crowd--representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, and state representative John Rogers among them--that they didn't answer the obvious question for discerning readers: what was old Felix Walton in the pen for in the first place? Murder? Rape? Sodomy? Child molesting? Did Felix treat his victim like a human being, or like an animal? Just wondering. We were given an inadvertent clue as to Lori's and Shannon's sympathies, though, when they pointed out that although blacks make up 25 percent of Georgia's population they comprise 65 percent of state prison inmates, inviting Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch to draw the sinister conclusion that evil disproportionalism is operating here, and race discrimination, too. (May 3, 1995)

Easy Money

Citizens looking for a few easy bucks can cash in on provisions in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed a year or two ago and barely noted except by a few troublemakers. We owe this intelligence to the Chicago Tribune, which reported on a stunt by consumer activist Michael Jacobson which netted him an easy $750 settlement from Citibank. It went like this. Citibank's telemarketers called Jacobson several times peddling its credit card discount services. Jacobson, who keeps a "tele-nuisance list," told them twice never to call again, and made detailed notes of his conversations. Then he hustled off to small claims court and filed suit. The law prohibits telemarketers from calling back anyone who has specifically told them not to. Individuals can collect $500 for the first infraction and up to $1500 for subsequent calls. The law requires firms to keep a companywide list of people who've told them not to call back.

An April Gallup poll has found that 39 percent of Americans believe the federal government "poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans." A U.S News & World Report poll shows 58 percent of Americans believe that "the people who run the (federal) government are not very much or not at all like themselves." Somebody's making up this stuff, surely.

Even Immigrants Can't Escape Us

A study by Michigan State University sociology professor Ruben G. Rumbaut claims that the children of immigrants initially do better in school than their American classmates, but their superior grade-point averages disappear as they spend more time in the United States. "The longer you are in the United States," the professor concluded, "the more you learn, among other things, the bad habits, such as wearing headphones while studying or waiting to the last minute to study for a test." Rumbaugh studied academic records of over 5,000 eighth- and ninth-grade students, all second-generation immigrants, to reach his conclusions.

Time To Wake Up And Smell The Litigation

The ironic headline caught my eye: "Carlisle Doctor Gladly Sheds Duties with Prisoners." Dr. Alexander Ton, according to the Associated Press story in the Indianapolis Star, had just lost his job as the chief sawbones at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility (code for: prison) in Carlisle, Indiana. "I'm happy. I'm very happy to get away from there. . ." he seemed to chirp. Did he say it with a wink and a smile, eyebrows arching, or was he serious? The story about Dr. Alexander Ton just lay there on the page, giving no clue. A video would have helped, so I could have seen his face, picked up the subtleties of expression. So, between shovelfuls of breakfast gruel, I pushed on with the story. The doctor, it turned out, had purposefully bid high on his contract with the facility, in the hope he'd be underbid. To his considerable relief, he was. Doctor Ton told the AP he was sick and tired of dealing with prisoners. Why, for heaven's sake? Here was a chance to help society's victims, to ease the pain of human suffering. Well, Ton said the prisoners yelled and cursed at the medical staff. He said some of them should be in a mental institution. He said he had been named in 17 malpractice suits filed by prisoners. "They sue everything and everybody," he said. He added that he hadn't even examined some of the prisoners who are suing him. Time to wake up and smell the litigation, doc. Welcome to America! Land of the free, home of the aggrieved!

Pre-Emptive Strike (Just In Case) Department

David P. West, reportedly an Indianapolis area man, but whose address is being kept a secret, has filed a lawsuit against Ford Motor Company, claiming that although his Ford Bronco II hasn't rolled over and he hasn't suffered any injuries when it hasn't, it might roll over, and he doesn't want to be hurt if it does. His suit asks the court to force Ford Motor to recall all the vehicles it sold and eliminate what West claims is a tendency to roll over. West's is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against Ford. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn't find any defects in the Bronco II after its investigation. Plaintiffs now appear to be staking out a new frontier, the contention they should be awarded damages because something might happen someday. (June 1, 1995)

Seizing The Moment!

You simply never know when opportunity will strike. This morning I was waiting in line to mail certain highly sensitive videotaped material at the Hard Cheese Post Office when I chanced to hear the lady in front of me in line share a snicker with the postal clerk. I leaned forward, tuned in. An assortment of stamps was spread across the counter. The customer picked up a sheet of the new Richard Nixon issue and muttered a derogatory remark about our beloved late President. Seeing an opening, I tapped the lady on the shoulder, and thrust forward a couple of packages I was carrying, both, by some odd coincidence, decorated with the special commemorative I use, the "American Pathetic" stamp featuring the Slicks rather cruelly parodied in an American Gothic setting. "Slick Willie's got his own stamp, ma'am," I fairly chirped, "and I can get you 1,200 for $4.95 if you'd like to try 'em. It's the best he'll ever do, that's for sure." Then, I am sure, I gave both of them one of my self-satisfied snorts, till they broke off my gaze and completed their transaction. I walked out of there fairly humming to myself, day made. (June 3, 1995)

Educating Mike. . .

Mike Littwin of the Baltimore Sun wrote a column about Diane Sawyer's Prime Time Live escapade in late May with 12-year-old Josh Nichols, whose father, Terry Nichols, has been charged in the Oklahoma City bombing. I missed this prime-time television contribution to American culture, but Littwin was not impressed and said so. He thought it outrageous that Sawyer and ABC would bring on an innocent lad and subject him to such exploitation. Of course it's likely that certain sums of money changed hands in this transaction, and that, I think we can all agree, ought to make it all right. Littwin, whose column was printed May 28 in the Indianapolis Star, asked a cosmic question: Is there any bottom in sight for America's marauding television journalists? Is there anything to which they will not stoop? I wrote Mike a brief note of support, offering the obvious answer: there is no bottom to this, although I wouldn't limit it to television journalists. The overwhelming evidence of thousands of years of human evolution is that there's nothing to which we as a species won't sink, no outrage too outrageous, no degradation too depraved, no act too vile. Sorry, Mike. (June 5, 1995)

Digging For Clues

I've written down a list of every place I've ever lived: Scorched Corners, Bloomington, Swill Junction, Fort Leonard Wood (Missouri), Ayer (Massachusetts), Torii Station (Okinawa), Measles Center, Mudwench, New Treblinka, Vile Gorge, Indianapolis, Enema Falls, and a few more. I assigned a numerical value to the first letter of each (A=1, B=2, and so on), and added them up. They total 202. At one point in the early 1980s, they added up to 147. Seven, of course, was Mickey Mantle's number, and the middle digit in our Scorched Corners telephone number back in the 1950s when three-digit number were all the rage (679 was ours). But what do you suppose the number 202 means? They average 11.2222. I search for clues as the lamplight flickers o'er. There must be an answer in there somewhere. (June 10, 1995)

A Left Coast correspondent has written to inform me of a stunt he finds deeply satisfying: he deals with an unwanted torrent of junk mail, some of it from organizations he personally despises, by using their postage-paid envelopes to return boxes of soil and rocks to the sender. Apparently it's as simple as taping the postage-paid envelope onto the carton. My Oregon correspondent reports that even though he includes a letter asking that his name be removed from their list, and includes his address, some organizations continue to send junk mail. He is only the second person I've come across using this ploy. The first was the late and legendary liberal gadfly, curmudgeon, imp, rabblerouser and prankster, Walter Trepling II of Scorched Corners, Indiana, who, rumor had it, mercilessly hectored various televangelists and conservative groups with shipments of rocks, scrap metal, and other refuse at their expense and who kept them on the hook with obscure but somehow-never-quite-delivered promises of significant cash contributions. I'll confess I've tried an innocuous version: simply tearing up the contents and sending back the shredded material in their postage-paid envelope. This other bulk-type response represents an intriguing escalation. (June 15, 1995)

Shopping For Clothes (A Reminiscence)

A wintry mid-January day in Mudwench, Indiana. On an impulse I leave my office and go to Kermit's, the area's most prestigious (and correspondingly overpriced) men's store. Shopping for suits. Ugly business, but once a decade, gotta do it. Dale Miller, slim, dignified, sedate, is my salesman, though I'm sure he calls himself a consultant or something equally fancy-sounding. At least he isn't a Bubba or a Buzz or a Skip or a Chick or a Chico, the guys you always find at car dealerships. Dale tacks my way, hovers at a respectable distance as I approach the suit department. Dale is not pushy, and I am grateful. Size 43 long, I say, and he pulls out a rack of them. Donald Brooks. Yves St. Laurent. Gordo Givenchy. Pierre Cardin. Foonga Wyeeyatanana. Jacques Scumbag. All my old friends are there. I begin fingering through them, by the sleeves, where the price tags hang. $595, says one tag, and my hand retreats, scorched. I try on three. Dale comments softly on the virtues of each. He points me toward the mirror. I go, stand, look. I don't know what to look for, or at, and Dale probably knows that. I'm embarrassed, but recover. I'm debating whether to begin my act with the man. Sell me this one, I say to Dale, pointing to a medium-dark grey suit with a discreet (always discreet) pinstripe. "That's a classic suit," says Dale. "So am I, in my own unusual way," I reply, having decided to push ahead with Dale. "It'll always be in style," he says. "Good," I say, deep bass, emphatically. "That's me--always in style." Brackow, the alterations man, chalks his marks. Dale pushes accessories. I buy one tie. What a fit, I'm thinking to myself. I sign the tab ($209 for the suit, $22 for the tie) and bid Dale a fond adieu. Then, reflecting that I have bought automobiles for less than $209, I dashed outside and threw up in the street. Or maybe only imagined I did. I was in the store for 18 minutes, far more than a lifetime's allotment. I seem to be into clothes lately. A week or so before this I took two old suits to a tailor shop I pass each morning enroute to work. The tailor is deformed in the hips and legs and walks with a pronounced side-to-side lurch. I see a discerning look in his eyes as I stride in, jaunty in my 1959 topcoat and a pair of shoes I bought for $8 at a J.C. Penney store in Vile Gorge, Indiana, in 1966. The shoes, now an easy 18 years old, still sport their original soles, which appear to be made of some sort of strange, indestructible plastic. He scans me, sizes me up. He's a bit disappointed, I can tell. Sure we can alter these, he says with a foreign accent. I think I spot a flicker of smirk on his face as I place the two pathetic suits on the counter-top. He notices that the grey pinstripe (a Schradski model, bought in Mudwench in 1974 for $79) has big--very big--floppy cuffs. Take off the cuffs, I instruct him. These lapels are too wide, he observes with only faintly disguised disdain. "I know," I reply, "but leave 'em on. Let's just leave 'em as they are." I smile at him, offer an ironic chuckle, then add, "You know, if we hold our breaths just a few minutes, they'll be right back in style." He goes on about his work, marking, pinning, making a few notes. It'll cost me $43 to make them fit again. I leave feeling like a champ. Where else, I congratulate myself, can you buy two suits for $43? (June 15, 1995)

Dove books has published, just in time for Father's Day, a new book by one of the world-renowned Menendez brothers--27-year-old-Lyle. The Private Diary of Lyle Menendez has blockbuster potential, and I've dropped the hint to my own children that nothing would make me happier on my special day than to have a copy. Lyle and his brother, Eric, 24, have admitted they murdered their mother and father at the family's Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. A jury could not bring itself to be judgmental in the lads' first trial. A retrial is scheduled to begin August 16. Lyle is rumored to have confessed in his new book that he "overreacted" the night he and his brother killed their parents. He describes his attorney as "not very good," his former girlfriend as a "lying bitch," and boasts that "women are in love with me" and "I can move a jury." Sounds like a perfect American celebrity of the 90s! Bring on the talk shows! Bring on the film rights! Bring on the megabucks contracts, the spin-off deals for Menendez Brothers dolls, candy bars, T-shirts, greeting cards, television sitcoms! We feel your pain, Lyle. We f-e-e-e-l your pain.

Oh Geez, Dad

Father's Day is overrated. We're not good for a danged thing, so what are they doing having a Father's Day, anyway? All we are is everything's fault.

Returning from therapy this morning I heard on my Probe radio an advertisement for the new Infiniti I-3000 or somesuch. A male voice, deep, somber, affecting the most dignified of accents, said to me: "Did you hear the joke about the man who paid $30,000 for a luxury car. . .that had no leg room?" I said to the radio: "Did you hear the joke about the 99.99999999999 per cent of the planet's population who can't afford to pay $30,000 for an automobile? Well, the joke's on them, isn't it?" Then I changed stations, tuned in a local pop therapist who'd make me feel good about myself. (June 18, 1995)
Here's a piece of classic Americana: 83 people injured in the April 19 Oklahoma City federal building bombing have filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the fertilizer believed to have been a component of the explosive used to blow up the building. Among the lawyers filing the suit is Johnny Cochran, one of O.J. Simpson's attorneys. Cochran, obviously broadcasting from Mars, offered this statement: "These products should be used for fertilizing crops, not for making bombs. When somebody makes money on these products, we think they should be held responsible." The lawsuit did not specify a specific amount, but attorneys--can we guess whose?--"said a jury could award more than $1 billion," according to the Associated Press June 11.

Life Imitates Art

Years ago film director Steven Spielberg--or was it Sam Peckinpaugh?--produced a black and white film, Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, which became a cult favorite and is still played on late-night television. The film was based on a then modern metaphor of random violence and featured Weaver taking a one-day business trip and encountering a criminally insane truck driver who stalked him for hundreds of miles across the California desert into the mountains trying to kill him. The June 17 Indianapolis Star carried an Associated Press feature bringing this story neatly into the 1990s, a tale of an Indianapolis trucker who went on a rampage in Colorado in a manner eerily reminiscent of the film. Police said James (apparently no relation to Lester) Flatt, 30, was finally shot and captured after leading police on a wild chase through Denver. A man driving on Interstate-25 near Denver told police he saw a semi truck deliberately trying to force other drivers off the road. The marauding truck exited I-25, turned around, re-entered the interstate northbound and continued to try to ram other drivers. Police joined the fray and Flatt barreled off another exit, smashing parked cars and chasing pedestrians off sidewalks before he was finally brought to heel by police officers. Obviously this is another American who just doesn't feel good about himself.

And While Japanese Kids Are Splitting Quarks in Preparation for A Journey to the Ninth Dimension, American Glitterati Are All Atwitter Over Bryant Gumbel's New 'Do

USA Today's Peter Johnson, ever alert for a scoop, reported breathlessly in the June 14 issue on the stir created on the Today show set by co-host Bryant Gumbel's decision to part his hair on the left side after wearing it without a part for an undisclosed period of time. The new style is the talk of the show, Johnson reported. Sidekick Katie Couric admitted it was "nice to have people obsess over a man's hair for a change. What a difference a part makes!" The show's newsreader, Matt Lauer, confided that he liked The Part but wanted Gumbel to "stay away from my (hair) gel." Network executive Steve Friedman remembered when Gumbel parted his hair the same way back in the early 1970s at station KNBC in Lost Angeles. Gumbel's former co-host, Jane Pauley, confessed she "hadn't noticed Bryant had new hair." Gumbel himself had the sound and look of a sly fox when reporter Johnson asked him about The Part: "It's hair," Gumbel opined. "I just grow it and cut it. I don't care one way or another." A restless nation awaits further developments. (June 15, 1995)

I've called every talk show I can think of, trying to get on to talk about Bryant Gumbel's new 'do, but the wait is so ungodly long. The day will have to come when there is a 24-hour-a-day talk show for every American citizen. Aren't we entitled to that? Don't they owe it to us?

CDs From Ancient Times Reveal How Weird We Were

Ageless Dick Clark is promoting a CD collection of rock music of the 1950s and 1960s in television ads that feature short film clips of many of rock's all-time greats. I'm sprawled, glassy-eyed, drooling in my BarcaLounger, and the scenes flash past: the Dell Vikings, Danny and the Juniors, the Coasters, the Diamonds, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, the Platters, Bo Diddly, the Drifters, Jimmy Jones, and more. There's something odd about it. Finally it hits me: all these people are dressed in suits, or wearing ties and jackets. Some are even in tuxedos. No vomit-soaked T-shirts or torn jeans drenched in unmentionable bodily fluids, no on-stage disembowelments of family pets or parents, no sex with farm animals or corpses, no cannibalism, no beheading of frogs or kittens, no smashing of guitars, no cocaine-snorting onstage. We certainly have traveled a long, long way from those days. (June 20, 1995)

Rock 'n' Roll legend Wolfman Jack died July 1 of a heart attack at his Belvidere, North Carolina, home at age 57. Another legend goes to ground. They say he burned his Camels till the end. Adios, Wolfman.

Polls show about 80 percent of the American people don't want a dollar coin to replace the dollar bill. Yet this idea gets floated every so often, and newspapers across the land, always in touch with their readers who don't want one, editorialize in favor of one. The June 21, 1995, Bloomington Herald-Times says "If public resistance could be overcome, the time for a convenient $1 coin is overdue." The H-T also wants to know when we're "going to get rid of pennies and just round all purchases to the nearest nickel?" When, indeed?

I'm sure there are compelling reasons--probably legal--but why would the Anderson, Indiana, school board want to change the names of the city's two surviving high schools (storied Anderson High is being closed at the end of the 1996-97 school year) from Anderson Highland and Anderson Madison Heights to Anderson North and Anderson South? This is an exchange of two perfectly serviceable place names, each with its own special lilt, for two generic, sterile, faceless, anonymous late 20th Century American classics, North and South. Is the gene pool shriveling up there, too? I first noticed American corporations shedding place names with any connection to a recognizable locality in the 1970s ( for example,South Bend, Indiana's fine, old St. Joseph Bank & Trust Company, identified with the local St. Joseph River valley, a connection to local history and people, changed its name to Trustcorp, for example, a name that means nothing, connects to nothing). Thus the American landscape came to be cluttered with such names as Exxon and Unisys and acronymic monstrosities like NBD Bank, BP America, MBNA America and so forth. My theory is it's for portability. Corporations want to be able to move anywhere in the world overnight with a name that's meaningless and unconnected anywhere: Trustcorp could just as well be in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Finland, or Cambodia as in South Bend, Indiana. St. Joseph Bank & Trust Co. couldn't be. And in this age of global strutting, it's so provincial to be encumbered by connections that can only slow one down in the stampede to that next important business plunder or personal fitness workout. One name fits all! And they can sneak off in the middle of the night if they need to, and leave no trace.

I'd Call That Ornery, Wouldn't You?

Jason Pearson, a 20-year-old Delphi, Indiana, man, was convicted of aggravated murder in June in Castle Dale, Utah. Pearson was convicted of fatally shooting a Utah state trooper following a 24-mile chase along Interstate 70. The trooper was killed and three other police vehicles hit with gunfire as they closed in on the lad. At his trial, Pearson testified he "never intended to hurt anyone" as he fired again and again with a shotgun and then a rifle. It took a 12-member jury almost six hours to convince itself that all that hot lead at least meant the young man was ornery. Now a judge has to make a gutty decision: life with parole or life without. Stay tuned. But don't be too judgmental! (July 4, 1995)

Brave New Casper

Casper, a summer blockbuster film brought to us by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures, and packing 'em in at theaters across this great nation since its late May premiere, apparently has been modernized and catapulted into the brave new world of the Nineties featuring a horny little ghost. Casper, of course, was a Hollywood cartoon and comic book critter of our childhoods, friendly, cute, benign, and certainly not interested in getting into little girls' pants (or little boys' either). Spoilsport critics say that's changed in the new Casper film. Russell Harvey, whose father is credited with turning the original Casper The Friendly Ghost into a national institution, is now criticizing the modern film, claiming it features "graphic violence, obscene language and perverted characterizations." Harvey is angry about a scene in which Casper discovers a young girl in his bedroom and says, "There's a girl on my bed. Yes!" Harvey says this version of Casper has sexual desires for a female child, and even kisses her. Marvin Levy, a spokesman for Speilberg's company, Amblin, pooh-poohs Harvey's complaint and says most people will interpret the film differently. Still, he sounded suspiciously Nineties when he told USA Today that "This Casper is a Casper with an attitude. 'Puckish' is the word." Levy added that if Casper acts differently in the new movie from the old cartoons, it is because times have changed." He's certainly right about that, and proud of it, I'd bet. (July 4, 1995)

An excerpt from Ronald Kessler's new book, Inside The White House, printed in the June 5 Washington Times, tells us of the eating habits and preferences of many of our mid- to late-20th Century favorites: Ronald and Nancy Reagan, President and Rosalyn Carter, The Nixons, the Fords, the Bushes, and some of their staff as well. We learn that Pat Nixon ate cottage cheese, too, though the cognoscenti chose to ridicule only her husband for eating it. Ronald Reagan liked hamburger soup (made from ground beef, tomatoes, and carrots) and wanted his steaks well done. Nancy Reagan favored healthy foods on the White House menu, but her husband would sneak in macaroni and cheese and other foods he liked when she wasn't around. We learn that the White House spends over $250,000 on flowers, and that first family members get unlimited free (to them, not to taxpayers) personal telephone calls. Henry Kissinger, who served in both the Ford and Nixon administrations, was distinctly unpopular with the crew of Air Force One, on which he frequently flew. Kessler says the crew did not enjoy cleaning up after Kissinger, and quotes then-chief steward Charles Palmer on Kissinger's table manners: "Henry Kissinger. . .didn't like peas. If there were peas on his plate, he would take a knife and brush them on the floor. He was a real messy eater. There were a lot of things on the floor before he was finished." The old steward is far too kind here. He's describing a pig and an asshole, not a "messy eater." Why won't Palmer call it what it is?

An obscure U.S. Labor Department report confirms what we know in our guts: While the stock market has roared to new highs and America's corporations are reporting record profits, the value of wages and benefits paid to the American worker is declining. The Labor department reported at the end of June that the value of those items went down 3 percent in the past year, the first decline since it began its calculation in 1987. And a recent survey by the Conference Board shows that in an age where downsizing, rightsizing and rationalizing (code for: eliminating jobs) have reached unparalleled popularity in corporate boardrooms, more than half the victims who get new jobs earn less money and the average cut in pay is 20 percent. What's going on here is a fundamental reordering of the economic universe. The worst nightmare of the country's Haves has to be that the Have Nots will wake up and discover what's going on.

Associated Press covered a news conference at Cape Canaveral featuring U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard and two Russian crewmates who landed at the Kennedy Space Center July 7 after several months aboard Russia's Mir space station. AP's story was accompanied by a four-column close-up picture of the three men enjoying hot fudge sundaes. Thagard wore his baseball cap indoors for the occasion. The Russians had removed their headgear. And so bad manners now infests even the NASA astronaut corps. Sayin' See Ya

Danged if I didn't lose my legs again today. Walked into the office at 7 a.m., ready for another day of challenge, excitement, and opportunity. The place looked funny. Bare. Then I noticed. Our supplies, rating sheets, forms, evaluations, most of the paperwork normally out on supply tables were gone. "Gee, what's going on, Ryan?" I asked the local site boss. I knew what was going on, just wanted to play the fool, see what Ryan would say. Ryan mumbled something about how it "looked like 'they' were going to shut down the office for a while." Today's probably the last day, he added. We knew better than to ask a lot of questions. Part of Ryan's job is to lie and dissemble to the rest of us. Ryan, a full-time and 'permanent' employee, said he wasn't sure where he'd be next week. He was his usual non-fountain of information. None of the rest of us--unemployed scum, dross, and rabble that we are--were much surprised. There'd been a few suspicious signs over the previous few weeks. Ryan played dumb all through it. And who knows, maybe he didn't know anything. What has this been, though, if not a great experience? So adios, Mr. Kratchlow. (July 7, 1995)

Dear Johnny. . .

I'm still trying to compose a letter to Jonathan Winters. Daunting task. How could I ever tell him how much influence he's had on my life? This appears to be an exception to Poe's claim that there never arose a thought in the human brain beyond the utterance of the human tongue. What would Edgar Allen say if he were writing Johnny?

Somehow, Coonley Must Be Stopped

The Illinois Junior Academy of Science, an association of 800 schools, plus teachers, students, and others wishing to foster student interest in science, has come up with a Perfectly Nineties solution to the pernicious problem of achievement. Its board of directors, almost surely anticipating big trouble from Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, which had won three straight Academy science fairs and was then threatening to win an unprecedented fourth, voted to ban any school from team competition that had won three years in a row. Somehow that got softened to four in a row. Coonley School promptly won its fourth straight championship and now has been officially banned from competing next year. The kids were punished by being denied the individual plaques given to winners of each of the previous 66 fairs--the school got a 30-inch high trophy--and informed that their school could compete again for the title in 1996. So far, the academy plans to let individual Coonley School pupils compete for honors. Coonley is described as a highly selective private school which admits only students with IQ scores exceeding 120 on two separate examinations. Its pupils, academy pooh-bahs admit, are just too good. "We have decided to give other schools an opportunity to win," said Janine Petric, Academy president. Because winning the state science fair is such a prestigious accomplishment for a school, Petric said, "we want to spread the wealth around." Spoken like a true Clintonista, don't you think? Coonley's headmaster, Gaston Favreau, who knows resentment against achievement when he sees it, preferred to be disingenuous when he told a Chicago Tribune reporter, "Are we saying because you are bright and you put in the time, the effort, the energy, the creativity and the critical thinking, you cannot come out on top?" Precisely. And Favreau surely knows as well as you or I that the next step will be to ban any individual from winning too often, as these late 20th Century snivelers continue their ceaseless questing for equality of results, not opportunity.(July 10, 1995)

I recently called one of America's big corporate giants, Con Agra, and of course was put on hold. While I waited, their Muzak played Ravel's Bolero for me. Sure beats Iron Maiden, Meat Loaf or Snoop Doggy Doo Slimebag, and I told 'em so once I finally got to talk to a human being. One small step for troglodytes. . .

A Setback--But Only A Brief One--In The Relentless March Toward Fairness And Equal Rights For All The Earth's Disadvantaged Peoples

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati has upheld a lower court ruling against a deaf man in Cleveland who sued the Cleveland Browns, NBC, ABC, CBS, and all their local affiliates in 1993. He claimed the National Football League's television blackout rule (wherein home games are not broadcast locally if they are not sold out 72 hours in advance) discriminated against deaf people. No word yet on whether the aggrieved plaintiff will take this to the Supreme Court. (July 19, 1995)

Cracking The Star/News Code

Corporate big cheeses have announced, in the oddly stilted lawyerly language reserved for such occasions, that effective September 1 the staffs of the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News will be merged into one big, happy family--still fiercely independent, still nobly questing after truth, justice, and multicultural diversity, mind you, but ever so much more efficient, coordinated, focused, value-driven, and all with the overarching aim of serving its beloved readers and advertisers even better. In other words, they're going to get rid of a bunch of people. Bet money on it.

Kirk Douglas rode a horse named "Whiskey" in two different movies: Lonely Are The Brave, and The Villain. I wonder what that means.

Pack Heat Or Shop--It's Our Choice

Patrons at Sony Theaters on Indianapolis's west side are greeted by a sign inside the ticket booth window which says: No Loaded Firearms Allowed Inside Theater. A short distance away, at the entrance to Galyan's TradingCompany, a large locally-based sporting goods store, is this sign: Firearms Not Permitted Inside This Store. I'd left my sidearms and large-bore shoulder weapons at home, anyway, so I was able to go the movie and shop at Galyan's. I think there's a clue in there, somewhere, about our society. (July 25, 1995)

She Can Kick Tail, Too

My wife, Mogo, has a new title: Goddess of Teaming, Thematics, New Paradigms, Multicultural Diversity, Multiple Learning Styles, Literature Circles, Student Groupings, Ethno-Centric Learning, Essential Questions, and Rubrics. Are there any questions?

Companies Which Desperately Need to Change Their Names Department:

The first two nominees are: Siemens and Fifth Third Bank. Additional nominees are welcomed.

My Family And Friends Will Forgive Me, For I Know Not What I Do The technological imperative propels me onward, upward, kicking, screaming. . .I have purchased, and appear to have successfully installed, a fax modem. I've joined the wildly cheering throng of America Online subscribers as well, and appear to have successfully completed my AOL logon. Within hours my e-mail inbox brimmed with an exuberant personal letter to me from Jambalaya Fibish, AOL's president. He wanted to be--and was-- the first to congratulate me and welcome me to the AOL family. Bold new horizons and brave new worlds beckon, it is obvious. (August 8, 1995)

Star And BSU Struggle Against Judgmentalism

Two Ball State University athletes were arrested in late July in a fracas involving one of the three elements nearly always present in these stories--women, booze, or drugs. This time it was DeWayne Rogers,then considered a likely starter on the coming year's Cardinals basketball team, breaking down a woman's apartment door, confining her against her wishes, and finally leading police on a car chase that ended with Rogers' arrest, along with a cohort, footballer Marcellus Davis, when the lads drove their car into a dead-end alley. Charges against Davis were later dropped, but Rogers was dismissed from the team and faces assorted counts of burglary, criminal confinement, and resisting arrest. University officials struggled to be non-judgmental, noting that it was a privilege to take part in college athletics and concluding, rather lamely, that Rogers, for one, "failed to meet" the school's "expectations" regarding personal conduct. The Indianapolis Star's writer, Terrance Harris, opened his August 1 account of the episode by describing the lads' conduct as "an apparent error in judgment." (August 2, 1995)

Here's a little snapshot of where our country's going: children under age 18 living with one parent numbered 18.6 million in 1994 and constituted 27 percent of this age group. In 1970 they comprised 12 percent of the under-18 group. In the same period, the number of unmarried-couple households increased sevenfold. (Source: Census Bureau report, ""Population Profile of the United States, 1995.")

Worth Ever' Dang Penny Of It!

The Indianapolis Star annually produces a multi-page report on Indiana's highest paid business executives. It's the sort of thing you read with a vomit trough nearby. Conseco, Inc., an insurance holding company based in Carmel, spawned the year's top predators. Its chairman, Stephen Hilbert, took $117.64 million to the bank in 1994 (more than doubling his 1993 take of $42.48 million). Three other Conseco executives hit the jackpot, too: Rollin Dick ($29.69 million), Donald Gongaware ($28.28 million), and Lawrence Inlow ($21.54 million). The Conseco Four totaled $197.16 million for leading the company in 1994 to a failed $3 billion buyout attempt of Kemper Corp., and a 21.65 percent drop in their company's stock value. Meantime the average American worker got a 3 percent pay increase in 1994, and of course millions more were rightsized out of existence. In Japan the average top executive receives 20 to 25 times the typical worker's wages. In France and Germany the ratio is 35 to 1. In the U.S. top executives get over 190 times what the average worker gets. Tell me this country isn't insane.

Four tourists have won America's unacknowledged-but-bet-your-life-it's-real lottery. Their winning numbers came up August 12 when an Empire State Building elevator in which they were passengers went out-of-control, hit the elevator shaft ceiling at the 80th floor, then dropped and stalled between the 79th and 80th floors. The elevator cab was stranded for about an hour and a half, till rescue crews cut a hole in the elevator and lifted the passengers to safety. The four tourists, whose names were not released, were said to have suffered minor injuries and were briefly hospitalized in satisfactory condition. Each may now savor the prospect of lawsuit damage rewards in the millions to compensate for their pain and suffering. Well worth a trip to Gotham, I'd say. (August 12, 1995)

Shop Or Be Shot?

Tandy Corp. has opened one of its new Incredible Universe superstores in Indianapolis. It advertises 185,000 square feet--about the size of four football fields--and over 85,000 different electronic products under one roof. The Indianapolis Star devoted 50 column inches--about 40 percent of the business section cover page--plus some runover on an inside page to a worshipful story announcing the big grand opening. Incredible Universe is more than triple the size of its largest Indianapolis competitors, locally-owned H.H. Gregg, and Minneapolis-based Best Buys, both of whose biggest stores here run around 50,000 square feet. Incredible Universe is catapulting the "shopping concept" to new levels of frenzy by making "entertainment a big factor" in our shopping experience. "Cast members," as Incredible Universe calls its employees, will greet, mingle and "sing, dance,and coax shoppers into a karaoke studio," as well as encourage us to "play with the merchandise." Tandy pooh-bahs expect more than a million customers will visit the local store in its inaugural year, with 10 per cent of those traveling, in a heartbreaking commentary on the barrenness of their lives, more than 100 miles to do so. Each new day in America brings a story like this, as businesses struggle to fine-tune the rabble to some new and tantalizing shopping experience. The furious building of strip malls and megastores eats like cancer at the landscape. The astonishing vista from the interstates and major thoroughfares around Indianapolis is the same--bulldozers, earth movers, concrete trucks, housing and commercial construction as far as the eye can see. It goes on around the clock 365 days a year, and all against a backdrop of millions of jobs being eliminated across the country, of stagnating or declining family incomes. Aside from wondering about the paradox of all this, it takes only a small leap of imagination to foresee the day when places like Incredible Universe, with billions at stake in inventory, payroll, and other operating costs, will begin sending armed "cast members" out into nearby neighborhoods with orders to shoot out the tires of passing vehicles and bring people in at gunpoint so they can be forced to either shop (and sing and dance and ham it up in the karaoke booth) or be shot down on the spot. The economic imperative will demand nothing less: "Shop or Be Shot." (August 12, 1995)

Welcome Back To School!

Two parents were arrested at an Indianapolis westside elementary school August 17 after they assaulted a school security officer when administrators told them they couldn't complete the registration of their son that day. Brian Cole and his wife, Laverne, became angry when told that because they lived outside the school district, they would have to wait to register their son in the first grade until after children living within the district had all been registered. The father assaulted a security guard, who was taken to a local hospital with a concussion, a facial cut and a bruised back. The wife was charged with disorderly conduct for arguing with police when they were arresting the husband. Welcome back to school! (August 17, 1995)

In the torrent of press coverage about Shannon Faulkner's duel with the Citadel, you almost never see the truth mentioned. Femininnies and the liberal mainstream media paint it as a holy crusade against repressive, fascist, male-dominated institutions and a heroic struggle for human rights in the face of cruel discrimination. Bleeders themselves see all this, and a battle as well against the militaristic wacko gun-toting militia crowd--The Citadel is, after all, a military school, isn't it?--kooks who threaten our nation on every side. At bottom, though, this story is not about Shannon Faulker's burning desire to get a college education at a military institution, or to use a Citadel education to launch a military career; it's about Shannon Faulker and her handlers deciding it isn't fair for South Carolina taxpayers' money to be used at a school which allows only males as cadets. There's nothing wrong with Shannon Faulker's taking such a decision; there are times when it's necessary to "make a point," and take on the establishment. Perhaps this is one of them. What's wrong is calling it something else, as so many revisionist lefties are. (August 20, 1995)

And since it's unconstitutional for The Citadel to be an all-male school, then we'll soon see the left pushing for legal action to force the approximately 94 women's colleges in the United States to admit men, won't we?

Little things which help us understand the universe (from "Harper's Index" in the August, 1995, issue of Harper's magazine): Percentage of contributions to the Republican National Committee since 1993 that were of $1,000 or more: 7; Percentage of contributions to the Democratic National Committee that were: 27; Ratio of compensation paid AlliedSignal's CEO in 1994 to wages paid to all of its 3,810 Mexican maquiladora workers: 3:2; Percentage of Americans who don't know that Hiroshima was the site of the first atomic bomb attack: 35; Estimated number of killings in True Lies, a film Bob Dole cited in March as among those "most friendly to the family": 94; Amount of the $21,000 in contributions Bob Dole has received from Time Warner since 1987 that he plans to return: 0; Average percentage of local TV evening news time that is devoted to crime and disaster coverage: 53.

But He Did Have A Full Box Of Ammo. . .

Dispatches from the frontier inform us that Judge Bruce Halliday actually wept in his Castle Dale, Utah, courtroom July 5 when he handed down a life sentence with the possibility of parole to 20-year-old Jason Scott Pearson, the Delphi, Indiana, lad convicted of aggravated murder for launching 16 rifle and shotgun blasts, one of which proved fatal, at a pursuing Utah state policeman. His attorneys argued that despite the 16 shots Pearson fired, "he did not have murder in his heart" and that what really happened was the lad just "made a very bad mistake." Judge Pearson noted that Pearson came from a broken home, that he was "a troubled young man" without a "serious criminal past," and should be given hope and a chance at rehabilitation. Pearson himself had testified he never intended to hurt anyone with his fusillade. No word about what hope was offered the parents, wife, and two young children of the slain trooper.

Don't Listen To What They Say, Watch What They Do. . .

Most business executives put profits first and people near the bottom of their priority lists, according to a survey by the big New York management consulting firm of Towers Perrin Co. Interviews with 300 honchos from medium- and large-sized firms produced 73 percent claiming that employees were their company's most important investment but when they ranked priorities, investing in employees came up fifth on a six-item list. This is a real shocker, isn't it?

More tidbits which help us understand our universe (from "Harper's Index" in the September, 1995 edition of Harper's magazine): Days after the Pentagon announced in June that it didn't need more Stealth bombers that the House voted to fund more: 10; Federal payments made in 1994 to government employees who resigned as part of a downsizing program: $912,000,000; Federal salaries paid in 1994 to newly hired government employees: $780,689,202; Percentage of all criminal defendants in Japan who are found guilty: 99; Percentage of all murders in Colombia that result in a conviction: 3; Weeks after the peso collapsed that former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari joined the board of Dow Jones: 4; Hours it took six residents of a Washington town to renovate a local intersection after waiting 10 years for the state to do it: 6; Ratio of the median U.S. waiting period for a human liver transplant to the amount of time Mickey Mantle waited: 74:1; Marriage proposals received by Timothy McVeigh since his arrest last April for the Oklahoma City bombing: 4. (August 26, 1995)

All Hail The Judge!

Peter J. Nemeth, judge of the St. Joseph County Probate Court in South Bend, Indiana, waltzed straight into the Memorable Sound Bite Hall of Fame with this one. . .in announcing a crackdown on deadbeat dads who don't pay child support and in sentencing Rochelle Damonte Roberts, 24, to two to four years in prison (Roberts admits to fathering nine children via six women, and owes $29,716 in back support), Nemeth said on July 17 that he would begin jailing able-bodied men who don't pay, then quipped: "The message to the men of our community who have reached puberty is, if they're going to unzip their pants, they're going to have to unzip their wallets."

Setting Sail. . .

Today marked my own modest debut on the Internet with the "Hoosiers" List. At 8:30 a.m. I sent forth a small morsel of red meat--just a couple paragraphs--about IU basketball. Then I quickly signed off and left the house. When I returned that evening there were 20 messages, replies, and replies to replies crammed into my electronic mailbox. Several were from certified Grape Kool-Aiders. This is only the beginning of an electronic dialogue involving the billions and billions of us who follow IU sports. Let the games begin! (August 28, 1995)

An additional 18 messages clogged my electronic mailbox on the second day after my e-mail debut. Already, though, my original message has been forgotten. The respondents quickly fell to yapping and arguing among themselves about other IU sports issues. It's like a shark feeding frenzy. People are swallowing their own young whole, chewing off their own arms and legs and those of anyone nearby in their maniacal quest for IU news. It's not a pretty picture. God, I love it! (August 29, 1995)

Mere Coincidences, All Of Them

Marsha Dueker of suburban Brownsburg in an August 31 letter to the Indianapolis Star raised a truly ornery question: How come, she asked, Dallas TV star Larry Hagman got his liver transplant in 39 days, singer David Crosby got his in 35 days, and Mickey Mantle waited only 48 hours, when the average wait for an "ordinary person" is 130 days? Just coincidences, don't you think? (August 31, 1995)

Feeling Our Pain

Chicago Tribune business writer George Gunset, in a Sept. 2 "Business Week in Review" section, summarized the just-announced $10 billion megadeal merging two of Gotham City's banking behemoths, Chase Manhattan Corp. and Chemical Bank, by noting that the new critter would be the nation's largest bank with $297 billion in assets, and that "only 12,000 jobs would be eliminated." Wall Street was adrool at the thought of all the synergies, dynamics, and wonderful cost reductions the big deal would provide investors. But what about the 12,000 human carcasses that'll stack up? What'll we do with them?
Mogo said to me last night, "You have no expectations of life." I pled guilty as charged. (September 22, 1995)

No jury is going to find O.J. Simpson guilty. Facts won't matter. He'll walk. This verdict was assured during the jury selection process, when the Lost Angeles district attorney's office agreed, under pressure from "community" groups, to allow minorities to comprise a majority on the Simpson jury.

Like Johnny Said, Race Was A Factor

I heard part of the post-verdict press conference of Simpson's attorneys. A reporter asked Johnny Cochran if race was a factor in the trial and verdict. Cochran said it absolutely was not. The reporter didn't utter a syllable of challenge to Cochran's preposterous lie. Even a Limbaugher with half his brain tied behind his back knows race was a major factor in the whole trial process. For the press to let Cochran get away with denying it is disgraceful. (October 5, 1995)

One-Class Basketball On The Brink

There's a movement afoot in Indiana to eliminate the state's traditional one-winner-take-all high school basketball tournament and replace it with a four- or five-class tournament based on school enrollment. This was inevitable and is part of a national movement that's been gathering speed in the 1990s. It's led by the sensitivity and self-esteem crowd that's on us like a locust plague. They've been tinkering with test scores, adjusting standards (always lowering them), tilting the playing fields, changing the rules whenever someone wins too often, and resenting achievement and superior performance whenever they find it. Troglodytes and traditionalists are protesting, but the tide seems irreversible. One smart aleck said he felt some of the class tourney advocates wouldn't be happy unless all 384 schools in the state received a championship trophy. Not a bad idea, come to think of it. UPS could take care of the deliveries in one day and everybody in every school would feel good about himself. That is what this is all about, isn't it? (October 14, 1995)

And if it's not fair at the high school level, what about college football? Shouldn't we have several divisions in the Big Ten, so thalidomides like IU can have a chance to win a "championship" every year? Don't we have a right to this?

Headline For Our Inflated Times Department: 400,000 Attend Million Man March. (October 17, 1995)

Louis Farrakhan, organizer of the 400,000 Man March on Wonderland, D.C., is now threatening to file lawsuits against local authorities who estimated the crowd at 400,000. Farrakhan says this is a honky racist conspiracy to deliberately distort attendance at the march. Could we just split the difference and get on with our lives?

Mark Fuhrman uses the word "nigger" and the bleeders scream "racist" to the heavens. Louis Farrakhan calls Jews "bloodsuckers" and nary a peep of protest is heard. Why does a racist anti-Semite black man get a free pass and a white Lost Angeles police detective get excoriated? I just don't get it. (October 17, 1995)

The second Menendez Brothers trial has begun. Why go to the trouble? Can't we just give them their own TV show and a fat compensatory federal grant? Isn't that what this is all about?

Mary Tyler Moore revealed in her autobiography that she helped her terminally ill brother try to commit suicide in 1992. Good for her! We all need a trusted friend we can count on at a time like that. (October 18, 1995)

Another Reason to Go On Living: Woodfield Mall in Schaumberg, Illinois, is again the world's largest mall, breathless promoters say, with the opening October 20th of a new wing. Aging crooner Tony Bennett warbled for the opening ceremony. The new addition must have been built in response to Bloomington, Minnesota's Mall of America, which had billed itself as the largest. The day will come when our entire nation is one big covered mall.

For God's Sake, Don't Look Down. . .

Denying surveys which show the average American spends six to seven hours a day watching television, Lee York, a vice president at Market Media, Inc., says "People today don't have the time to read the newspaper or watch television" in explaining why his company is now marketing advertising space on supermarket floors. The floor is a "barren environment," according to York, whose firm will implant brightly colored graphics and product logos in linoleum in Winn-Dixie Stores nationwide. Market Media aims to have floor ads in over 8,500 stores by 1997. What is this if not the logical extension of the genetic compulsion to fill up empty space to soothe a nation heavily populated with people who'd be uneasy if left alone in an empty room?

Drool-Snapper

Here I thought I was doing all right, keeping an even disposition and a cheerful spirit about my rightsizedness. . .and then I discovered the June 26, 1995, issue of Fortune's cover headline, "Are You Paid Enough? (Unless You Earn Four Times Your Age, the Answer Is Probably NO)" At the bottom was a picture of "John Panzer, a 43-year-old software marketer with a family of four" (who) "makes $125,000 and still feels strapped." The string of drool at the corner of my mouth snapped up. I churned to page 66, saw everybody's salary, muttered. Figured out I was being paid 14.8 percent of my age. How am I gonna send my kids to Princeton, keep up the mortage on my $250,000 starter house in Dog Log Woods? Now I'm sullen, bitter. This is enough to make me vote Democratic!

Another Family Vacation Ruined

Nobody's more disappointed than I that they've canceled the big O.J. Simpson sports memorabilia show in Atlantic City in February. I'd been working extra hours to set aside the money needed for the $159.95 photo of the Ford Bronco chase, signed by O.J. and his driver, Al Cowlings, and the $100 courtroom scene signed by O.J. and Johnny Cochran. I was gonna drive out and make a whole week of it! Dang!

Hoist 'Em!

"Hollywood is or can be a very toxic place. And I'm trying to keep that away from my kids as much as I can." --Actor Bruce Willis, telling Extra why he and his wife, actress Demi Moore, and their children live in Hailey, Idaho. Great, Bruce, but what are you gonna do when your kids rent Disclosure,a movie starring their mother, in which she unharnesses her heaving canteloupe classics and dives into Michael Douglas's crotch for a truly memorable bob job about 10 minutes (9 minutes, 42.33810955 seconds, actually) into the story? Tell 'em that there's no gettin' away from it, that the "toxicity" has followed them all the way to Hailey, Idaho? That it really isn't their own mother up there sucking away on the big silver screen? If Bruce and Demi are really serious about this, there's something they could do. They could decline film roles like this. But of course nobody will pay them $4 million per film not to act in them. There's your petard, right there. What do do, what to do, what to do? (November 10, 1995) Twenty Years Ago Today. . .

Twenty years ago today the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier loaded with 26,116 tons of iron ore, plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior in a fierce storm. Today there was to be a private ceremony for the families of the 29 dead crewmen at the Great Lakes Shipping Museum at Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, who immortalized the episode in his epic song, The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald, was to attend. God, how I wish I could have been there. (November 10, 1995)

Can't Beat 'em? Ban 'em!

The Let's Keep Tilting The Playing Field, By God, Till We Win movement has reared its ugly head in Illinois again. Bob Doan, principal of Villa Grove High School south of Urbana, has asked the Illinois High School Athletic Association to ban private schools from state athletic tournaments. They're winning too much, he says, and it's not fair. Pathetic.

Two Reasons To Puke On Veterans Day

(1) Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (who, at age 79, and a bit too late for the 58,000 Americans who died there, now says his masterminding of American involvement in the Vietnam War was "a mistake") in Hanoi to apologize to North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, and (2) Slick Willie participating in and thereby defiling a Saturday memorial ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns for fallen American veterans. (November 11, 1995)

"We all make mistakes in life and I'm now trying to atone for mine." --Robert McNamara, to Associated Press reporter Kathy Wilhelm, who asked about his motive for his trip to Hanoi to meet General Giap, in the Indianapolis Star November 12.)

You know, I can't even remember what the weather was like in Scorched Corners when I was a kid. There was probably a 50 percent chance of everything, though.

Looking At Bright, Shiny Objects

Georgia State Lottery, Rebecca Paul, has announced plans for a new " Quick Cash" game which beautifully reflects our times. "Quick Cash" will feed our insatiable hunger for more and more frequent stimulation by giving players a chance to win at rapid-fire intervals--as many as 12 games per hour every hour the lottery's computers are running, from 6 a.m. to midnight. In an Atlanta Journal and Constitution interview Thanksgiving week, Paul noted that Georgians have to wait 24 hours between games "to have another crack at a big online jackpot." This was clearly intolerable. She expects the new caper to offer "Quick Cash" drawings every five minutes and to yield about $200 million annually in increased wagering, on top of the existing $1.4 billion bet annually in Georgia. Revealing an uncanny marketing savvy, Paul predicted the new game will not only expand the base of players but bring many new retail establishments into the state's gambling network. "Quick Cash" will be an online computer game mainly available in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, and clubs. The state lottery board unanimously approved "Quick Cash" at its mid-November meeting without any debate. There were critics, of course, but they were the same old strident, hysterical Christians, moralists, Luddites, fuddy-duddies, spoilsports and wacko right-wing bombers and kooks who are always trying to stop progress and deprive the rest of us of our Constitutional rights. Georgia Governor Zell Miller, "the father of Georgia's lottery," said he'd heard the critics wailing but wasn't concerned. "I've heard all those arguments on the lottery for years," he said. "If that's what the lottery commission wants to do, that's fine with me." The Journal and Constitution, focused as most newspapers are on the moment's minutia, missed an opportunity to connect this story to the larger unfolding spectacle of American life. We are inching in incremental steps, unnoticeable to all but the demented, hypersensitive few, toward a society in which continuous sensory stimulation is demanded by the rabble and provided by their keepers. Evidence abounds. More and more businesses run 24 hours a day. Connections to global markets now require round-the-clock vigilance from investors, shylocks, bankers, bureaucrats, dictators, criminals and business people, for every second of every day someone out there is making deals, shifting billions in currency at warp speed, bribing governments, inventing new schemes, penetrating previously untapped markets for goods, or creating new ones. Thousands of new products appear each year. Over a billion dollars of credit card transactions occur each day. Shopping malls metastasize, and their blazing mercury vapor lamps transform hundreds of thousands of square miles of night to day. Lasers sweep the skies, punching holes to potential new customers in other galaxies. More models of athletic shoes were introduced last year than brands of athletic shoes existed in 1959. The TV screen flickers hypnotically, strobelike, in thatch huts on the Serengheti, ice caves in Antarctica, mansions in Europe, crack houses in Calcutta, ghetto hovels in Detroit and Johannesburg, terrorist hideouts in Beirut and the Sudan. Mailboxes bulge each day with more printed material than many of us will read in a lifetime, hyping products, causes, politicians, dreams, scams. The three inches thick Sunday newspaper weighs over 10 pounds, most of it advertising. Phones jangle incessantly, many calls placed by computers. We clap hands to our heads to shut out the scratching, clawing sound at the door, on the walls and the roof, the sounds of telemarketers burrowing to get inside to goad us to buy something, anything, to keep this awesome, ravenous selling machine satiated. If we don't buy, and buy enough and buy now and keep buying, someday they'll come to our houses with guns, and make us buy something. They'll insist that it is our civic duty. The rosters of America Online, Compuserve and the other computer services are expanding almost exponentially now, as millions more of us allow these strangers into our homes to hawk goods, introduce us to total strangers in "chatting rooms," entice us to give them credit card numbers, personal data. Children and adults worldwide sigh from boredom and angst. School is boring. Work is boring. Life is boring. The cry resounds for stimulation, more excitement. A glance at any television or movie screen shows us slashing, flashing images, rapid cuts from scene to scene: lights flaring nuclear white from fires and explosions, hurtling vehicles, fire hose sprays of Uzi gunfire, super close-ups of hairy hands setting timers, tamping explosives into pipebombs, strangulation victims drooling spittle and blood, heads exploding as dum-dum shells plow home, breasts heaving, tongues probing, dope-sated eyes rolling back, pelvises grinding, gigantic silver-black lizardlike insects towering over us in narrow exitless passageways, drooling clear viscous slime from savage jaws as they close in to kill. Faster, faster. Screams, more screams. The din rises, the gates to the abyss open wide. . . If Georgia isn't the first state to have cash games every minute then some other state will. The question is not if, but when. (November 30, 1995)

Loading The Dice. . .

An article in the December 1995 ABA Journal confirmed what many among the unwashed rabble suspected: the O.J. Simpson trial verdict was likely sealed when the jury was selected. Pre-trial questionnaires prepared by jury selection consultants show that of those who were seated on the final Simpson jury: 100 percent did not regularly read daily newspapers; 75 percent believed Simpson was unlikely to have committed the crimes because he excelled at football; 42 percent said they or their family members had "negative law enforcement experiences" (code for: were suspicious or skeptical of police); 42 percent believed it was OK to use physical force on a family member. Simpson's lawyers extensively used jury research by trial consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, while the prosecution, according to the ABA Journal, declined jury selection advice from its consultant. More evidence, sadly enough, that this trial--all trials, probably--wasn't at all a quest for truth or justice but was instead a a contest, a game of manipulation and deceit between lawyers to see who was cleverest and who could load the dice in the jury selection. Shame ought to be widespread in the legal profession, but I doubt that it is.

Peculiar Photo Shoot Has Rural Georgians Puzzled

Word drifts north from rural Georgia that two adult men and two nearly teen-age boys were observed by several passing motorists in what appeared to be some sort of bizarre "photo shoot" along Georgia Highway 212 the day after Thanksgiving. George State Patrol and local police discounted rumors that at least one of the adults was a recent walk-away from a nearby Dorkburg, Georgia, mental facility. Witnesses were said to have passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie as their cars hurtled past the unusual roadside tableau. Best stay tuned, keep an eye on this story. May be something to it.

Peek At Reality Too Much For California Family

A California family has sued Walt Disney Co. for damages following an Unpleasantness in Anaheim's Disneyland parking lot in which the plaintiffs were robbed of about $1,650 by three miscreants who escaped on foot. Billie Jean Matay, her daughter Denise Bennett, and Bennett's three school-age children were "subjected to hours of questioning" and the children were "traumatized," the lawsuit said, when security guards took them to an office where the children saw Disney characters taking off their costumes. The family alleges that Disney employees are guilty of "exposing the children to the reality that Disney characters were, in fact, make-believe." No word on the amount of damages sought, but we can bet it's millions and millions and millions. There are few more heinous crimes in this great big wonderful country of ours than exposing anyone--let alone young children--to reality. Somebody must be made to pay for this, and who better than the Walt Disney Company? (December 7, 1995)

Surely you've heard about the Recent Unpleasantness in Harlem involving a black man who entered a Jewish-owned clothing store brandishing a pistol and a container of paint thinner, allowed black customers to leave before shooting fleeing white people, then set the building on fire and shot himself to death. Gotham City pooh-bahs leapfrogged over themselves to proclaim that race had absolutely nothing to do with it. The Reverend Al Sharpton materialized on TV amid hints of "black rage" and a "racist Republican administration" which discriminated against illegal black street vendors, and so on and so forth. A few days after the Unpleasantness, though, it emerged that race had everything to do with it, that the perpetrator, 51-year-old Roland Smith, had a prison record, had publicly and angrily expressed his belief that the white people who owned the clothing store were "cheating black people out of jobs and retail space" in the offending building, and had shouted a warning to black customers in the store, telling them to "Get out! It's going to go down!" before opening fire on his selected white victims. I've had our big bank of television sets running full blast since, scanning, waiting for coverage of Pat Schroeder, Barney Frank, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Ed Asner, Oliver Stone, Michael Kinsley, Peter Jennings, Howard Metzenbaum, Ira Magaziner, Lani Guinier, Barbara Boxer, Johnny Cochran, Carol Moseley-Braun, Ron Dellums, Vic Fazio, David Bonior, Maxine Waters, O.J. Simpson trial jurors, or the Clintonistas marching in the streets to protest the mean-spirited outrage of it all. But alas, they've not appeared. Strangest thing. (December 12, 1995)

Richard Estrada, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News, speculates that Hispanic leaders are planning their own "Million Man March" on Washington, so impressed were they with press coverage and publicity given this fall's black gathering in Wonderland, D.C. Hispanics, Estrada reports, are projected to replace blacks as the nation's largest minority group by 2010. Do we spot a trend here? Will big rallies in Wonderland by all our countless minority and victim groups become the latest national fad? The thought is a quick pick-me-up at the end of an otherwise fairly depressing year. Perhaps there is a reason to go on living. (December 16, 1995)

Bartender! Turnstiles For Everyone!

There are conspiracies abroad, too. In a story eerily similar to black charges of a honky conspiracy to undercount those attending the big black Million (or 400,000) Man March on Wonderland, D.C. last October, the Associated Press reports a big dispute in France over how many striking government workers marched in the Paris streets December 12 to protest planned government austerity measures. Strike leaders said over two million people hit the bricks to howl. Police estimated the mob at 930,000. Sounds like the sort of thing that will tie up the French courts for years! Couldn't we just install turnstiles worldwide, so we can get an accurate count and get on with our lives?

Stuff You Just Stumble Across

Washington Times columnist Richard Grenier reports that a study done during the Bush administration found that American corporations now spend more on lawyers than they report in after-tax profits. There's a clue in there somewhere, I just know it.

Summing Up American Civilization, Circa 1995

"If we had God booked and O.J. was available, we'd move God. There's nobody who wouldn't take a figure of this magnitude." --CNN talk show host Larry King when asked if he'd like to have O.J.Simpson for an interview.

Silence From the Grievance-Mongers

Recently unearthed records indicate that Soviet communists murdered some 20,000 priests and church members, some of whom were crucified on the iron fences of their own churches. These, together with the millions of others murdered by the Communists in the halcyon days of Lenin and Stalin, surely should qualify for victim status in the liberal pantheon of the aggrieved. But alas, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Cokie Roberts, Larry King, Phil Donahue, the New York Times, Pat Schroeder, Ted Kennedy, Johnny Cochran, Lewis Lapham and the rest of the illuminati have reacted with yawns, or not at all. (December 10, 1995)

Canon Camera has a television ad featuring the grizzled young grungemeister, Andre Agase, slamming paint-drenched tennis balls into a big canvas, then sloshing a bucket of paint on the thing. "Express yourself," a smirking Agase tells us. . .Outback Steakhouse has an ad in which voices sing and chant, "No Rules! Just Right!" Both ads capture well the tenor of our times.

"There's nothing wrong with John whatsoever other than he killed a couple people." --John Christo, quoted by Associated Press January 2, 1995, defending his friend, John C. Salvi III, who was arrested and charged with shooting two receptionists to death and wounding five other people at a Brookline, Mass. abortion clinic. Christo also attacked the media for portraying Salvi as a "serial killer" instead of a "nice guy."

You Already Are Department

"We're going to be a constant nuisance." --American Lung Association spokesman Debra Kelley, explaining the ALA's plans to hector the Philip Morris company "wherever it goes" in 1996, quoted in Newsweek's December 11, 1995 issue.

Things Are Still Shaky in Gotham Department

For the second time in less than two weeks an aggrieved citizen-victim has opened fire and massacred innocent people in a neighborhood store crowded with Christmas shoppers. Twenty-two-year-old Michael Vernon killed five people and critically wounded three others December 19 in a Bronx shoe store. The Chicago Tribune account of the fracas noted that Vernon walked into the store around noontime looking for a pair of sneakers he had ordered, "but something went wrong." Vernon argued with a clerk, pulled out his gun and shot him, then opened fire on other people in the shop. Vernon was wounded and apprehended by a policeman as Vernon fled the scene. Police said that Vernon had "apparently become displeased with the service" in Little Chester Shoes. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told reporters, "We are asking for God's mercy." What he should have been asking for was God's vengeance.

I May Be Old, But I'm Immature

Who's ever said it better than my first grade teacher, 90-year-old Margaret Ann Sykes, still hobbling around in my hometown of Scorched Corners, Indiana? After receiving one of my quirky Christmas cards, she replied with this note: "I enjoyed your card. There's no hope for you now. If anything, you didn't improve with age. But I like you just as you are. I'm on a walker (with wheels) and still going. Your friend, Margaret Ann." (December 31, 1995).

General Turgidson Woulda Loved Brits' 15-Inchers

In late December in London I came face to face with a dream. I stepped up and touched a pair of 15-inch naval guns on display at the Imperial War Museum. Over 60 feet long, these big babies fire a 1940-pound shell over 18 miles. The shell itself is just under six feet long. Each gun weighs 100 tons. From 1914 to 1941 the pair were used on British naval destroyers. Closest thing to The Guns of Navarrone I've seen. I'll confess to fantasizing about owning several, and sitting up high at the back on a huge chrome-plated tractor seat, secured by heavy leather strapping, wearing a golden crash helmet, welder's goggles and a fireproof asbestos suit , cranking up the big barrels up to "zero in" on my hobgoblin of the moment. Seeing them, touching them, was nearly a religious experience. The dream lives on. Near the War Museum, at 100 Lambeth Road, Mogo and I stopped to look at the home of Captain William Bligh, the commander of the legendary H.M.S Bounty. The cap'n lived here from 1754 to 1817, the historic marker said. . .at the corner of Bury Place and Russell Street, just outside the British Museum, I read this sign on the corner of a building: "To Let. Tang-Poon, Surveyors-Property Consultants, 071-722-5675." In the toilet of the train hurtling to Cambridge I encountered this scrawled, plaintive cry for understanding: "German Wages Not Shit Pay Says IRA." From our train window we saw four men playing golf December 30 at a place called Knebworth, about 20 minutes outside London. A light snow covered the ground. . .we were struck by the many people we saw smoking cigarettes during our six-day visit. The anti-smoking movement in the U.S. is years ahead of England. It reminded us of our own childhoods, when (it seemed) "everybody" smoked, and sometimes with both hands. Another sign on a post at a corner on Tottenham Court Road screamed: Students for Socialism! Fight for Socialism! End Student Poverty! Somehow, it seemed fitting in a country farther down the road to socialism than our own. I wanted to stop and scrawl my own sign, though, something on the order of End Student Poverty! Turn That Baseball Cap Around! Get a Job! We were out walking London's streets every night of our visit and it wasn't until New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square that we saw our first British policeman patrolling on foot. In all the night trips on subways and walking about, we never once felt the least bit uneasy, threatened or unsafe. People were unfailingly polite, civilized, with not even a hint of rowdiness or danger. This is a sharp contrast to how we feel in any American city. British television is markedly more low-key than American: news and other programs move at a languid pace, and without the underlying sense of frenzy which permeates the American brand. One ad on London TV features disability and life insurance for Brits visiting America where, the ad notes, foreign tourists just might get mugged or killed. A story in the Daily Mail December 30 reported that May 21 would be "tax freedom day" for British citizens this year. In 1985 it was June 3 and in 1965 it took till April 29 for a citizen to earn enough to pay his tax bills. The average for European Union countries is June 14 and in the super-socialist redoubt of Sweden "tax freedom" doesn't arrive till late July. . .A sign at the rear of the world-renowned Saint Martin-in-the-Fields church says it costs one British pound (currently about $1.60) per minute (about $2,300 per day) to keep the church open. A bronze wall plaque nearby offers an inventory of the officers and men of the 18th, 21st and 23rd battalions of Imperial Yeomanry who died in the South African War of 1899-1902. I read the names--E.J. Ogilvy, H. Boultwood, H. Hale, A.J. McAllister, T. Coddington, H. Freakes, C. Olney, C. W. Ireton, and more--and noted that most were "men" not officers. The latter, as Jonathan Winters has so succinctly noted, are usually viewing the action "some 5,000 yards off through heavy lenses." American General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf's combat fatigue uniform from the Gulf War is in a glass case at the Imperial War Museum. . .one of the exhibits there noted that the German blitz of London began on Sept 7,1940, and the bombardment continued for 57 consecutive nights. . .something against which to measure our own next mild inconvenience.

The Ultimate Fighting Contest is apparently the latest rage to sweep the U.S. This newest national pastime--what does it replace? Baseball? Drive-by shootings?--features two gladiators in an octagonal pit enclosed by a chain-link fence, bound only by two rules--no biting and no eye-gouging. Otherwise, anything goes. The Chicago Tribune lamented its soaring popularity, citing a Denver "tournament" before Christmas where 350,000 (presumably howling) patrons paid $24.95 apiece to watch on cable TV. The mayor of Denver decried the spectacle. Others of great sensitivity are rightfully joining the protest. "Society," the Tribune thundered, "has a right to say that some forms of brutality--like dueling--are beyond the pale." And indeed that would be true--in a civilized country. "Americans would never consider allowing competition in Russian roulette," the Tribune concluded--somewhat naively, I thought--and they shouldn't allow this "gruesome spectacle" either. I'll bet the Tribune's editorial staff that if Russian roulette were offered to the American public on a pay-per-view basis, it would do a land-office business (surely we recall the prophetic film, Network, in which network executives murdered their anchor man on-air because of low ratings, don't we?). (December 31, 1995)

	Scoundrels, Knaves & Fools American Pile Whoops & Squawks Splinters From the Bench Indiana University Sports Lists & Other Minutiae Contact the author	2009 \| 2008 \| 2007 \| 2006 \| 2005 \| 2004 \| 2003 \| 2002 \| 2001 \| 2000 \| 1999 \| 1998 \| 1997 \| 1996 \| 1995 \| Pre-1995 The American Pile A national outcry arose from liberals and the national media last fall when a South Carolina mother told police a black man had commandeered her car at gunpoint and driven off with her two children inside the vehicle, which was later found at the bottom of a lake--the youngsters, one three years old, the other 14 months, dead inside. The woman later admitted her story about the black man was a lie. She was arrested and charged with murdering her children. The wailers had a field day, claiming the woman's story was typical of the ongoing lousy deal blacks get in a still malevolently racist America. Now comes Anthony Avent, a black and a 6-9 forward on the Orlando Magic professional basketball team, with a tale of his own. Avent was stabbed New Year's Eve, the wounds to his arms and hands requiring 22 stitches. He told police he was confronted and attacked by three white men on a downtown Orlando street. The honkies called him "conceited and rude," Avent said. A few days later, though, Avent recanted, saying it wasn't whitey at all, but rather a "friend" who stabbed him in his home. He made up the story to protect his friend, and "If I had to do it over again, I'd do the same thing, knowing I was protecting a friend." Fair enough. It is a free country, after all, and we're all free to make up lies to protect our friends if we want to. But will Time, Newsweek and the rest devote equivalent space to exploring this episode of reverse racism? Will Pat Schroeder, Michael Kinsley, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, Vic Fazio, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephart, and the rest of the liberal crowd hold press conferences to denounce the viciousness and racism implicit in Avent's fabrications? No, they won't. That street runs only one way in America. (January 7, 1995) O.J. Simpson has been named winner of the 1994 Cover Story Crown by Advertising Age, a trade weekly covering media and marketing developments. It carefully tracks thirty different magazine and tabloid covers and, using a complicated "point" system, announces winners annually to a breathless and waiting world. The Juice knocked 'em dead in 1994 with 54 covers worth 61 points (he also won a subcategory devoted only to monthly magazine covers, with a blockbuster five consecutive covers, July through November), easily outgunning (and here's a point worth exploring by one of the big foundations--why was a double murder worth almost triple the points earned by a runnerup who, so far as we know, had no murders in her year's activities?) second-place finisher Oprah Winfrey, who generated her 21 covers and 28.5 points chiefly by "losing weight, running a marathon, and continued marriage rumors." Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis landed on 19 covers worth 25 points mainly by becoming ill and dying. The Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan drama earned 21 covers and 23 points, and Julia Roberts was fifth with 15 covers and 19 points. It was noted (with a certain sadness, I thought) that 1993's winners, those battling divorcees, Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, didn't even make the top 10 in 1994. If I know my celebrities, strategists and handlers are already huddled in secret conferences all across the country developing action plans to get their people back on top for '95. Newsday, which provided the national wire story about the Advertising Age competition, speculates that since his murder trial is to start early in the new year, Simpson is the odds-on favorite to cop an unprecedented second consecutive Cover Story Crown in 1995. Best New Name I've Seen in a While: Alfred Lindeman (no relation to IU's Judah-ben Lindeman) an administrative law judge from Greenbrae, California, offered this one in a letter to The American Spectator (December, 1994 edition): President Clinocchio. Sounds Like The Girl I Took To The High School Prom "It haunts the Amazon jungle with a giant bear's body and a monkey's face, clad in dark red fur and trailing a cloud of flying beetles. Its stench is disabling. Its upright bulk disconcertingly humanlike and its roar like endless thunder. . .with backward-turned clawed feet, skin capable of withstanding shotgun blasts." --Laurie Goering, a Chicago Tribune staff writer, describing, in the January 8 Tribune, accounts of scientists on an expedition searching for a gigantic South American tree sloth called Mapinguari, believed to have been extinct for 8,500 years but reported alive and roaming in the remote western Brazilian province of Acre. Las Vegas mainstay Wayne Newton filed for bankruptcy in 1994. A judge approved a plan last December for Newton to pay his creditors about 10 percent of the $22 million he owed. It has just been announced that Newton begins a 12-week gig in Las Vegas January 16 at $325,000 a week, or $3.9 million in total. Can anyone tell me why someone who earns an annual income in the double-figure millions is allowed to weasel out of $22 million in debts for 10 cents on the dollar? Is this what The Founding Fathers had in mind? No wonder Scottie Pippen is mad as hell about only being paid $2.8 million a year, and Black Jack McDowell will demand that whatever contract he signs must be renegotiated within hours of the ink's drying! No wonder! Some astounding facts just released by Capital Research Center, a philanthropic watchdog group based in Wonderland, D.C., which surveys corporate charitable giving each year and publishes the results in its monograph, Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy: 1) for every dollar American corporations gave in 1992 (the most recent year surveyed) to organizations supporting pro-business policies, free-market economies and limited government, they gave $3.42 to anti-business, left-leaning groups advocating higher taxes, increased government control of the economy and business; 2) twenty-one large U.S. corporations which reported for 1992 combined losses of $15 billion gave away $97 million the same year in charitable contributions, the bulk of it again going to anti-business organizations. CRC has been reporting this same trend for years. On the face of it, there's an utter contradiction here: business supporting its enemies. What to make of it? Are our boys, our corporate titans, hedging, covering their bets by throwing cash at everybody? Has business been flim-flamming us, posing as conservatve when it really isn't? Just one more thing to confound Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch. Here's a product none of us should be without: Ozium, a spray bottle of "brand new car" scent you can use to restore that special aroma new cars come with. It's made by Blue Coral, Inc., 5300 Harvard Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44105, at $2.99 a pop. Great stocking-stuffers at Christmas! Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road. God's Little Acre. Remember? A new biography on Caldwell, who in the 1930s and 1940s was the world's biggest-selling author, explores the tangled mess of Caldwell's life and concludes that numerous personal problems overlaid by the demon of alcohol were major factors in Caldwell's downward spiral over the last 40 years of his life. . .and reveals, too, that Caldwell was truly a man ahead of his time. The Chicago Tribune's review of Erskine Caldwell: The Journey from Tobacco Road (Dan B. Miller, Knopf, $30) unearths an anecdote we didn't encounter in high school or college literature classes, at least not in The Ancient Times. Seems that when Tobacco Road was dramatized on Broadway, the show opened "with a harelipped teen-age girl masturbating in the front yard of her falling down homestead while her family watched," and this, the author speculates, may have had something to do with its notoriety and huge financial success. If we didn't know better, we'd swear he was scripting a Joycelyn Elders speech, an MTV video or the season kickoff for a Madonna or Roseanne Barr special. If the smut market hadn't been so limited then, Caldwell would have become a billionaire with such antics. A few days ago a 16-year-old boy was chased by several other young men into a convenience store parking lot about a block from Indianapolis Washington High School and kicked and beaten to death, in another of these apparently senseless vicious crimes which so typify and plague our age. Witnesses described the assailants and their chauffeurs (two did the beating, two waited nearby in the getaway car) as people of color. The dead lad was white. This information has been verified by photographs of the deceased and the one assailee who's so far been arrested, and by police reports. The Indianapolis Star's coverage, however, has not yet mentioned the whiteness of the dead youth, and I've not seen or heard a public peep from any group or individual charging racism or any other outrage in this matter. Does anyone believe the streets wouldn't be full of howling protesters and the media swarmed by hand-wringing activists stamping their feet and roaring for justice had the races been reversed and the dead person an aggrieved minority? This is why hypocrisy and selective indignation are this nation's major growth industries. (January 17, 1995) Guns, Crime and Freedom, by Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association, has vaulted onto the New York Times bestseller list, but the Times continues to refuse to review it. LaPierre's dangerous views thus join books by such as William Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Pope John Paul II, P.J. O'Rourke, Charles Murray and Barbara Bush which are national best sellers currently driving the liberal elite, the handwringing snivelers in the groves of academe, and the Trash America Firsters crazy. (January 22, 1995) Another Reason to Go On Living Richard "Digger" Phelps, former Notre Dame basketball coach, has announced he wants to run for President in the year 2004. Mark Fuhrman, the Lost Angeles detective expected to be a key prosecution witness in the O.J. Simpson trial, became a bit testy January 25 when he encountered an eager press photographer at the Spokane International Airport. The Associated Press story about the incident reveals just a hint of whose side it's on, too. Fuhrman, pursued by reporters and cameras at the airport, struck a Spokane Spokesman-Review photographer in the chest, pushed him down, and shouted, "Get out of my face!", according to press reports. The photographer was uninjured but four buttons were torn off his shirt in the fracas. AP's lead paragraph about the incident opened like this: "Detective Mark Fuhrman, portrayed by O. J. Simpson's lawyers as a racist capable of framing their client, did his reputation no good Wednesday when he bashed a photographer at a Washington state airport." We're none of us seasoned journalists, of course, so who's to say this isn't a perfect lead paragraph? In the realm of f-e-e-e-e-l-i-n-g-s where most of us live, though, many Americans would debate the comment about Fuhrman "doing his reputation no good." Those who've spent their lives watching the press raise rudeness and insipidity to an art form in such settings would cheer Fuhrman and consider his reputation enhanced by his reaction. Fuhrman may turn out to be the flamer, here; Simpson' lawyers will soon get a chance to goad him and find out. (January 27, 1995) Bumper stickers seen on a flatbed semi-trailer at the corner of N. Tibbs and W. 16th Street in Indianapolis, January 31, 1995: My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Roll Student. . . Save The Planet: Kill Yourself. Go Ahead, Make Our Day, Try To Have Shareholder Input Included in a required notice to Franklin Custodian Funds shareholders of an annual board of directors meeting was this paragraph,under the heading Shareholder Proposals: The Fund is not required to, nor does it intend to, hold regular annual meetings of shareholders. Any shareholder who wishes to submit a proposal for consideration at the next meeting of shareholders, when and if such a meeting is called, should submit such proposal promptly to the Fund. My wife, Mogo, and I have first-class tickets on the Concorde to London and we can't leave soon enough. We're joining SRO crowds of glitterati jamming the Royal Court Theater in West London's chic Chelsea district to see the latest blockbuster attack on human decency, a play called Blasted, which blends fellatio, defecation, homosexual rape, and cannibalism--all on one stage!!! Critics warned of the play's "toxicity," according to U.S. News and World Report (Feb. 6, 1995), but cheering, chattering mobs of theater-goers won't be denied. We plan to bring home as much of the ancillary merchandise as we can carry: T-shirts, blazers, tridents, jogging suits, sweatshirts, memo pads, anything with the Blasted logo and art work on it. We wouldn't miss this for the world! Make Ready The Rubber Room. . . The mother of an 8th grade student in an Indianapolis suburb entered her daughter's classroom unannounced and uninvited Tuesday afternoon, February 2, and ordered her daughter to get up and leave the room. She approached the male teacher in a storm of anger, jabbed the air with her finger and said, "I am a Native American and I have power over you. I am clairvoyant and I have been present in this room (in spirit) and watched you abuse my daughter. You are an asshole and you need to hear it." The teacher sent a janitor to find the principal. The woman continued her tirade. She and the daughter stormed out of the room and went to the principal's office, where the girl was officially withdrawn from school. This is a true story. The New York Zoological Society, concerned that the word "zoo" has developed negative connotations, has announced it's changing the names of the Bronx Zoo and the Central Park Zoo to Wildlife Conservation parks. There, that feels better, doesn't it? How ironic that the ideas for which liberals viciously mocked Dan Quayle as Vice President--morality, responsibility--have now found credibility as Newsweek's February 6, 1995, cover story ("Shame: How Do We Bring Back A Sense of Right and Wrong?"). U.S. News & World Report (Feb. 6, 1995) printed a small photograph of an outdoor storage yard for Russia's gargantuan SS-18 intercontinental missiles. A Soviet soldier is standing near one of the monsters, the blastport of which looks to be two to three times the man's height--about 14-15 feet across. An awe-inspiring sight. Made me wish I had a couple. Non-Confidence Builder Department: I notified the Internal Revenue Service in early September, 1994, of our change of address and received an IRS confirmation of that fact, dated Sept. 26, 1994. My 1994 federal tax return packet, mailed three months later, arrived in early January, 1995, bearing our old address. I notified the Indiana Department of Revenue at the same time as the IRS, and received neither a confirmation nor a 1994 state tax package. He's Toast! He's Outta Here! Part of the official mustering-out process for manager-level people at Price Waterhouse involves the employee's signing a legal letter acknowledging the termination of the employment contract. Mine came in the mail late in the year and I couldn't resist a minor alteration to its text. The firm's letter began: "We have mutually agreed that my employment contract, dated July 1, 1981, as amended, shall be considered terminated--and here I hand-wrote this insertion--"and the employee declared in a permanent state of Toast." I cheerfully affixed an "ATB" (All The Best) and my best soaring signature at the bottom and mailed it off. Some Things You Just Know. . . Help Wanted Department: In an attempt to sanitize my prose, I need a (non-profane) synonym for one of the English language's choicest words: "asshole." This is not so simple a task as it appears at first glance. This critter's a special blend of qualities devilishly difficult to pin down. Much as the famed jurist grappled with a definition of pornography, so may we not quite know what an asshole is, but know one when we see one. A central characteristic, for me, is the joyousness with which the asshole pursues his activities; a true asshole is never accidental, nor indifferent or oblivious to what he is--he consciously revels in it! Examples come easily to mind--just for fun, let's make them non-Indiana residents: Buddy Ryan, Sean Penn, John Thompson, Norman Mailer, Frank Sinatra, Bo Schembechler, Jeff George, Mike Ditka, Jack Nicholson, Victor Kiam, Rickey Henderson, Alexander Haig, Howard Stern, Roseanne Barr, Rob Dibble, and rock stars, tennis players, and glitterati piled high enough to blot out the sun. Are we getting a sense here, feeling a common beat? I'm tempted to use "flamer." I solicit and welcome help on this. WIBC Radio in Indianapolis has canceled the city's only liberal talk show, The Dick Wolfsie Program, because of poor ratings. General manager Tom Severino said WIBC liked Wolfsie "a lot," but was trying to become "the top-rated station for listeners 12 and older" and needs the "best entertainers" it can get if it's going to succeed at that. Program director Bobby Hatfield, who fired Wolfsie, said he was listening to the Wolfsie show a week ago when a caller and Wolfsie actually got in an argument and the caller hung up! "That's mean-spirited talk," Hatfield told Indianapolis Star television writer Steve Hall, "and that's not what WIBC represents." You can almost see Hatfield wringing his hands, his face puckered in angst. Meantime, WIBC's afternoon kingpin, the Rush Limbaugh Show, continues to blow the competition out of the water. Life is very, very complex in that 12-and-older market. (February 14, 1995) Brand Touts Revolutionary Concept: Four-Year Degree Newly-anointed executives love to put their stamp on things right away, to let everybody know the old era's gone and a new big cheese is on the throne. Policy changes, bold new initiatives, personnel shakeups, downsizings, rightsizings, those sorts of things typically mark the ascension. Indiana University's new president, Myles Brand, seems to have caught the bug. One of his first presidential acts was to announce a "Four-Year Path" plan he seemed to think was a fairly revolutionary idea. It entails the university's guaranteeing that a student will finish his degree work in four years if he meets certain requirements along the way (typically, this involves attending classes, taking enough credit hours to meet degree requirements, that sort of thing), and if he doesn't, then the University will let him make up the shortfall free of charge. Brand said the university has an obligation to do this for its students. Well, there have been critics. A faculty group saw the idea as a seashells-and-balloons frivolity that detracted from the university's real mission. Brand, taking his cue from Slick Willie's government-by-mood-ring modus operandi, commissioned a public opinion poll to see how everybody feels about it. The wrangling continues, to the amusement of many of us who can remember when it was a given that you finished college in four years and those who didn't were generally viewed as dolts and slackers. I know, I know, things are much tougher now, much tougher. Journalist (and former Ronald Reagan speechwriter) Peggy Noonan produced a PBS three-part series on values in February, and offered this observation on the Feb. 21st segment: "Parents have two jobs: parenting, and protecting their children from our culture." I think that about nails it. Colin and Clarence Somehow Lack The 'Necessities' Rush Limbaugh got a call on his show Friday (February 24) from a father whose daughter is enrolled in a public school system somewhere in North America. The daughter was in a multicultural diversity module at school and her teacher had assigned the youngsters to research and write a paper on a black American and come to school dressed up as that person on "report day." The subject had to be chosen from a list of blacks the teacher passed out. The list, said the father, included Nelson Mandela and Angela Davis (both linked to the Communist Party and in Davis's case openly), rock star and world class bizarre-o Michael Jackson, and others. General Colin Powell and U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were not on the list. The man wondered why. (February 26, 1995) Say "See Ya" To 'Moon' Flanders Actor Ed Flanders, best known for his Emmy award-winning portrayal of kind-hearted Dr. Donald Westphal on NBC's St. Elsewhere in the 1980s and President Harry Truman in a 1977 TV special, died February 22 at age 60 at his California home. He was on St. Elsewhere from 1982-87 and departed the program in a distinctly offbeat fashion. In his final 1987 episode, Flanders' character gave a ferocious upbraiding to a fictional money-grubbing hospital chain executive about corporate control of hospitals, then dropped his pants and mooned him. Flanders returned a year later for the show's farewell program and instead of sticking to his lines about the hospital's closing he delivered an unscripted soliloquy on death, which the surprised producers decided to leave in. This is a guy I wish I'd known. It's only a coincidence, I suppose, that he won a 1974 Tony award and a 1976 Emmy for his Broadway performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten. U.S. News & World Report devoted its February 27, 1995, cover story to the theme "Why Fathers Count," wherein it set out the compelling case that fathers are crucial to successful families and play a vital role in child rearing. Study after study shows it. Those with abnormally long attention spans can recall how the liberals, Murphy Brown Brigades, and feminazis screeched when then-Vice President Dan Quayle tried to make these same points just a few short years ago. Times change. Life is strange. The Larry King Live show just called wanting my list of favorite words. Here they are: Steatopygia, Insipid, Rapturous, Aperture, Orifice, Eerie, Blue Darter, Bilge, Grotesque, Rite, Bulbous, Flak, Tuberous, Hobgoblin, Slam, Balloon, Scrofulous, Spittle, Sump, Egregious, Massive, Absurd, Hermetically, Ridiculous, Cackle, Buffoon, Lunatic, Evanescent, Bilious, Babble, Flak, Turgid, Scuttle, Pneumatic, Billowing, Mandrill, Oboe, Chimpanzee, Babboonlike, Gibbon, Cretin, Mongoloid, Simian, Xylem, Phloem, Mufti, Mangy, Grapple, Shards, Scramble, Gobbets, Shroud, Moronic, Barff, Abominable, Jowls, Livid, Dyspeptic, Deviant, Abusive, Hostile, Apoplectic, Twaddle, Treacle, Tuna, Yo Yo, Hawnyock (sp?), Fungible, Scumbag, Festooned, Akimbo, Bovine, Unctuous, Silo, Mongrel, Wheedle, Highfalutin, Hog, Burly, Throw-Weight, Twit, Twinkle, Wazoo. It's hard to know how to take Professor Charles Owen, director of the Design Processes Laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The February 19, 1995, London Sunday Times reports, in apparent straight face, on Owen's work designing an Earth Mother dirigible that's bigger than Bob Knight's ego and the late Orson Wells's belly combined. Named AeroCarrier, this big baby will be 1.5 miles long, carry 3400 passengers and crew at up to 100 miles an hour, and have a runway on its top for helicopters and jet planes. One potential catch Owens has already thought of: AeroCarrier will be too big to dock or land on Earth, so it will remain aloft permanently as a mother ship (six smaller airships would serve to transport cargo and humans from the ground). Professor Owens has designed huge display screens--aerial billboards--which will be display "information, entertainment, and advertisements to the towns and cities below, some of which will be thrown into shadow as the AeroCarrier eclipses the sun." AeroCarrier recently won a bronze prize at the sixth international design competition in Osaka, Japan, and Owens is writing a book about this and his other award-winning designs, according to the Sunday Times, which quoted the professor saying, "There is great interest in bringing back dirigibles. I've had calls from. . .Russia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Korean, and Japan. . .many people would like to invest." Where do I get in line to buy tickets? Talk erupts from time to time about the suffering of the O. J. Simpson trial jurors, the disruption of their lives, the stress, the strain. All true, but a spot on that jury is a ticket to a front row seat at America's Instant Celebrity trough, to instant riches for books, talk show appearances, movies, world tours, symposia, Larry King Live appearances (dead or alive, it won't matter). Isn't that what every last red-blooded American one of us wants, to get in there, snorting and rooting, and get our share, get what's rightfully ours? They'll all make out like bandits. I could do with a good bit less of their whining. By Golly, He IS Going to Run for President Former Notre Dame basketball coach Richard "Digger" Phelps appeared on ESPN Sports March 16 in either multicolored hair or toupee. The hair on the top and center of The Digster's gourd was reddish-brown, the rest grey-black. Or could it have been just an optical delusion, the subtle play of studio lights? Best keep watch on this evolving story. (March 18, 1995). Smut-O-Rama Holed up temporarily in a seedy Days Inn along I-69 at Fort Wayne and channel-slaloming across television's sewage lagoon, I chanced across something called The Larry Sanders Show featuring comedian Garry Shandling on HBO. I paused to watch. In the approximately eight minutes from 10:48 p.m. to 10:56 p.m. the cast offered these bits of dialogue: "Fuck me," "you worthless piece of shit," "nobody fuckin' cares abour your fuckin' ear," "put up with such shit," "this is fuckin' nuts," "damn right," "you bastard," "your ass doesn't look fat in pants," and "a lot of fucking plants," In addition, there was a reference to a TV show called "Cousins Who Fuck," "that stuck-up little shit," "that butthole buddy of yours," and "pissing in your good ear." One character told another that wearing an earring low in your left ear "means you are pitching, not catching." While this uplifting dialogue was spewed about, in and out of the offices roamed three cantaloupe-breasted women in short skirts (just there for intellectual content, of course). They bent over frequently. All was offered in the name of freedom of artistic expression and the eternal quest for meaning in the human condition, be sure. Please do not kill me. I am only a wretched scrivener, recording the pageant as it unfolds. Michael Lives! He Lives! He Lives! I'll confess. I tuned in to watch Michael Jordan's Return to NBA action in Indianapolis, U.S.A. NBC's Bob Costas and Marv Albert were hyperventilating well before tipoff, informing us that scalpers were charging $1,000 for courtside tickets and $400-$500 for seats miles deep in the nosebleed frontier sections of Market Square Arena. Mere mention of the money alone was enough to captivate most of the America tuned in. Marv said that what His Airness was trying to do was "truly remarkable." Costas and others called it "historic." My wife, Mogo, joining me in our twin green naugahyde BarcaLoungers parked and drooling courtside in front of our big-screen TV, felt it was far more than that--she recognized it as a religious experience. We learned that Michael gets his entire $4 million contract for playing just the remaining 17 regular season games and the playoffs. What's more, no wacko Religious Left liberal bleeders had flown into the city to march in protest over the unfairness and injustice of this. NBC's broadcast team had spread out all over the world for this event. Other coaches, opposing players, even NBC broadcasters reacted via quick cuts to other NBA cities where games were being played. Costas in particular seemed deeply moved, stating in reverential tones that Michael's attempted comeback was "truly unprecedented." He noted that the group singing the national anthem in Indianapolis was called "Promise" and hailed from Olivet Nazarene College and that "you can read any kind of symbolism into this that you want. . ." As Mogo and I keened and swayed in rapture, our faces bathed in a living tableaux from the big screen's frenzied reflections, NBC cut away to the pre-game ceremonies. The arena went pitch black. Pacers blue and gold spotlights panned the crowd and a rotating mirror ball high in the night spangled the arena with swirling points of light. The taped sound of roaring Indianapolis 500 race cars exploded. The huge glaring spotlight eye illuminated a man inside an animal suit--it was Boomer, the team's blue panther mascot, who'd dropped from the rafters on a long cable--sprinting wildly around the playing floor waving a huge Pacers flag. Rock music thundered at ear-shattering levels. A spotlight stabbed to center court where a dozen or so provocatively-clad young women writhed and undulated around the Pacers centercourt logo, pounding pompons toward the arena's darkened reaches. The music crashed on, spotlights stampeded crazily over the walls and ceiling. The public address announcer erupted in a gravelly scream, shrieking the names of our beloved Pacers one by one by one. Another spotlight flared at courtside, illuminating a small group of Pacers dancing, jiving, high-fiving. It was about this time that we, utterly overcome by excitement, lost consciousness. (March 19, 1995) Humble, Awed, Trying To Do Our Part. . . Mogo and I got up extra early March 25 and drove over to the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield to witness Mike Tyson's release from prison. The mob was so great that it was impossible to get up really close. Helicopters hovered over the scene. Fans and admirers jostled. Authorities and numerous unidentified burly people kept order, shielded the icon, Tyson, from contamination. The press swarmed about, mothlike, bringing, as the Indianapolis Star proudly trumpeted in its front-page banner headline story the next day, "his release to viewers and readers throughout the world." Promoter Don King, America's reigning bad hair champion, hovered close to his protege. Word spead quickly that the great Muhammad Ali was present. So was Monica Turner, a Georgetown University medical student who, according to the Star's breathless coverage, "reportedly has visited Tyson (in prison) about every two weeks." When Tyson walked out the prison's front door at 6:15 a.m. camera flashes exploded, reminding us, and the Star's reporters as well, of "a brief burst of fireflies." Limousines and other vehicles whisked the entourage away to the nearby Islamic Center of America and later to the airport where a private jet waited. Mogo and I chased them all the way, but our wheezing Probe quickly fell off the 110-mile per hour pace set by the police escorts. It was enough just to be there, to be a part of it, to see Mike. The Star reported that admirers came from as far as 200 miles away for the occasion. This was an experience we wouldn't have missed for the world. Getting to see Don King's hair made it even more special. This summer, as soon as Mogo is off for summer vacation, we'll be making the pilgrimage to Mike's 66-acre mansion and farm east of Cleveland. It's the least we can do. (March 26, 1995) I'll Trade You My Dick Speck and Charlie Manson Dolls for Your O. J. Simpson, But Only While The Trial's Still In Progress Antiques and collectibles expert Lynn Hopper, writing in the April 2 Indianapolis Star, predicts the value of an O.J. Simpson doll (from Shindana Toys in Lost Angeles) will soar to over $100 if Simpson is convicted. A Simpson model in excellent condition today is worth $50-$75, she said. They sold for $6-12 when first issued in 1975. Ever the canny investor, I have a thousand of them in a Hard Cheese, Indiana, vault, waiting, waiting, waiting. (April 2, 1995) Cable TV companies, long a plague upon the citizenry, are now running ads touting butt-busting service, telling us they'll be on time for their service calls or give you a $20 refund, and on time for a scheduled installation or give it to you free. Isn't it wonderful what a little competition from direct satellite TV systems will do? Some Things You Just Know in Your Heart Any nation that elevates Brian "Kato" Kaelin to icon status has already begun its descent into The Final Darkness. Hamburg Loony Tunes, Part II Judge Gertraut Goering has freed for the second time the man who stabbed tennis star Monica Seles in the back during a televised tournament in Hamburg, Germany, April 30, 1993. The assailant, Guenter Parche, was given a suspended two-year sentence in his first trial before Judge Goering, on a conviction of causing grievous bodily harm. The judge accepted testimony from two psychiatrists who said that, aside from his "fixation" on Seles's chief rival, fellow tennis star Stefi Graf, Parche was "harmless." Seles wrote a letter to the court saying the 1993 attack was responsible for her not resuming her career. Judge Goering ruled that Seles herself would have to testify to that effect, that her letter was not enough. Parche claimed he only wanted to disable Seles by stabbing her, so that Graf could regain the No. 1 tennis ranking, an argument the judge accepted. "We can't rule out that he meant to do more than he did to Miss Seles," said the judge, "but we also can't prove this." The knife left a half-inch deep wound that has since healed, but Seles has not resumed her career, saying she can't overcome the emotional trauma of the attack. (April 6, 1995) Four white male Indianapolis police officers have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming they've victims of reverse discrimination in the department's promotion process. The four claim they were passed over for promotion and a lower-ranked white female and black male were promoted ahead of them. The department, they allege, has an elaborate testing and scoring procedure all candidates for promotion must go through, but that the police chief ignores the rankings in order to promote minorities. Their action approaches the utmost in political incorrectness. Still, you've got to admire their spunk in dragging this dirty little secret into the scalding light of day. Task No. 1: Be Casual Good News! General Motors has announced the company's dress code has been changed to "casual every day." Don't Ask, Don't Tell My nominee for the week's most overlooked nugget would be the last paragraph of a front-page story in USA Today April 14 about the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into a December, 1994, commuter airline crash at Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The story focused on the release of documents which showed the pilot of the American Eagle plane which crashed had such a poor record with his previous employer that he was allowed to resign rather than be fired. The pilot, Michael Hillis, resigned Jan. 3, 1991, and a few days later was hired by Flagship Airlines, which operates as American Eagle. The story quoted a Flagship spokesman, Mitch Baranowski, saying that Flagship had indeed followed its corporate policy for reference checks for new employees and that policy produced no clue that Hillis was recommended for dismissal at his last job. The story's last paragraph read: "We did check with Comair per our policy and they didn't give us any information that would have led us to question this pilot," said Flagship spokesman Mitch Baranowski. This precisely sums up the paralyzing cloud of fear which overhangs all employee reference-checking in our society today and well illustrates the inevitable consequence for an excessively litigious society. The fear of lawsuits and legal liability is so great that employers are afraid to reveal any information related to work performance. When I worked at Price Waterhouse, human resource people were explicitly instructed to answer only four questions when reference checks were made by outsiders: we could verify the dates of employment, the last position or rank held, and the individual's Social Security number and final salary (but only if those last two items had been provided by the former employee). The firm's lawyers stressed over and over that to give any other information--even when true--about a former employee created a legal liability and opened the company to legal action. There can be no doubt that that's exactly what prevented Comair from revealing the truth to Flagship about Hillis's poor record. Thirteen people died in the crash. Five survived, and will have a field day winning damage suits against all concerned. Little snapshots of America: Number of lawsuits for civil rights violations filed by U.S. prison inmates last year: 37,419; Number of Veterans Administration employes whose salaries exceed $100,000 per year: 7,367; Percent of all U.S. corporate sponsorship that goes to the arts: 6; Percent that goes to sports: 65; Number of the 29 divorced members of the U.S.House of Representatives who are Democrats: 21. (Harpers, February, 1995) The rise of talk radio is one of the most significant developments of our age, with vast implications for all of us. For the elites, those who've been in control of the flow of information and knowledge, talk radio is a nightmare. It breaks their grip, their control of information and the culture, undermines their ability to set the nation's agenda. For the first time in our history, the rabble have an outlet, a voice, a way to express and to hear their opinions. It has the look of a wave that can't be stopped. Few more appalling prospects could confront the cognoscenti. Liddy Barks Comma Bites Rob McDonald of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel interviewed the legendary "G-Man," G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate and talk radio fame, in advance of Liddy's April 29 speaking engagement in Fort Wayne. This truly beautiful exchange was printed as part of their telephone interview: McDonald: "Newt Gingrich spearheaded the Contract (with America). What are his strengths and weaknesses?" Liddy: "He can organize, deploy, inspire his colleagues, and he is particularly articulate in debate. He's a master of his facts. His weakness: he tends not to suffer fools sufficiently gladly to be considered diplomatic." McDonald: "What do you mean?" Liddy: "I mean exactly that. When you ask me a question, I respond. That's my answer. Some of the press folks say, "In other words, you mean. . ." No, not in other words. It's just what I said. If the listener is not sufficiently literate to understand it, it is not my problem. . .I consider myself capable fully of explaining myself well the first time around." (April 30, 1995) Indiana University announced May 5 that tuition is going up by six percent next year, about double the rate of inflation. IU President Myles Brand said he wished tuition could be lower but that it couldn't. He blamed the increase on the state legislature's appropriation and said Indiana actually needed an 8 percent tuition increase to cover the gap created by inadequate state funding of campus needs. He said the university was able to get by on only a six percent tuition hike by "internal reallocation," which is bureaucratese for there's plenty of fat in IU's operation. Most undergraduate and graduate programs are raising credit hour rates by about 6 percent, but the graduate business program decided to hike rates by 29.5 percent. Defending the increases, Brand said, "If you're going to continue to build a great university you need that level of tuition. You get what you pay for: Indiana University will be of higher quality as a result." Three IU trustees who voted against the 6 percent hike felt the school should be cutting its costs and operating more efficiently and making do with less. That idea was hooted offstage when the matter came to a vote. And so this great university, along with most of its brethren, continues to remain oblivious to the tidal changes--cost-cutting, greater efficiency, downsizing, rightsizing, rationalizing, and all the rest we've been reading about for a decade--sweeping American business and the world economy. Brand's claim that IU just couldn't get by with less is pure poppycock. Street Of Dreams A subdivision just off West Coliseum Boulevard on Fort Wayne, Indiana's northwest side, just inside Interstate 69 and hard by a Seyfert's potato chip factory, features streets named Investment Drive, Directors Row, Production Road, Executive Boulevard, Progress Road, Dividend Road, and Profit Drive. I'll not rest easy till I can own a home on a street with a name like that. And if I have to sell out and move to Fort Wayne to do it, I will. Lillian Glass, identified in USA Today as a "communications expert," has written a book Glass says will help us weed out the bad people in our lives. Toxic People (Simon & Schuster) hit the nation's bookstores this week. Glass identifies traits and characteristics of 30 types of "toxic" people, and offers her Top 10 list of world-class. . .well, Nolan Richardson's grandmother would call them. . .turds. The legendary Kato Kaelin makes the list at No. 9 (The Opportunistic User). Howard Stern is No. 8; Rush Limbaugh as "The Arrogant Know-It-All" is No. 7; New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as "The Ultimate Competitor" is No. 6. Hate groups earn Glass's No. 1 spot. Donald Trump is No. 2, the baseball duo of Donald Fehr and Bud Selig is No. 3, Britain's Prince Charles is No. 4. Your spouse's divorce attorney is No. 10. In Glass's fifth-most-noxious spot is "The Bully". . .Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight. The name of the Republican leader of the Georgia State Senate is: Skin Edge (USA Today, May 11, 1995). I did not make this up. Boffo Combo--Moms And Mike! Weirdest little story. A brief note in the May 10 USA Today said former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson had been invited to speak at a Mother's Day benefit dinner sponsored by a Fresno, California, women's civic group. Next day a denial circulated. Radio silence since. Strange. Mogo and I had our air tickets to Fresno reserved. We'd go anywhere to support Iron Mike. USA Today devoted nearly a full page in its May 8 issue to probing the mystery of fizzling new car sales. Industry experts, marketing and consumer research gurus, Wall Street analysts, even--of all things--a token customer or two were asked for their insights. It's a real puzzler: car loan rates are moderate (9.77%), inflation is low, disposable income is deemed to be "healthy," and consumer confidence "robust." But 1995 sales are running at a projected one million fewer vehicles than 1994. And ominously, the average age of the nation's registered automobiles exceeds 8 years, the highest since the late 1940s. Psychologist Stanley Plog weighed in with the mantra of our age, complaining that 1990s cars are boring. A CNW Marketing/Research consumer study shows that buying a new car--once the defining status symbol in America--now ranks ninth on a list of the top 10 big ticket items people want (remodeling a kitchen ranks No. 1, buying or starting a business is No. 2, buying a used car is No. 3). Wall Street analyst Jack Kirkman noted that personal computer technology now soaks up a growing chunk of discretionary funds. CNW also reported that only 15.6 percent of its 1994 survey group felt that driving a two- or three-year-old used car would "hurt their image," versus 33 percent who felt that way in 1985. Yet in 66 column-inches devoted to this story, nobody mentioned what's obvious to Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch: cars cost too much. The average price of a new car is over $20,000 (ten years ago the average was $11,500), well beyond the reach of increasing numbers of Americans, millions of whom have seen their jobs sacrificed as American business has downsized its way to record profits in recent years. (The same day's Indianapolis Star offered a neat postscript to USA Today's agonizing: an Indianapolis Lexus dealer ran a full-page ad offering its 1995 beauty "starting at $51,900.") The real mystery is why the "experts" can't see this. IBM's chief executive officer, Louis Gerstner, brought in several years ago to rescue the computer giant's sagging fortunes, cut thousands of jobs and millions in costs getting Big Blue shaped up. But a brief note in the May 16 USA Today suggests the spirit of sacrifice needed to save this great American institution doesn't extend all the way into the executive suites. Gerstner, some troublemaking reporter has learned, has hired an executive chef for about $117,500. Lisa Lobasso, 37, gets to cook for the corporate Cheese Whizzes at a salary of $87,500 plus a $30,000 signing bonus. She last worked at RJR Nabisco where, coincidentally, Gerstner was CEO before taking the IBM post. Lobasso declined comment on the story, as did IBM, though a spokesman for IBM did say that executive dining rooms are a "necessary cost" for companies trying to woo big customers. Funny, I thought that's what expensive restaurants were for. (May 16, 1995) You might have noticed a flurry of media sniggering in late April when research about the size of American male private parts--you know, our wangs--was presented at the annual American Urological Association meeting in Las Vegas. They talked about circumferences, lengths, flaccid conditions and turgid conditions--I hearkened back to my days in junior high school biology class when we'd twitter about xylem and phloem, cloacas, pores, orifices, things like that. Bloomington Herald-Times columnist Mike Leonard, who has never encountered a depth he wouldn't stoop to in journalism's ceaseless questing for truth, devoted a whole column to the matter April 27, and doubtless other courageous writers around the country expounded, too. It was headlined "At Last, White Men Get Some News They Can Celebrate," and, so far as I can tell, not a single peep of protest or outrage has been registered by the local liberal cognoscenti over Leonard's outrageous slur against our nation's honkies. The HT's usually exquisitely sensitive editors somehow let this one slip past. There was once a time, of course, when no self-respecting "family" newspaper would have printed such a story. Those days are obviously gone, and we're all the poorer for it, no matter what the freedom-of-the-press boys and the apologists say. Rush Limbaugh has launched a new product line of neckties. He mentioned it on his radio show May 17 and described them as being "moderately priced" and "costing about what an average tie costs," then mentioned a figure of "about $40." Rush, a champion of the common man, seems a bit out of touch on this. Or I am. Do you know anybody who spends $40 on a necktie? If you did, would you want to be caught in their company? Next time Rush and his main squeeze weekend with us, we'll take him up to the Dollar General Store in Enema Falls, where we can load up on $3 and $4 ties imported straight from Paris, New York, Milan, Rome. That's what it says on the labels of mine, anyway. (May 17, 1995) Fodor's, the famous publisher of travel guides, asked 600 U.S. travelers their least desirable travel destination. First--the last place they'd want to visit--were Iran and Iraq. Second? New York City. I'd have said Ross-Ade Stadium. And what activity do Americans value the most when traveling? Eating, said 84 percent. The Indianapolis Star's hard-hitting business section reported May 23 that Indiana Attorney General Pam Carter has released a "Buyer Beware" list citing 82 companies and individuals her office says have cheated, misled, or fleeced consumers. Great, I muttered over my breakfast gruel. These crooks ought to be exposed. I eagerly read on, looking for the single most important thing the Star could have provided me: the list of culprits. But I'll be danged if the Star chose not to reveal the names, though it did mention near the end of its story that readers could get the list by calling Carter's office (where the line is usually busy and most readers will give up in despair after a few fruitless attempts to get through). Why didn't the Star try to hit a home run in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch by naming names, giving us that list? I'd guess they didn't want to be judgmental. It wouldn't have been fair, and it's far too complicated for ordinary mortals to understand. I did get through after six calls and someone named Laura in the Consumer Protection Office said she'd send the list right out to me. The Horror, The Shrieking Nothingness of. . .Boring Hamburgers The Indianapolis Star has an uncanny knack for zeroing in on the burning angsts of our times. This morning's food section comforted me with a headline and story assuring me that I could, if I were willing to be creative, escape the horror--indeed, the worldwide plague--of boring hamburgers. (May 25, 1995) A New York judge May 22 dismissed a $75 million lawsuit filed by comedian Jackie Mason against the Tony Award organization. Mason was aggrieved because his show, Jackie Mason: Politically Incorrect, wasn't considered for a Tony award. The judge ruled--and this is the astonishing part--that the 24-member Tony committee actually has the right to decide who will be considered for a Tony award and who will receive one. A revolutionary idea, indeed, in the late 20th century Age of Whine and Victimhood we inhabit. Of course this matter isn't over. There has to be an appeals judge out there somewhere who'll look more favorably upon Mason's grievance. Let's not give up on this. A Dream Worth Keeping Alive The Jackie Mason story revived a concept I wrote about years ago when I suggested that what this great nation needed was a small but dedicated group of counter-suers who would travel the countryside in search of stories like Mason's and who would, wherever they found them, immediately file grotesquely huge--seeking, say, a minimum of $500 million in damages--countersuits against the original filers of such nonsense. In this daydream I imagined myself as both the richest man in the world, with virtually unlimited funds at my disposal, and the first to volunteer for this noble service. The countersuits would make one simple accusation: the defendant is an asshole. Winning them would be beside the point. The point--and with limitless funds you could effectively make it--would be to tie them up in court for the rest of their natural lives, to exact punishment for their insult to the bodkin politic. Good dreams never die. GM To Bury Top Dog General Motors Corporation announced this month it is discontinuing production of the most aggressively ugly automobile of my lifetime, the Chevrolet Caprice. No Lefties Weeping For Shawn Nelson Be honest, now. When you saw last week's story about the fella in San Diego who commandeered a 58-ton Army tank and went on a rampage, smashing over cars and fire hydrants and anything else in his way, and eventually blasting onto a major highway, driving with his head sticking out of the tank, laughing as he roared along, didn't you think: Boy, I'd love to do that, just once? Of course we wouldn't want the ending: police finally leaped aboard, cut open the tank hatch with bolt cutters, and fatally wounded Shawn Nelson. Funniest thing, too: we haven't seen Pat Schroeder, Eleanor Holmes-Norton, Ted Kennedy, Al Sharpton, Michael Kinsley, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley-Braun, Tom Harkin, Ron Dellums, Eleanor Clift, Jesse Jackson, Al Hunt, Richard Gephardt, Barbra Streisand, Slick Hillie, or any others of the wacko religious left crowd on national television protesting the brutality, the outrage of this unprovoked police violence against an innocent citizen. We Know The Answer, And So Does Genevieve Wells Genevieve Wells wrote to the editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times May 24 to ask the discomforting question: why does the newspaper proudly proclaim its learning-through-the newspaper program for elementary school kids while regularly rubbing our (and their) faces in articles and advertisements about female "oil wrestling," wet T-shirt contests, glow-in-the-dark condoms, surveys of penis lengths and girths, "adult" lingerie, pictures of string bikini-clad women, and other salacious tidbits? Wells had the temerity to suggest there is something hypocritical in this, and that perhaps "the kids" the H-T claims to adore deserve a better lesson than the thin gruel which increasingly saturates the news media. This is certainly not a question the H-T or any media outlet wants to address. The editor chose not to reply to her letter, and doubtless next day resumed ladling out its ration of smut to the reading faithful. Who does Genevieve Wells think she is, anyway? Is she suggesting the freedom of the press includes the freedom to decide not to print something? Dangerous notion. Someone better investigate this. (May 24, 1995) Stalking Evil, Disproportionalism Along I-65 The state of Georgia's return to chain gangs has liberals riled up over how cruel it is to chain prisoners and have them work. USA Today sent two correspondents to cover the story May 3 along I-65 near the Georgia-Tennessee border. Felix Walton, a chain gang member, was allowed to sound off and did. "It's humiliating," he said. "When they put those chains on me it made me feel like an animal. This ain't no way to treat a human being." USA Today's two scribes, Lori Sharn and Shannon Tangonan, were so eager to quote the anti-chain gang crowd--representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, and state representative John Rogers among them--that they didn't answer the obvious question for discerning readers: what was old Felix Walton in the pen for in the first place? Murder? Rape? Sodomy? Child molesting? Did Felix treat his victim like a human being, or like an animal? Just wondering. We were given an inadvertent clue as to Lori's and Shannon's sympathies, though, when they pointed out that although blacks make up 25 percent of Georgia's population they comprise 65 percent of state prison inmates, inviting Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch to draw the sinister conclusion that evil disproportionalism is operating here, and race discrimination, too. (May 3, 1995) Easy Money Citizens looking for a few easy bucks can cash in on provisions in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed a year or two ago and barely noted except by a few troublemakers. We owe this intelligence to the Chicago Tribune, which reported on a stunt by consumer activist Michael Jacobson which netted him an easy $750 settlement from Citibank. It went like this. Citibank's telemarketers called Jacobson several times peddling its credit card discount services. Jacobson, who keeps a "tele-nuisance list," told them twice never to call again, and made detailed notes of his conversations. Then he hustled off to small claims court and filed suit. The law prohibits telemarketers from calling back anyone who has specifically told them not to. Individuals can collect $500 for the first infraction and up to $1500 for subsequent calls. The law requires firms to keep a companywide list of people who've told them not to call back. An April Gallup poll has found that 39 percent of Americans believe the federal government "poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans." A U.S News & World Report poll shows 58 percent of Americans believe that "the people who run the (federal) government are not very much or not at all like themselves." Somebody's making up this stuff, surely. Even Immigrants Can't Escape Us A study by Michigan State University sociology professor Ruben G. Rumbaut claims that the children of immigrants initially do better in school than their American classmates, but their superior grade-point averages disappear as they spend more time in the United States. "The longer you are in the United States," the professor concluded, "the more you learn, among other things, the bad habits, such as wearing headphones while studying or waiting to the last minute to study for a test." Rumbaugh studied academic records of over 5,000 eighth- and ninth-grade students, all second-generation immigrants, to reach his conclusions. Time To Wake Up And Smell The Litigation The ironic headline caught my eye: "Carlisle Doctor Gladly Sheds Duties with Prisoners." Dr. Alexander Ton, according to the Associated Press story in the Indianapolis Star, had just lost his job as the chief sawbones at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility (code for: prison) in Carlisle, Indiana. "I'm happy. I'm very happy to get away from there. . ." he seemed to chirp. Did he say it with a wink and a smile, eyebrows arching, or was he serious? The story about Dr. Alexander Ton just lay there on the page, giving no clue. A video would have helped, so I could have seen his face, picked up the subtleties of expression. So, between shovelfuls of breakfast gruel, I pushed on with the story. The doctor, it turned out, had purposefully bid high on his contract with the facility, in the hope he'd be underbid. To his considerable relief, he was. Doctor Ton told the AP he was sick and tired of dealing with prisoners. Why, for heaven's sake? Here was a chance to help society's victims, to ease the pain of human suffering. Well, Ton said the prisoners yelled and cursed at the medical staff. He said some of them should be in a mental institution. He said he had been named in 17 malpractice suits filed by prisoners. "They sue everything and everybody," he said. He added that he hadn't even examined some of the prisoners who are suing him. Time to wake up and smell the litigation, doc. Welcome to America! Land of the free, home of the aggrieved! Pre-Emptive Strike (Just In Case) Department David P. West, reportedly an Indianapolis area man, but whose address is being kept a secret, has filed a lawsuit against Ford Motor Company, claiming that although his Ford Bronco II hasn't rolled over and he hasn't suffered any injuries when it hasn't, it might roll over, and he doesn't want to be hurt if it does. His suit asks the court to force Ford Motor to recall all the vehicles it sold and eliminate what West claims is a tendency to roll over. West's is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against Ford. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn't find any defects in the Bronco II after its investigation. Plaintiffs now appear to be staking out a new frontier, the contention they should be awarded damages because something might happen someday. (June 1, 1995) Seizing The Moment! You simply never know when opportunity will strike. This morning I was waiting in line to mail certain highly sensitive videotaped material at the Hard Cheese Post Office when I chanced to hear the lady in front of me in line share a snicker with the postal clerk. I leaned forward, tuned in. An assortment of stamps was spread across the counter. The customer picked up a sheet of the new Richard Nixon issue and muttered a derogatory remark about our beloved late President. Seeing an opening, I tapped the lady on the shoulder, and thrust forward a couple of packages I was carrying, both, by some odd coincidence, decorated with the special commemorative I use, the "American Pathetic" stamp featuring the Slicks rather cruelly parodied in an American Gothic setting. "Slick Willie's got his own stamp, ma'am," I fairly chirped, "and I can get you 1,200 for $4.95 if you'd like to try 'em. It's the best he'll ever do, that's for sure." Then, I am sure, I gave both of them one of my self-satisfied snorts, till they broke off my gaze and completed their transaction. I walked out of there fairly humming to myself, day made. (June 3, 1995) Educating Mike. . . Mike Littwin of the Baltimore Sun wrote a column about Diane Sawyer's Prime Time Live escapade in late May with 12-year-old Josh Nichols, whose father, Terry Nichols, has been charged in the Oklahoma City bombing. I missed this prime-time television contribution to American culture, but Littwin was not impressed and said so. He thought it outrageous that Sawyer and ABC would bring on an innocent lad and subject him to such exploitation. Of course it's likely that certain sums of money changed hands in this transaction, and that, I think we can all agree, ought to make it all right. Littwin, whose column was printed May 28 in the Indianapolis Star, asked a cosmic question: Is there any bottom in sight for America's marauding television journalists? Is there anything to which they will not stoop? I wrote Mike a brief note of support, offering the obvious answer: there is no bottom to this, although I wouldn't limit it to television journalists. The overwhelming evidence of thousands of years of human evolution is that there's nothing to which we as a species won't sink, no outrage too outrageous, no degradation too depraved, no act too vile. Sorry, Mike. (June 5, 1995) Digging For Clues I've written down a list of every place I've ever lived: Scorched Corners, Bloomington, Swill Junction, Fort Leonard Wood (Missouri), Ayer (Massachusetts), Torii Station (Okinawa), Measles Center, Mudwench, New Treblinka, Vile Gorge, Indianapolis, Enema Falls, and a few more. I assigned a numerical value to the first letter of each (A=1, B=2, and so on), and added them up. They total 202. At one point in the early 1980s, they added up to 147. Seven, of course, was Mickey Mantle's number, and the middle digit in our Scorched Corners telephone number back in the 1950s when three-digit number were all the rage (679 was ours). But what do you suppose the number 202 means? They average 11.2222. I search for clues as the lamplight flickers o'er. There must be an answer in there somewhere. (June 10, 1995) A Left Coast correspondent has written to inform me of a stunt he finds deeply satisfying: he deals with an unwanted torrent of junk mail, some of it from organizations he personally despises, by using their postage-paid envelopes to return boxes of soil and rocks to the sender. Apparently it's as simple as taping the postage-paid envelope onto the carton. My Oregon correspondent reports that even though he includes a letter asking that his name be removed from their list, and includes his address, some organizations continue to send junk mail. He is only the second person I've come across using this ploy. The first was the late and legendary liberal gadfly, curmudgeon, imp, rabblerouser and prankster, Walter Trepling II of Scorched Corners, Indiana, who, rumor had it, mercilessly hectored various televangelists and conservative groups with shipments of rocks, scrap metal, and other refuse at their expense and who kept them on the hook with obscure but somehow-never-quite-delivered promises of significant cash contributions. I'll confess I've tried an innocuous version: simply tearing up the contents and sending back the shredded material in their postage-paid envelope. This other bulk-type response represents an intriguing escalation. (June 15, 1995) Shopping For Clothes (A Reminiscence) A wintry mid-January day in Mudwench, Indiana. On an impulse I leave my office and go to Kermit's, the area's most prestigious (and correspondingly overpriced) men's store. Shopping for suits. Ugly business, but once a decade, gotta do it. Dale Miller, slim, dignified, sedate, is my salesman, though I'm sure he calls himself a consultant or something equally fancy-sounding. At least he isn't a Bubba or a Buzz or a Skip or a Chick or a Chico, the guys you always find at car dealerships. Dale tacks my way, hovers at a respectable distance as I approach the suit department. Dale is not pushy, and I am grateful. Size 43 long, I say, and he pulls out a rack of them. Donald Brooks. Yves St. Laurent. Gordo Givenchy. Pierre Cardin. Foonga Wyeeyatanana. Jacques Scumbag. All my old friends are there. I begin fingering through them, by the sleeves, where the price tags hang. $595, says one tag, and my hand retreats, scorched. I try on three. Dale comments softly on the virtues of each. He points me toward the mirror. I go, stand, look. I don't know what to look for, or at, and Dale probably knows that. I'm embarrassed, but recover. I'm debating whether to begin my act with the man. Sell me this one, I say to Dale, pointing to a medium-dark grey suit with a discreet (always discreet) pinstripe. "That's a classic suit," says Dale. "So am I, in my own unusual way," I reply, having decided to push ahead with Dale. "It'll always be in style," he says. "Good," I say, deep bass, emphatically. "That's me--always in style." Brackow, the alterations man, chalks his marks. Dale pushes accessories. I buy one tie. What a fit, I'm thinking to myself. I sign the tab ($209 for the suit, $22 for the tie) and bid Dale a fond adieu. Then, reflecting that I have bought automobiles for less than $209, I dashed outside and threw up in the street. Or maybe only imagined I did. I was in the store for 18 minutes, far more than a lifetime's allotment. I seem to be into clothes lately. A week or so before this I took two old suits to a tailor shop I pass each morning enroute to work. The tailor is deformed in the hips and legs and walks with a pronounced side-to-side lurch. I see a discerning look in his eyes as I stride in, jaunty in my 1959 topcoat and a pair of shoes I bought for $8 at a J.C. Penney store in Vile Gorge, Indiana, in 1966. The shoes, now an easy 18 years old, still sport their original soles, which appear to be made of some sort of strange, indestructible plastic. He scans me, sizes me up. He's a bit disappointed, I can tell. Sure we can alter these, he says with a foreign accent. I think I spot a flicker of smirk on his face as I place the two pathetic suits on the counter-top. He notices that the grey pinstripe (a Schradski model, bought in Mudwench in 1974 for $79) has big--very big--floppy cuffs. Take off the cuffs, I instruct him. These lapels are too wide, he observes with only faintly disguised disdain. "I know," I reply, "but leave 'em on. Let's just leave 'em as they are." I smile at him, offer an ironic chuckle, then add, "You know, if we hold our breaths just a few minutes, they'll be right back in style." He goes on about his work, marking, pinning, making a few notes. It'll cost me $43 to make them fit again. I leave feeling like a champ. Where else, I congratulate myself, can you buy two suits for $43? (June 15, 1995) Dove books has published, just in time for Father's Day, a new book by one of the world-renowned Menendez brothers--27-year-old-Lyle. The Private Diary of Lyle Menendez has blockbuster potential, and I've dropped the hint to my own children that nothing would make me happier on my special day than to have a copy. Lyle and his brother, Eric, 24, have admitted they murdered their mother and father at the family's Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. A jury could not bring itself to be judgmental in the lads' first trial. A retrial is scheduled to begin August 16. Lyle is rumored to have confessed in his new book that he "overreacted" the night he and his brother killed their parents. He describes his attorney as "not very good," his former girlfriend as a "lying bitch," and boasts that "women are in love with me" and "I can move a jury." Sounds like a perfect American celebrity of the 90s! Bring on the talk shows! Bring on the film rights! Bring on the megabucks contracts, the spin-off deals for Menendez Brothers dolls, candy bars, T-shirts, greeting cards, television sitcoms! We feel your pain, Lyle. We f-e-e-e-l your pain. Oh Geez, Dad Father's Day is overrated. We're not good for a danged thing, so what are they doing having a Father's Day, anyway? All we are is everything's fault. Returning from therapy this morning I heard on my Probe radio an advertisement for the new Infiniti I-3000 or somesuch. A male voice, deep, somber, affecting the most dignified of accents, said to me: "Did you hear the joke about the man who paid $30,000 for a luxury car. . .that had no leg room?" I said to the radio: "Did you hear the joke about the 99.99999999999 per cent of the planet's population who can't afford to pay $30,000 for an automobile? Well, the joke's on them, isn't it?" Then I changed stations, tuned in a local pop therapist who'd make me feel good about myself. (June 18, 1995) Here's a piece of classic Americana: 83 people injured in the April 19 Oklahoma City federal building bombing have filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the fertilizer believed to have been a component of the explosive used to blow up the building. Among the lawyers filing the suit is Johnny Cochran, one of O.J. Simpson's attorneys. Cochran, obviously broadcasting from Mars, offered this statement: "These products should be used for fertilizing crops, not for making bombs. When somebody makes money on these products, we think they should be held responsible." The lawsuit did not specify a specific amount, but attorneys--can we guess whose?--"said a jury could award more than $1 billion," according to the Associated Press June 11. Life Imitates Art Years ago film director Steven Spielberg--or was it Sam Peckinpaugh?--produced a black and white film, Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, which became a cult favorite and is still played on late-night television. The film was based on a then modern metaphor of random violence and featured Weaver taking a one-day business trip and encountering a criminally insane truck driver who stalked him for hundreds of miles across the California desert into the mountains trying to kill him. The June 17 Indianapolis Star carried an Associated Press feature bringing this story neatly into the 1990s, a tale of an Indianapolis trucker who went on a rampage in Colorado in a manner eerily reminiscent of the film. Police said James (apparently no relation to Lester) Flatt, 30, was finally shot and captured after leading police on a wild chase through Denver. A man driving on Interstate-25 near Denver told police he saw a semi truck deliberately trying to force other drivers off the road. The marauding truck exited I-25, turned around, re-entered the interstate northbound and continued to try to ram other drivers. Police joined the fray and Flatt barreled off another exit, smashing parked cars and chasing pedestrians off sidewalks before he was finally brought to heel by police officers. Obviously this is another American who just doesn't feel good about himself. And While Japanese Kids Are Splitting Quarks in Preparation for A Journey to the Ninth Dimension, American Glitterati Are All Atwitter Over Bryant Gumbel's New 'Do USA Today's Peter Johnson, ever alert for a scoop, reported breathlessly in the June 14 issue on the stir created on the Today show set by co-host Bryant Gumbel's decision to part his hair on the left side after wearing it without a part for an undisclosed period of time. The new style is the talk of the show, Johnson reported. Sidekick Katie Couric admitted it was "nice to have people obsess over a man's hair for a change. What a difference a part makes!" The show's newsreader, Matt Lauer, confided that he liked The Part but wanted Gumbel to "stay away from my (hair) gel." Network executive Steve Friedman remembered when Gumbel parted his hair the same way back in the early 1970s at station KNBC in Lost Angeles. Gumbel's former co-host, Jane Pauley, confessed she "hadn't noticed Bryant had new hair." Gumbel himself had the sound and look of a sly fox when reporter Johnson asked him about The Part: "It's hair," Gumbel opined. "I just grow it and cut it. I don't care one way or another." A restless nation awaits further developments. (June 15, 1995) I've called every talk show I can think of, trying to get on to talk about Bryant Gumbel's new 'do, but the wait is so ungodly long. The day will have to come when there is a 24-hour-a-day talk show for every American citizen. Aren't we entitled to that? Don't they owe it to us? CDs From Ancient Times Reveal How Weird We Were Ageless Dick Clark is promoting a CD collection of rock music of the 1950s and 1960s in television ads that feature short film clips of many of rock's all-time greats. I'm sprawled, glassy-eyed, drooling in my BarcaLounger, and the scenes flash past: the Dell Vikings, Danny and the Juniors, the Coasters, the Diamonds, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, the Platters, Bo Diddly, the Drifters, Jimmy Jones, and more. There's something odd about it. Finally it hits me: all these people are dressed in suits, or wearing ties and jackets. Some are even in tuxedos. No vomit-soaked T-shirts or torn jeans drenched in unmentionable bodily fluids, no on-stage disembowelments of family pets or parents, no sex with farm animals or corpses, no cannibalism, no beheading of frogs or kittens, no smashing of guitars, no cocaine-snorting onstage. We certainly have traveled a long, long way from those days. (June 20, 1995) Rock 'n' Roll legend Wolfman Jack died July 1 of a heart attack at his Belvidere, North Carolina, home at age 57. Another legend goes to ground. They say he burned his Camels till the end. Adios, Wolfman. Polls show about 80 percent of the American people don't want a dollar coin to replace the dollar bill. Yet this idea gets floated every so often, and newspapers across the land, always in touch with their readers who don't want one, editorialize in favor of one. The June 21, 1995, Bloomington Herald-Times says "If public resistance could be overcome, the time for a convenient $1 coin is overdue." The H-T also wants to know when we're "going to get rid of pennies and just round all purchases to the nearest nickel?" When, indeed? I'm sure there are compelling reasons--probably legal--but why would the Anderson, Indiana, school board want to change the names of the city's two surviving high schools (storied Anderson High is being closed at the end of the 1996-97 school year) from Anderson Highland and Anderson Madison Heights to Anderson North and Anderson South? This is an exchange of two perfectly serviceable place names, each with its own special lilt, for two generic, sterile, faceless, anonymous late 20th Century American classics, North and South. Is the gene pool shriveling up there, too? I first noticed American corporations shedding place names with any connection to a recognizable locality in the 1970s ( for example,South Bend, Indiana's fine, old St. Joseph Bank & Trust Company, identified with the local St. Joseph River valley, a connection to local history and people, changed its name to Trustcorp, for example, a name that means nothing, connects to nothing). Thus the American landscape came to be cluttered with such names as Exxon and Unisys and acronymic monstrosities like NBD Bank, BP America, MBNA America and so forth. My theory is it's for portability. Corporations want to be able to move anywhere in the world overnight with a name that's meaningless and unconnected anywhere: Trustcorp could just as well be in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Finland, or Cambodia as in South Bend, Indiana. St. Joseph Bank & Trust Co. couldn't be. And in this age of global strutting, it's so provincial to be encumbered by connections that can only slow one down in the stampede to that next important business plunder or personal fitness workout. One name fits all! And they can sneak off in the middle of the night if they need to, and leave no trace. I'd Call That Ornery, Wouldn't You? Jason Pearson, a 20-year-old Delphi, Indiana, man, was convicted of aggravated murder in June in Castle Dale, Utah. Pearson was convicted of fatally shooting a Utah state trooper following a 24-mile chase along Interstate 70. The trooper was killed and three other police vehicles hit with gunfire as they closed in on the lad. At his trial, Pearson testified he "never intended to hurt anyone" as he fired again and again with a shotgun and then a rifle. It took a 12-member jury almost six hours to convince itself that all that hot lead at least meant the young man was ornery. Now a judge has to make a gutty decision: life with parole or life without. Stay tuned. But don't be too judgmental! (July 4, 1995) Brave New Casper Casper, a summer blockbuster film brought to us by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures, and packing 'em in at theaters across this great nation since its late May premiere, apparently has been modernized and catapulted into the brave new world of the Nineties featuring a horny little ghost. Casper, of course, was a Hollywood cartoon and comic book critter of our childhoods, friendly, cute, benign, and certainly not interested in getting into little girls' pants (or little boys' either). Spoilsport critics say that's changed in the new Casper film. Russell Harvey, whose father is credited with turning the original Casper The Friendly Ghost into a national institution, is now criticizing the modern film, claiming it features "graphic violence, obscene language and perverted characterizations." Harvey is angry about a scene in which Casper discovers a young girl in his bedroom and says, "There's a girl on my bed. Yes!" Harvey says this version of Casper has sexual desires for a female child, and even kisses her. Marvin Levy, a spokesman for Speilberg's company, Amblin, pooh-poohs Harvey's complaint and says most people will interpret the film differently. Still, he sounded suspiciously Nineties when he told USA Today that "This Casper is a Casper with an attitude. 'Puckish' is the word." Levy added that if Casper acts differently in the new movie from the old cartoons, it is because times have changed." He's certainly right about that, and proud of it, I'd bet. (July 4, 1995) An excerpt from Ronald Kessler's new book, Inside The White House, printed in the June 5 Washington Times, tells us of the eating habits and preferences of many of our mid- to late-20th Century favorites: Ronald and Nancy Reagan, President and Rosalyn Carter, The Nixons, the Fords, the Bushes, and some of their staff as well. We learn that Pat Nixon ate cottage cheese, too, though the cognoscenti chose to ridicule only her husband for eating it. Ronald Reagan liked hamburger soup (made from ground beef, tomatoes, and carrots) and wanted his steaks well done. Nancy Reagan favored healthy foods on the White House menu, but her husband would sneak in macaroni and cheese and other foods he liked when she wasn't around. We learn that the White House spends over $250,000 on flowers, and that first family members get unlimited free (to them, not to taxpayers) personal telephone calls. Henry Kissinger, who served in both the Ford and Nixon administrations, was distinctly unpopular with the crew of Air Force One, on which he frequently flew. Kessler says the crew did not enjoy cleaning up after Kissinger, and quotes then-chief steward Charles Palmer on Kissinger's table manners: "Henry Kissinger. . .didn't like peas. If there were peas on his plate, he would take a knife and brush them on the floor. He was a real messy eater. There were a lot of things on the floor before he was finished." The old steward is far too kind here. He's describing a pig and an asshole, not a "messy eater." Why won't Palmer call it what it is? An obscure U.S. Labor Department report confirms what we know in our guts: While the stock market has roared to new highs and America's corporations are reporting record profits, the value of wages and benefits paid to the American worker is declining. The Labor department reported at the end of June that the value of those items went down 3 percent in the past year, the first decline since it began its calculation in 1987. And a recent survey by the Conference Board shows that in an age where downsizing, rightsizing and rationalizing (code for: eliminating jobs) have reached unparalleled popularity in corporate boardrooms, more than half the victims who get new jobs earn less money and the average cut in pay is 20 percent. What's going on here is a fundamental reordering of the economic universe. The worst nightmare of the country's Haves has to be that the Have Nots will wake up and discover what's going on. Associated Press covered a news conference at Cape Canaveral featuring U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard and two Russian crewmates who landed at the Kennedy Space Center July 7 after several months aboard Russia's Mir space station. AP's story was accompanied by a four-column close-up picture of the three men enjoying hot fudge sundaes. Thagard wore his baseball cap indoors for the occasion. The Russians had removed their headgear. And so bad manners now infests even the NASA astronaut corps. Sayin' See Ya Danged if I didn't lose my legs again today. Walked into the office at 7 a.m., ready for another day of challenge, excitement, and opportunity. The place looked funny. Bare. Then I noticed. Our supplies, rating sheets, forms, evaluations, most of the paperwork normally out on supply tables were gone. "Gee, what's going on, Ryan?" I asked the local site boss. I knew what was going on, just wanted to play the fool, see what Ryan would say. Ryan mumbled something about how it "looked like 'they' were going to shut down the office for a while." Today's probably the last day, he added. We knew better than to ask a lot of questions. Part of Ryan's job is to lie and dissemble to the rest of us. Ryan, a full-time and 'permanent' employee, said he wasn't sure where he'd be next week. He was his usual non-fountain of information. None of the rest of us--unemployed scum, dross, and rabble that we are--were much surprised. There'd been a few suspicious signs over the previous few weeks. Ryan played dumb all through it. And who knows, maybe he didn't know anything. What has this been, though, if not a great experience? So adios, Mr. Kratchlow. (July 7, 1995) Dear Johnny. . . I'm still trying to compose a letter to Jonathan Winters. Daunting task. How could I ever tell him how much influence he's had on my life? This appears to be an exception to Poe's claim that there never arose a thought in the human brain beyond the utterance of the human tongue. What would Edgar Allen say if he were writing Johnny? Somehow, Coonley Must Be Stopped The Illinois Junior Academy of Science, an association of 800 schools, plus teachers, students, and others wishing to foster student interest in science, has come up with a Perfectly Nineties solution to the pernicious problem of achievement. Its board of directors, almost surely anticipating big trouble from Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, which had won three straight Academy science fairs and was then threatening to win an unprecedented fourth, voted to ban any school from team competition that had won three years in a row. Somehow that got softened to four in a row. Coonley School promptly won its fourth straight championship and now has been officially banned from competing next year. The kids were punished by being denied the individual plaques given to winners of each of the previous 66 fairs--the school got a 30-inch high trophy--and informed that their school could compete again for the title in 1996. So far, the academy plans to let individual Coonley School pupils compete for honors. Coonley is described as a highly selective private school which admits only students with IQ scores exceeding 120 on two separate examinations. Its pupils, academy pooh-bahs admit, are just too good. "We have decided to give other schools an opportunity to win," said Janine Petric, Academy president. Because winning the state science fair is such a prestigious accomplishment for a school, Petric said, "we want to spread the wealth around." Spoken like a true Clintonista, don't you think? Coonley's headmaster, Gaston Favreau, who knows resentment against achievement when he sees it, preferred to be disingenuous when he told a Chicago Tribune reporter, "Are we saying because you are bright and you put in the time, the effort, the energy, the creativity and the critical thinking, you cannot come out on top?" Precisely. And Favreau surely knows as well as you or I that the next step will be to ban any individual from winning too often, as these late 20th Century snivelers continue their ceaseless questing for equality of results, not opportunity.(July 10, 1995) I recently called one of America's big corporate giants, Con Agra, and of course was put on hold. While I waited, their Muzak played Ravel's Bolero for me. Sure beats Iron Maiden, Meat Loaf or Snoop Doggy Doo Slimebag, and I told 'em so once I finally got to talk to a human being. One small step for troglodytes. . . A Setback--But Only A Brief One--In The Relentless March Toward Fairness And Equal Rights For All The Earth's Disadvantaged Peoples A federal appeals court in Cincinnati has upheld a lower court ruling against a deaf man in Cleveland who sued the Cleveland Browns, NBC, ABC, CBS, and all their local affiliates in 1993. He claimed the National Football League's television blackout rule (wherein home games are not broadcast locally if they are not sold out 72 hours in advance) discriminated against deaf people. No word yet on whether the aggrieved plaintiff will take this to the Supreme Court. (July 19, 1995) *Cracking The Star/News* Code** Corporate big cheeses have announced, in the oddly stilted lawyerly language reserved for such occasions, that effective September 1 the staffs of the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News will be merged into one big, happy family--still fiercely independent, still nobly questing after truth, justice, and multicultural diversity, mind you, but ever so much more efficient, coordinated, focused, value-driven, and all with the overarching aim of serving its beloved readers and advertisers even better. In other words, they're going to get rid of a bunch of people. Bet money on it. Kirk Douglas rode a horse named "Whiskey" in two different movies: Lonely Are The Brave, and The Villain. I wonder what that means. Pack Heat Or Shop--It's Our Choice Patrons at Sony Theaters on Indianapolis's west side are greeted by a sign inside the ticket booth window which says: No Loaded Firearms Allowed Inside Theater. A short distance away, at the entrance to Galyan's TradingCompany, a large locally-based sporting goods store, is this sign: Firearms Not Permitted Inside This Store. I'd left my sidearms and large-bore shoulder weapons at home, anyway, so I was able to go the movie and shop at Galyan's. I think there's a clue in there, somewhere, about our society. (July 25, 1995) She Can Kick Tail, Too My wife, Mogo, has a new title: Goddess of Teaming, Thematics, New Paradigms, Multicultural Diversity, Multiple Learning Styles, Literature Circles, Student Groupings, Ethno-Centric Learning, Essential Questions, and Rubrics. Are there any questions? Companies Which Desperately Need to Change Their Names Department: The first two nominees are: Siemens and Fifth Third Bank. Additional nominees are welcomed. My Family And Friends Will Forgive Me, For I Know Not What I Do The technological imperative propels me onward, upward, kicking, screaming. . .I have purchased, and appear to have successfully installed, a fax modem. I've joined the wildly cheering throng of America Online subscribers as well, and appear to have successfully completed my AOL logon. Within hours my e-mail inbox brimmed with an exuberant personal letter to me from Jambalaya Fibish, AOL's president. He wanted to be--and was-- the first to congratulate me and welcome me to the AOL family. Bold new horizons and brave new worlds beckon, it is obvious. (August 8, 1995) Star And BSU Struggle Against Judgmentalism Two Ball State University athletes were arrested in late July in a fracas involving one of the three elements nearly always present in these stories--women, booze, or drugs. This time it was DeWayne Rogers,then considered a likely starter on the coming year's Cardinals basketball team, breaking down a woman's apartment door, confining her against her wishes, and finally leading police on a car chase that ended with Rogers' arrest, along with a cohort, footballer Marcellus Davis, when the lads drove their car into a dead-end alley. Charges against Davis were later dropped, but Rogers was dismissed from the team and faces assorted counts of burglary, criminal confinement, and resisting arrest. University officials struggled to be non-judgmental, noting that it was a privilege to take part in college athletics and concluding, rather lamely, that Rogers, for one, "failed to meet" the school's "expectations" regarding personal conduct. The Indianapolis Star's writer, Terrance Harris, opened his August 1 account of the episode by describing the lads' conduct as "an apparent error in judgment." (August 2, 1995) Here's a little snapshot of where our country's going: children under age 18 living with one parent numbered 18.6 million in 1994 and constituted 27 percent of this age group. In 1970 they comprised 12 percent of the under-18 group. In the same period, the number of unmarried-couple households increased sevenfold. (Source: Census Bureau report, ""Population Profile of the United States, 1995.") Worth Ever' Dang Penny Of It! The Indianapolis Star annually produces a multi-page report on Indiana's highest paid business executives. It's the sort of thing you read with a vomit trough nearby. Conseco, Inc., an insurance holding company based in Carmel, spawned the year's top predators. Its chairman, Stephen Hilbert, took $117.64 million to the bank in 1994 (more than doubling his 1993 take of $42.48 million). Three other Conseco executives hit the jackpot, too: Rollin Dick ($29.69 million), Donald Gongaware ($28.28 million), and Lawrence Inlow ($21.54 million). The Conseco Four totaled $197.16 million for leading the company in 1994 to a failed $3 billion buyout attempt of Kemper Corp., and a 21.65 percent drop in their company's stock value. Meantime the average American worker got a 3 percent pay increase in 1994, and of course millions more were rightsized out of existence. In Japan the average top executive receives 20 to 25 times the typical worker's wages. In France and Germany the ratio is 35 to 1. In the U.S. top executives get over 190 times what the average worker gets. Tell me this country isn't insane. Four tourists have won America's unacknowledged-but-bet-your-life-it's-real lottery. Their winning numbers came up August 12 when an Empire State Building elevator in which they were passengers went out-of-control, hit the elevator shaft ceiling at the 80th floor, then dropped and stalled between the 79th and 80th floors. The elevator cab was stranded for about an hour and a half, till rescue crews cut a hole in the elevator and lifted the passengers to safety. The four tourists, whose names were not released, were said to have suffered minor injuries and were briefly hospitalized in satisfactory condition. Each may now savor the prospect of lawsuit damage rewards in the millions to compensate for their pain and suffering. Well worth a trip to Gotham, I'd say. (August 12, 1995) Shop Or Be Shot? Tandy Corp. has opened one of its new Incredible Universe superstores in Indianapolis. It advertises 185,000 square feet--about the size of four football fields--and over 85,000 different electronic products under one roof. The Indianapolis Star devoted 50 column inches--about 40 percent of the business section cover page--plus some runover on an inside page to a worshipful story announcing the big grand opening. Incredible Universe is more than triple the size of its largest Indianapolis competitors, locally-owned H.H. Gregg, and Minneapolis-based Best Buys, both of whose biggest stores here run around 50,000 square feet. Incredible Universe is catapulting the "shopping concept" to new levels of frenzy by making "entertainment a big factor" in our shopping experience. "Cast members," as Incredible Universe calls its employees, will greet, mingle and "sing, dance,and coax shoppers into a karaoke studio," as well as encourage us to "play with the merchandise." Tandy pooh-bahs expect more than a million customers will visit the local store in its inaugural year, with 10 per cent of those traveling, in a heartbreaking commentary on the barrenness of their lives, more than 100 miles to do so. Each new day in America brings a story like this, as businesses struggle to fine-tune the rabble to some new and tantalizing shopping experience. The furious building of strip malls and megastores eats like cancer at the landscape. The astonishing vista from the interstates and major thoroughfares around Indianapolis is the same--bulldozers, earth movers, concrete trucks, housing and commercial construction as far as the eye can see. It goes on around the clock 365 days a year, and all against a backdrop of millions of jobs being eliminated across the country, of stagnating or declining family incomes. Aside from wondering about the paradox of all this, it takes only a small leap of imagination to foresee the day when places like Incredible Universe, with billions at stake in inventory, payroll, and other operating costs, will begin sending armed "cast members" out into nearby neighborhoods with orders to shoot out the tires of passing vehicles and bring people in at gunpoint so they can be forced to either shop (and sing and dance and ham it up in the karaoke booth) or be shot down on the spot. The economic imperative will demand nothing less: "Shop or Be Shot." (August 12, 1995) Welcome Back To School! Two parents were arrested at an Indianapolis westside elementary school August 17 after they assaulted a school security officer when administrators told them they couldn't complete the registration of their son that day. Brian Cole and his wife, Laverne, became angry when told that because they lived outside the school district, they would have to wait to register their son in the first grade until after children living within the district had all been registered. The father assaulted a security guard, who was taken to a local hospital with a concussion, a facial cut and a bruised back. The wife was charged with disorderly conduct for arguing with police when they were arresting the husband. Welcome back to school! (August 17, 1995) In the torrent of press coverage about Shannon Faulkner's duel with the Citadel, you almost never see the truth mentioned. Femininnies and the liberal mainstream media paint it as a holy crusade against repressive, fascist, male-dominated institutions and a heroic struggle for human rights in the face of cruel discrimination. Bleeders themselves see all this, and a battle as well against the militaristic wacko gun-toting militia crowd--The Citadel is, after all, a military school, isn't it?--kooks who threaten our nation on every side. At bottom, though, this story is not about Shannon Faulker's burning desire to get a college education at a military institution, or to use a Citadel education to launch a military career; it's about Shannon Faulker and her handlers deciding it isn't fair for South Carolina taxpayers' money to be used at a school which allows only males as cadets. There's nothing wrong with Shannon Faulker's taking such a decision; there are times when it's necessary to "make a point," and take on the establishment. Perhaps this is one of them. What's wrong is calling it something else, as so many revisionist lefties are. (August 20, 1995) And since it's unconstitutional for The Citadel to be an all-male school, then we'll soon see the left pushing for legal action to force the approximately 94 women's colleges in the United States to admit men, won't we? Little things which help us understand the universe (from "Harper's Index" in the August, 1995, issue of Harper's magazine): Percentage of contributions to the Republican National Committee since 1993 that were of $1,000 or more: 7; Percentage of contributions to the Democratic National Committee that were: 27; Ratio of compensation paid AlliedSignal's CEO in 1994 to wages paid to all of its 3,810 Mexican maquiladora workers: 3:2; Percentage of Americans who don't know that Hiroshima was the site of the first atomic bomb attack: 35; Estimated number of killings in True Lies, a film Bob Dole cited in March as among those "most friendly to the family": 94; Amount of the $21,000 in contributions Bob Dole has received from Time Warner since 1987 that he plans to return: 0; Average percentage of local TV evening news time that is devoted to crime and disaster coverage: 53. But He Did Have A Full Box Of Ammo. . . Dispatches from the frontier inform us that Judge Bruce Halliday actually wept in his Castle Dale, Utah, courtroom July 5 when he handed down a life sentence with the possibility of parole to 20-year-old Jason Scott Pearson, the Delphi, Indiana, lad convicted of aggravated murder for launching 16 rifle and shotgun blasts, one of which proved fatal, at a pursuing Utah state policeman. His attorneys argued that despite the 16 shots Pearson fired, "he did not have murder in his heart" and that what really happened was the lad just "made a very bad mistake." Judge Pearson noted that Pearson came from a broken home, that he was "a troubled young man" without a "serious criminal past," and should be given hope and a chance at rehabilitation. Pearson himself had testified he never intended to hurt anyone with his fusillade. No word about what hope was offered the parents, wife, and two young children of the slain trooper. Don't Listen To What They Say, Watch What They Do. . . Most business executives put profits first and people near the bottom of their priority lists, according to a survey by the big New York management consulting firm of Towers Perrin Co. Interviews with 300 honchos from medium- and large-sized firms produced 73 percent claiming that employees were their company's most important investment but when they ranked priorities, investing in employees came up fifth on a six-item list. This is a real shocker, isn't it? More tidbits which help us understand our universe (from "Harper's Index" in the September, 1995 edition of Harper's magazine): Days after the Pentagon announced in June that it didn't need more Stealth bombers that the House voted to fund more: 10; Federal payments made in 1994 to government employees who resigned as part of a downsizing program: $912,000,000; Federal salaries paid in 1994 to newly hired government employees: $780,689,202; Percentage of all criminal defendants in Japan who are found guilty: 99; Percentage of all murders in Colombia that result in a conviction: 3; Weeks after the peso collapsed that former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari joined the board of Dow Jones: 4; Hours it took six residents of a Washington town to renovate a local intersection after waiting 10 years for the state to do it: 6; Ratio of the median U.S. waiting period for a human liver transplant to the amount of time Mickey Mantle waited: 74:1; Marriage proposals received by Timothy McVeigh since his arrest last April for the Oklahoma City bombing: 4. (August 26, 1995) All Hail The Judge! Peter J. Nemeth, judge of the St. Joseph County Probate Court in South Bend, Indiana, waltzed straight into the Memorable Sound Bite Hall of Fame with this one. . .in announcing a crackdown on deadbeat dads who don't pay child support and in sentencing Rochelle Damonte Roberts, 24, to two to four years in prison (Roberts admits to fathering nine children via six women, and owes $29,716 in back support), Nemeth said on July 17 that he would begin jailing able-bodied men who don't pay, then quipped: "The message to the men of our community who have reached puberty is, if they're going to unzip their pants, they're going to have to unzip their wallets." Setting Sail. . . Today marked my own modest debut on the Internet with the "Hoosiers" List. At 8:30 a.m. I sent forth a small morsel of red meat--just a couple paragraphs--about IU basketball. Then I quickly signed off and left the house. When I returned that evening there were 20 messages, replies, and replies to replies crammed into my electronic mailbox. Several were from certified Grape Kool-Aiders. This is only the beginning of an electronic dialogue involving the billions and billions of us who follow IU sports. Let the games begin! (August 28, 1995) An additional 18 messages clogged my electronic mailbox on the second day after my e-mail debut. Already, though, my original message has been forgotten. The respondents quickly fell to yapping and arguing among themselves about other IU sports issues. It's like a shark feeding frenzy. People are swallowing their own young whole, chewing off their own arms and legs and those of anyone nearby in their maniacal quest for IU news. It's not a pretty picture. God, I love it! (August 29, 1995) Mere Coincidences, All Of Them Marsha Dueker of suburban Brownsburg in an August 31 letter to the Indianapolis Star raised a truly ornery question: How come, she asked, Dallas TV star Larry Hagman got his liver transplant in 39 days, singer David Crosby got his in 35 days, and Mickey Mantle waited only 48 hours, when the average wait for an "ordinary person" is 130 days? Just coincidences, don't you think? (August 31, 1995) Feeling Our Pain Chicago Tribune business writer George Gunset, in a Sept. 2 "Business Week in Review" section, summarized the just-announced $10 billion megadeal merging two of Gotham City's banking behemoths, Chase Manhattan Corp. and Chemical Bank, by noting that the new critter would be the nation's largest bank with $297 billion in assets, and that "only 12,000 jobs would be eliminated." Wall Street was adrool at the thought of all the synergies, dynamics, and wonderful cost reductions the big deal would provide investors. But what about the 12,000 human carcasses that'll stack up? What'll we do with them? Mogo said to me last night, "You have no expectations of life." I pled guilty as charged. (September 22, 1995) No jury is going to find O.J. Simpson guilty. Facts won't matter. He'll walk. This verdict was assured during the jury selection process, when the Lost Angeles district attorney's office agreed, under pressure from "community" groups, to allow minorities to comprise a majority on the Simpson jury. Like Johnny Said, Race Was A Factor I heard part of the post-verdict press conference of Simpson's attorneys. A reporter asked Johnny Cochran if race was a factor in the trial and verdict. Cochran said it absolutely was not. The reporter didn't utter a syllable of challenge to Cochran's preposterous lie. Even a Limbaugher with half his brain tied behind his back knows race was a major factor in the whole trial process. For the press to let Cochran get away with denying it is disgraceful. (October 5, 1995) One-Class Basketball On The Brink There's a movement afoot in Indiana to eliminate the state's traditional one-winner-take-all high school basketball tournament and replace it with a four- or five-class tournament based on school enrollment. This was inevitable and is part of a national movement that's been gathering speed in the 1990s. It's led by the sensitivity and self-esteem crowd that's on us like a locust plague. They've been tinkering with test scores, adjusting standards (always lowering them), tilting the playing fields, changing the rules whenever someone wins too often, and resenting achievement and superior performance whenever they find it. Troglodytes and traditionalists are protesting, but the tide seems irreversible. One smart aleck said he felt some of the class tourney advocates wouldn't be happy unless all 384 schools in the state received a championship trophy. Not a bad idea, come to think of it. UPS could take care of the deliveries in one day and everybody in every school would feel good about himself. That is what this is all about, isn't it? (October 14, 1995) And if it's not fair at the high school level, what about college football? Shouldn't we have several divisions in the Big Ten, so thalidomides like IU can have a chance to win a "championship" every year? Don't we have a right to this? Headline For Our Inflated Times Department: 400,000 Attend Million Man March. (October 17, 1995) Louis Farrakhan, organizer of the 400,000 Man March on Wonderland, D.C., is now threatening to file lawsuits against local authorities who estimated the crowd at 400,000. Farrakhan says this is a honky racist conspiracy to deliberately distort attendance at the march. Could we just split the difference and get on with our lives? Mark Fuhrman uses the word "nigger" and the bleeders scream "racist" to the heavens. Louis Farrakhan calls Jews "bloodsuckers" and nary a peep of protest is heard. Why does a racist anti-Semite black man get a free pass and a white Lost Angeles police detective get excoriated? I just don't get it. (October 17, 1995) The second Menendez Brothers trial has begun. Why go to the trouble? Can't we just give them their own TV show and a fat compensatory federal grant? Isn't that what this is all about? Mary Tyler Moore revealed in her autobiography that she helped her terminally ill brother try to commit suicide in 1992. Good for her! We all need a trusted friend we can count on at a time like that. (October 18, 1995) Another Reason to Go On Living: Woodfield Mall in Schaumberg, Illinois, is again the world's largest mall, breathless promoters say, with the opening October 20th of a new wing. Aging crooner Tony Bennett warbled for the opening ceremony. The new addition must have been built in response to Bloomington, Minnesota's Mall of America, which had billed itself as the largest. The day will come when our entire nation is one big covered mall. For God's Sake, Don't Look Down. . . Denying surveys which show the average American spends six to seven hours a day watching television, Lee York, a vice president at Market Media, Inc., says "People today don't have the time to read the newspaper or watch television" in explaining why his company is now marketing advertising space on supermarket floors. The floor is a "barren environment," according to York, whose firm will implant brightly colored graphics and product logos in linoleum in Winn-Dixie Stores nationwide. Market Media aims to have floor ads in over 8,500 stores by 1997. What is this if not the logical extension of the genetic compulsion to fill up empty space to soothe a nation heavily populated with people who'd be uneasy if left alone in an empty room? Drool-Snapper Here I thought I was doing all right, keeping an even disposition and a cheerful spirit about my rightsizedness. . .and then I discovered the June 26, 1995, issue of Fortune's cover headline, "Are You Paid Enough? (Unless You Earn Four Times Your Age, the Answer Is Probably NO)" At the bottom was a picture of "John Panzer, a 43-year-old software marketer with a family of four" (who) "makes $125,000 and still feels strapped." The string of drool at the corner of my mouth snapped up. I churned to page 66, saw everybody's salary, muttered. Figured out I was being paid 14.8 percent of my age. How am I gonna send my kids to Princeton, keep up the mortage on my $250,000 starter house in Dog Log Woods? Now I'm sullen, bitter. This is enough to make me vote Democratic! Another Family Vacation Ruined Nobody's more disappointed than I that they've canceled the big O.J. Simpson sports memorabilia show in Atlantic City in February. I'd been working extra hours to set aside the money needed for the $159.95 photo of the Ford Bronco chase, signed by O.J. and his driver, Al Cowlings, and the $100 courtroom scene signed by O.J. and Johnny Cochran. I was gonna drive out and make a whole week of it! Dang! Hoist 'Em! "Hollywood is or can be a very toxic place. And I'm trying to keep that away from my kids as much as I can." --Actor Bruce Willis, telling Extra why he and his wife, actress Demi Moore, and their children live in Hailey, Idaho. Great, Bruce, but what are you gonna do when your kids rent Disclosure,a movie starring their mother, in which she unharnesses her heaving canteloupe classics and dives into Michael Douglas's crotch for a truly memorable bob job about 10 minutes (9 minutes, 42.33810955 seconds, actually) into the story? Tell 'em that there's no gettin' away from it, that the "toxicity" has followed them all the way to Hailey, Idaho? That it really isn't their own mother up there sucking away on the big silver screen? If Bruce and Demi are really serious about this, there's something they could do. They could decline film roles like this. But of course nobody will pay them $4 million per film not to act in them. There's your petard, right there. What do do, what to do, what to do? (November 10, 1995) Twenty Years Ago Today. . . Twenty years ago today the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier loaded with 26,116 tons of iron ore, plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior in a fierce storm. Today there was to be a private ceremony for the families of the 29 dead crewmen at the Great Lakes Shipping Museum at Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, who immortalized the episode in his epic song, The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald, was to attend. God, how I wish I could have been there. (November 10, 1995) Can't Beat 'em? Ban 'em! The Let's Keep Tilting The Playing Field, By God, Till We Win movement has reared its ugly head in Illinois again. Bob Doan, principal of Villa Grove High School south of Urbana, has asked the Illinois High School Athletic Association to ban private schools from state athletic tournaments. They're winning too much, he says, and it's not fair. Pathetic. Two Reasons To Puke On Veterans Day (1) Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (who, at age 79, and a bit too late for the 58,000 Americans who died there, now says his masterminding of American involvement in the Vietnam War was "a mistake") in Hanoi to apologize to North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, and (2) Slick Willie participating in and thereby defiling a Saturday memorial ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns for fallen American veterans. (November 11, 1995) "We all make mistakes in life and I'm now trying to atone for mine." --Robert McNamara, to Associated Press reporter Kathy Wilhelm, who asked about his motive for his trip to Hanoi to meet General Giap, in the Indianapolis Star November 12.) You know, I can't even remember what the weather was like in Scorched Corners when I was a kid. There was probably a 50 percent chance of everything, though. Looking At Bright, Shiny Objects Georgia State Lottery, Rebecca Paul, has announced plans for a new " Quick Cash" game which beautifully reflects our times. "Quick Cash" will feed our insatiable hunger for more and more frequent stimulation by giving players a chance to win at rapid-fire intervals--as many as 12 games per hour every hour the lottery's computers are running, from 6 a.m. to midnight. In an Atlanta Journal and Constitution interview Thanksgiving week, Paul noted that Georgians have to wait 24 hours between games "to have another crack at a big online jackpot." This was clearly intolerable. She expects the new caper to offer "Quick Cash" drawings every five minutes and to yield about $200 million annually in increased wagering, on top of the existing $1.4 billion bet annually in Georgia. Revealing an uncanny marketing savvy, Paul predicted the new game will not only expand the base of players but bring many new retail establishments into the state's gambling network. "Quick Cash" will be an online computer game mainly available in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, and clubs. The state lottery board unanimously approved "Quick Cash" at its mid-November meeting without any debate. There were critics, of course, but they were the same old strident, hysterical Christians, moralists, Luddites, fuddy-duddies, spoilsports and wacko right-wing bombers and kooks who are always trying to stop progress and deprive the rest of us of our Constitutional rights. Georgia Governor Zell Miller, "the father of Georgia's lottery," said he'd heard the critics wailing but wasn't concerned. "I've heard all those arguments on the lottery for years," he said. "If that's what the lottery commission wants to do, that's fine with me." The Journal and Constitution, focused as most newspapers are on the moment's minutia, missed an opportunity to connect this story to the larger unfolding spectacle of American life. We are inching in incremental steps, unnoticeable to all but the demented, hypersensitive few, toward a society in which continuous sensory stimulation is demanded by the rabble and provided by their keepers. Evidence abounds. More and more businesses run 24 hours a day. Connections to global markets now require round-the-clock vigilance from investors, shylocks, bankers, bureaucrats, dictators, criminals and business people, for every second of every day someone out there is making deals, shifting billions in currency at warp speed, bribing governments, inventing new schemes, penetrating previously untapped markets for goods, or creating new ones. Thousands of new products appear each year. Over a billion dollars of credit card transactions occur each day. Shopping malls metastasize, and their blazing mercury vapor lamps transform hundreds of thousands of square miles of night to day. Lasers sweep the skies, punching holes to potential new customers in other galaxies. More models of athletic shoes were introduced last year than brands of athletic shoes existed in 1959. The TV screen flickers hypnotically, strobelike, in thatch huts on the Serengheti, ice caves in Antarctica, mansions in Europe, crack houses in Calcutta, ghetto hovels in Detroit and Johannesburg, terrorist hideouts in Beirut and the Sudan. Mailboxes bulge each day with more printed material than many of us will read in a lifetime, hyping products, causes, politicians, dreams, scams. The three inches thick Sunday newspaper weighs over 10 pounds, most of it advertising. Phones jangle incessantly, many calls placed by computers. We clap hands to our heads to shut out the scratching, clawing sound at the door, on the walls and the roof, the sounds of telemarketers burrowing to get inside to goad us to buy something, anything, to keep this awesome, ravenous selling machine satiated. If we don't buy, and buy enough and buy now and keep buying, someday they'll come to our houses with guns, and make us buy something. They'll insist that it is our civic duty. The rosters of America Online, Compuserve and the other computer services are expanding almost exponentially now, as millions more of us allow these strangers into our homes to hawk goods, introduce us to total strangers in "chatting rooms," entice us to give them credit card numbers, personal data. Children and adults worldwide sigh from boredom and angst. School is boring. Work is boring. Life is boring. The cry resounds for stimulation, more excitement. A glance at any television or movie screen shows us slashing, flashing images, rapid cuts from scene to scene: lights flaring nuclear white from fires and explosions, hurtling vehicles, fire hose sprays of Uzi gunfire, super close-ups of hairy hands setting timers, tamping explosives into pipebombs, strangulation victims drooling spittle and blood, heads exploding as dum-dum shells plow home, breasts heaving, tongues probing, dope-sated eyes rolling back, pelvises grinding, gigantic silver-black lizardlike insects towering over us in narrow exitless passageways, drooling clear viscous slime from savage jaws as they close in to kill. Faster, faster. Screams, more screams. The din rises, the gates to the abyss open wide. . . If Georgia isn't the first state to have cash games every minute then some other state will. The question is not if, but when. (November 30, 1995) Loading The Dice. . . An article in the December 1995 ABA Journal confirmed what many among the unwashed rabble suspected: the O.J. Simpson trial verdict was likely sealed when the jury was selected. Pre-trial questionnaires prepared by jury selection consultants show that of those who were seated on the final Simpson jury: 100 percent did not regularly read daily newspapers; 75 percent believed Simpson was unlikely to have committed the crimes because he excelled at football; 42 percent said they or their family members had "negative law enforcement experiences" (code for: were suspicious or skeptical of police); 42 percent believed it was OK to use physical force on a family member. Simpson's lawyers extensively used jury research by trial consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, while the prosecution, according to the ABA Journal, declined jury selection advice from its consultant. More evidence, sadly enough, that this trial--all trials, probably--wasn't at all a quest for truth or justice but was instead a a contest, a game of manipulation and deceit between lawyers to see who was cleverest and who could load the dice in the jury selection. Shame ought to be widespread in the legal profession, but I doubt that it is. Peculiar Photo Shoot Has Rural Georgians Puzzled Word drifts north from rural Georgia that two adult men and two nearly teen-age boys were observed by several passing motorists in what appeared to be some sort of bizarre "photo shoot" along Georgia Highway 212 the day after Thanksgiving. George State Patrol and local police discounted rumors that at least one of the adults was a recent walk-away from a nearby Dorkburg, Georgia, mental facility. Witnesses were said to have passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie as their cars hurtled past the unusual roadside tableau. Best stay tuned, keep an eye on this story. May be something to it. Peek At Reality Too Much For California Family A California family has sued Walt Disney Co. for damages following an Unpleasantness in Anaheim's Disneyland parking lot in which the plaintiffs were robbed of about $1,650 by three miscreants who escaped on foot. Billie Jean Matay, her daughter Denise Bennett, and Bennett's three school-age children were "subjected to hours of questioning" and the children were "traumatized," the lawsuit said, when security guards took them to an office where the children saw Disney characters taking off their costumes. The family alleges that Disney employees are guilty of "exposing the children to the reality that Disney characters were, in fact, make-believe." No word on the amount of damages sought, but we can bet it's millions and millions and millions. There are few more heinous crimes in this great big wonderful country of ours than exposing anyone--let alone young children--to reality. Somebody must be made to pay for this, and who better than the Walt Disney Company? (December 7, 1995) Surely you've heard about the Recent Unpleasantness in Harlem involving a black man who entered a Jewish-owned clothing store brandishing a pistol and a container of paint thinner, allowed black customers to leave before shooting fleeing white people, then set the building on fire and shot himself to death. Gotham City pooh-bahs leapfrogged over themselves to proclaim that race had absolutely nothing to do with it. The Reverend Al Sharpton materialized on TV amid hints of "black rage" and a "racist Republican administration" which discriminated against illegal black street vendors, and so on and so forth. A few days after the Unpleasantness, though, it emerged that race had everything to do with it, that the perpetrator, 51-year-old Roland Smith, had a prison record, had publicly and angrily expressed his belief that the white people who owned the clothing store were "cheating black people out of jobs and retail space" in the offending building, and had shouted a warning to black customers in the store, telling them to "Get out! It's going to go down!" before opening fire on his selected white victims. I've had our big bank of television sets running full blast since, scanning, waiting for coverage of Pat Schroeder, Barney Frank, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Ed Asner, Oliver Stone, Michael Kinsley, Peter Jennings, Howard Metzenbaum, Ira Magaziner, Lani Guinier, Barbara Boxer, Johnny Cochran, Carol Moseley-Braun, Ron Dellums, Vic Fazio, David Bonior, Maxine Waters, O.J. Simpson trial jurors, or the Clintonistas marching in the streets to protest the mean-spirited outrage of it all. But alas, they've not appeared. Strangest thing. (December 12, 1995) Richard Estrada, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News, speculates that Hispanic leaders are planning their own "Million Man March" on Washington, so impressed were they with press coverage and publicity given this fall's black gathering in Wonderland, D.C. Hispanics, Estrada reports, are projected to replace blacks as the nation's largest minority group by 2010. Do we spot a trend here? Will big rallies in Wonderland by all our countless minority and victim groups become the latest national fad? The thought is a quick pick-me-up at the end of an otherwise fairly depressing year. Perhaps there is a reason to go on living. (December 16, 1995) Bartender! Turnstiles For Everyone! There are conspiracies abroad, too. In a story eerily similar to black charges of a honky conspiracy to undercount those attending the big black Million (or 400,000) Man March on Wonderland, D.C. last October, the Associated Press reports a big dispute in France over how many striking government workers marched in the Paris streets December 12 to protest planned government austerity measures. Strike leaders said over two million people hit the bricks to howl. Police estimated the mob at 930,000. Sounds like the sort of thing that will tie up the French courts for years! Couldn't we just install turnstiles worldwide, so we can get an accurate count and get on with our lives? Stuff You Just Stumble Across Washington Times columnist Richard Grenier reports that a study done during the Bush administration found that American corporations now spend more on lawyers than they report in after-tax profits. There's a clue in there somewhere, I just know it. Summing Up American Civilization, Circa 1995 "If we had God booked and O.J. was available, we'd move God. There's nobody who wouldn't take a figure of this magnitude." --CNN talk show host Larry King when asked if he'd like to have O.J.Simpson for an interview. Silence From the Grievance-Mongers Recently unearthed records indicate that Soviet communists murdered some 20,000 priests and church members, some of whom were crucified on the iron fences of their own churches. These, together with the millions of others murdered by the Communists in the halcyon days of Lenin and Stalin, surely should qualify for victim status in the liberal pantheon of the aggrieved. But alas, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Cokie Roberts, Larry King, Phil Donahue, the New York Times, Pat Schroeder, Ted Kennedy, Johnny Cochran, Lewis Lapham and the rest of the illuminati have reacted with yawns, or not at all. (December 10, 1995) Canon Camera has a television ad featuring the grizzled young grungemeister, Andre Agase, slamming paint-drenched tennis balls into a big canvas, then sloshing a bucket of paint on the thing. "Express yourself," a smirking Agase tells us. . .Outback Steakhouse has an ad in which voices sing and chant, "No Rules! Just Right!" Both ads capture well the tenor of our times. "There's nothing wrong with John whatsoever other than he killed a couple people." --John Christo, quoted by Associated Press January 2, 1995, defending his friend, John C. Salvi III, who was arrested and charged with shooting two receptionists to death and wounding five other people at a Brookline, Mass. abortion clinic. Christo also attacked the media for portraying Salvi as a "serial killer" instead of a "nice guy." You Already Are Department "We're going to be a constant nuisance." --American Lung Association spokesman Debra Kelley, explaining the ALA's plans to hector the Philip Morris company "wherever it goes" in 1996, quoted in Newsweek's December 11, 1995 issue. Things Are Still Shaky in Gotham Department For the second time in less than two weeks an aggrieved citizen-victim has opened fire and massacred innocent people in a neighborhood store crowded with Christmas shoppers. Twenty-two-year-old Michael Vernon killed five people and critically wounded three others December 19 in a Bronx shoe store. The Chicago Tribune account of the fracas noted that Vernon walked into the store around noontime looking for a pair of sneakers he had ordered, "but something went wrong." Vernon argued with a clerk, pulled out his gun and shot him, then opened fire on other people in the shop. Vernon was wounded and apprehended by a policeman as Vernon fled the scene. Police said that Vernon had "apparently become displeased with the service" in Little Chester Shoes. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told reporters, "We are asking for God's mercy." What he should have been asking for was God's vengeance. I May Be Old, But I'm Immature Who's ever said it better than my first grade teacher, 90-year-old Margaret Ann Sykes, still hobbling around in my hometown of Scorched Corners, Indiana? After receiving one of my quirky Christmas cards, she replied with this note: "I enjoyed your card. There's no hope for you now. If anything, you didn't improve with age. But I like you just as you are. I'm on a walker (with wheels) and still going. Your friend, Margaret Ann." (December 31, 1995). General Turgidson Woulda Loved Brits' 15-Inchers In late December in London I came face to face with a dream. I stepped up and touched a pair of 15-inch naval guns on display at the Imperial War Museum. Over 60 feet long, these big babies fire a 1940-pound shell over 18 miles. The shell itself is just under six feet long. Each gun weighs 100 tons. From 1914 to 1941 the pair were used on British naval destroyers. Closest thing to The Guns of Navarrone I've seen. I'll confess to fantasizing about owning several, and sitting up high at the back on a huge chrome-plated tractor seat, secured by heavy leather strapping, wearing a golden crash helmet, welder's goggles and a fireproof asbestos suit , cranking up the big barrels up to "zero in" on my hobgoblin of the moment. Seeing them, touching them, was nearly a religious experience. The dream lives on. Near the War Museum, at 100 Lambeth Road, Mogo and I stopped to look at the home of Captain William Bligh, the commander of the legendary H.M.S Bounty. The cap'n lived here from 1754 to 1817, the historic marker said. . .at the corner of Bury Place and Russell Street, just outside the British Museum, I read this sign on the corner of a building: "To Let. Tang-Poon, Surveyors-Property Consultants, 071-722-5675." In the toilet of the train hurtling to Cambridge I encountered this scrawled, plaintive cry for understanding: "German Wages Not Shit Pay Says IRA." From our train window we saw four men playing golf December 30 at a place called Knebworth, about 20 minutes outside London. A light snow covered the ground. . .we were struck by the many people we saw smoking cigarettes during our six-day visit. The anti-smoking movement in the U.S. is years ahead of England. It reminded us of our own childhoods, when (it seemed) "everybody" smoked, and sometimes with both hands. Another sign on a post at a corner on Tottenham Court Road screamed: Students for Socialism! Fight for Socialism! End Student Poverty! Somehow, it seemed fitting in a country farther down the road to socialism than our own. I wanted to stop and scrawl my own sign, though, something on the order of End Student Poverty! Turn That Baseball Cap Around! Get a Job! We were out walking London's streets every night of our visit and it wasn't until New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square that we saw our first British policeman patrolling on foot. In all the night trips on subways and walking about, we never once felt the least bit uneasy, threatened or unsafe. People were unfailingly polite, civilized, with not even a hint of rowdiness or danger. This is a sharp contrast to how we feel in any American city. British television is markedly more low-key than American: news and other programs move at a languid pace, and without the underlying sense of frenzy which permeates the American brand. One ad on London TV features disability and life insurance for Brits visiting America where, the ad notes, foreign tourists just might get mugged or killed. A story in the Daily Mail December 30 reported that May 21 would be "tax freedom day" for British citizens this year. In 1985 it was June 3 and in 1965 it took till April 29 for a citizen to earn enough to pay his tax bills. The average for European Union countries is June 14 and in the super-socialist redoubt of Sweden "tax freedom" doesn't arrive till late July. . .A sign at the rear of the world-renowned Saint Martin-in-the-Fields church says it costs one British pound (currently about $1.60) per minute (about $2,300 per day) to keep the church open. A bronze wall plaque nearby offers an inventory of the officers and men of the 18th, 21st and 23rd battalions of Imperial Yeomanry who died in the South African War of 1899-1902. I read the names--E.J. Ogilvy, H. Boultwood, H. Hale, A.J. McAllister, T. Coddington, H. Freakes, C. Olney, C. W. Ireton, and more--and noted that most were "men" not officers. The latter, as Jonathan Winters has so succinctly noted, are usually viewing the action "some 5,000 yards off through heavy lenses." American General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf's combat fatigue uniform from the Gulf War is in a glass case at the Imperial War Museum. . .one of the exhibits there noted that the German blitz of London began on Sept 7,1940, and the bombardment continued for 57 consecutive nights. . .something against which to measure our own next mild inconvenience. The Ultimate Fighting Contest is apparently the latest rage to sweep the U.S. This newest national pastime--what does it replace? Baseball? Drive-by shootings?--features two gladiators in an octagonal pit enclosed by a chain-link fence, bound only by two rules--no biting and no eye-gouging. Otherwise, anything goes. The Chicago Tribune lamented its soaring popularity, citing a Denver "tournament" before Christmas where 350,000 (presumably howling) patrons paid $24.95 apiece to watch on cable TV. The mayor of Denver decried the spectacle. Others of great sensitivity are rightfully joining the protest. "Society," the Tribune thundered, "has a right to say that some forms of brutality--like dueling--are beyond the pale." And indeed that would be true--in a civilized country. "Americans would never consider allowing competition in Russian roulette," the Tribune concluded--somewhat naively, I thought--and they shouldn't allow this "gruesome spectacle" either. I'll bet the Tribune's editorial staff that if Russian roulette were offered to the American public on a pay-per-view basis, it would do a land-office business (surely we recall the prophetic film, Network, in which network executives murdered their anchor man on-air because of low ratings, don't we?). (December 31, 1995) Back to top
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