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The American Pile

  • The health department in White County, Indiana, recently closed down a local grocery specializing in Mexican delights. One of numerous health code violations cited was the discovery of a dead--but still wearing its fur, eyeballs and its brains, according to local press reports--goat in a freezer. Enraged activists swarmed to protest. The ACLU muttered ominously. Charges of racial discrimination filled the air. Health officials were accused of concocting the whole thing and of failing to appreciate "native cultures." This isn't about discrimination at all. It's about state health laws; but above all it's about busybodies from the wacko Religious Left who have nothing better to do with their miserable lives than hector the rest of us. (January 1, 1998)
  • The headline read "Women's Chorus Seeks New Members," but you had to burrow into the story to uncover the agenda. The Indianapolis Women's Choir plans January 11 auditions for the new season. The choir, like so many modern-day organizations, is quite concerned about being sensitive to multicultural and multisexual diversity, and seeks, according to the Indianapolis Star, "women of all voices, cultures, and sexual orientation." The group is "dedicated to celebrating women, presenting lesbians in a positive light," and, like Slick and many a Clintonista, "building bridges to different communities." If there's any time left, perhaps they'll sing a few songs, too.
  • I called two glass companies in late January to get a price quote for replacing a windshield in my deep titanium Ford Probe. I gave them identical information. The Glass Doctor said it would cost $423.34. Safeline Auto Glass wanted $230.39. I chose the latter, but remain mystified about the huge price differential. Bet one of them assumed it was being paid by insurance. Just a hunch.
  • Richard Williams, the father of black tennis professionals Venus and Serena Williams, apologized January 22 for calling a woman who bumped daughter Venus during the U.S. Open semifinals last fall "a big, tall, white turkey." I've been on the lookout since last September when Williams uttered these words, and haven't seen or heard a peep from the Rev. Al Sharpton, Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephardt, Donna Shalala, The American Civil Liberties Union, Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters, Eleanor Holmes-Norton, Slick Willie, Pat Schroeder, Charlie Rangel, Christopher Dodd, Michael Kinsley, Cokie Roberts, Johnny Cochran, Tom Brokaw, Eleanor Clift, Al Hunt, The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bob Beckel or any of the rest of the wacko Religous Left crowd so much into outrage, foot-stamping, and hand-wringing about racism and injustice. They're nowhere to be found on this one.
  • Citizens everywhere can rest easier now that Gerald Handfield, Jr. has rescued a trove of priceless historical documents from the state of Indiana's paper shredders. Handfield is the director of the Indiana Commission on Public Records. He learned earlier this month that state prison officials were going to destroy a collection of notes, letters, and philosophical musings by the legendary convict and American icon, Mike Tyson, who spent three years in an Indiana prison for rape. Handfield promised to safeguard the treasures and preserve them for posterity, according to USA Today. Handfield's concern about posterity offers us a fairly keen insight into the state of American uncivilization in the fading months of the 20th Century.
  • This morning's Indianapolis Star bore this headline: U.S. 12th Graders Trail World in Math, Science Achievement. We can be sure, though, that American youngsters feel better about themselves than any other nation's youth. That's what matters. (February 25, 1998)
  • The Hoosier Lottery has over the last year begun to add a tag line to its radio and television advertising. "Play responsibly," the copyreader says. What they really want, though, is for everyone to play irresponsibly. And continuously. This tag line is a sop to the lawyers, who no doubt advised them to add it as protection against lawsuits claiming the state is responsible for a citizen's gambling "addiction." So it goes in America.
Duel Of The Potty Talk Titans
  • Gotham City shock jock Howard Stern's syndicated radio talk show came to Indianapolis February 2 determined to bring Indy's troglodytic hicks up to modern speed. To win our hearts and groins, he's here to do battle with Indy's own home-grown potty talkers on The Bob and Tom Show. Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold have 20 percent of the local market and are syndicated to over 30 cities nationally. Stern is a global legend in his own right with films, merchandise and literary spinoffs, and a radio show infiltrating over 40 American cities. Ratings and big money are at stake. Stern, news reports had it, spent considerable time on his inaugural show goading and ridiculing the local lads, calling them "douche bags" and other unsavory things, boasting how he was gonna spread 'em wide and drive it home on our beloved boys. Bob & Tom, meanwhile, were said to be hoping to stay on their version of the high road, and not be drawn into verbal combat with the outrageous outlander who just rode into town all leather, crotch flickings, bodily fluids, grunge, smelly armpits, semen stains, George Carlin's vocabulary, and a never-met-a-sheep-I didn't-like attitude. Pop culture and human nature being what they are, the bottom line for the rest of us is that Indianapolis radio and the so-called public dialogue will soon descend even deeper into the noxious depths of the cesspool, taking what's left of the human spirit with them. (February 2, 1998)
  • Over the weekend I attended an evening banquet and a couple of breakfasts of the National Wild Turkey Federation's 25th anniversary conference in Indianapolis. NWTF members are ardently patriotic. They love and revere their country with a fervor long considered out of fashion by pop culture. They are equally devoted to wildlife conservation and preservation--particularly as it relates to the American wild turkey--and have chapters in every state, and about 185,000 members nationwide. Imagine my surprise when, just before breakfast, a murmur rippled throughout the gigantic Indiana Convention Center and someone pointed toward the stage. There stood Retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of allied forces in the Gulf War. 'Stormin' Norman" himself. I got in a short line, shook his hand and thanked him for his service to our country. It was an honor to meet him and I told him so. Moments later we stood while an Indiana State Police honor guard presented the American flag. I joined in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It was probably the first time I'd uttered those words since high school. Each word came back easily. Schwarzkopf snapped off a crisp salute. At another meal, all the veterans in the group were called forward to the front of the room, stood together reciting the pledge while a patriotic video projected onto gigantic screens in the darkened hall. No dry eyes, I'll guarantee you. We were given a small American flag pin, and General Schwarzkopf came down the line and shook hands with each veteran. It was an exhilirating experience. I thought again, as I always do at such times, of the American President whose every day in office is an added disgrace to our country and a rebuke to all the men and women who've served honorably in the armed forces. My contempt for him is complete. (February 27, 1998)
  • Ever noticed how much catsup is wasted in a McDonald's restaurant? Count the times you order a sandwich, ask for a packet of catsup and the employee throws in not one, but a handful--three, four, five, even six packets. No single package of catsup can make a difference to McDonald's but the combined daily waste in the company's thousands of restaurants is surely significant.
  • It's been several weeks now since Green Bay Packer footballer Reggie White uttered all those remarks before a session of the Wisconsin State Legislature and the silence is thundering. As Bob Dole said, "Hey, where's the outrage?". Where are the exquisitely sensitive mobs marching in America's streets to protest the racism, the vile evil of it all? How come Reggie gets a free pass and Fuzzy Zoeller doesn't?
  • The late and legendary Congresswoman Bella Abzug died at the end of March. She was a liberal Democrat famous for wearing big, stupid hats.
Improving The Gene Pool
  • Legendary punk rocker Wendy O. Williams is dead at age 48 in Storr, Connecticut, according to an Associated Press report. She was the lead singer of the Plasmatics who achieved fame in the late 1970s and 1980s for such antics as blowing up cars and equipment onstage and chainsawing guitars--you know, the highjinks Beethoven, Bach, and crazies like that rode to fame centuries ago. Wendy's body was found in a wooded area and authorities said she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound (code for: suicide). Good!
  • Have you noticed that seemingly every radio station has a guy with a raspy, deep bass voice these days, and he drips with edgy machismo and a bristling "attitude"? These people are desperate.
  • Mark Steitelman of Gotham City, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal (April 16, 1998), is looking for an American citizen who knows what a venator is. Well, Mark and only the select few know it's the old F. W. Woolworth Company in its new name disguise, Venator Group. Steitleman laments the passing of so many of our country's familiar names, while surely knowing why. The "why" is portability and anonymity. The Woolworth name and so many others linked to recognizable places (The St. Joseph Valley Bank) and people (F.W. Woolworth) are no longer serviceable in today's world. Business managers today want a name that connects to. . .nothing. The disconnectedness lends a note of confusion and uncertainty, makes it easy to shutter up businesses overnight and move them anywhere in the world. Venator fits in perfectly in London, Brisbane, Stuttgart, Paris, Little Rock, New York, or Scorched Corners, without having to change the letterhead on company stationary. It's sleek, modern, impersonal, portable, antiseptic, cold steel. Perfect for a place where no one can hear you scream, anyway.
  • A sixty-year-old anecdote involving broadcasting legend David Brinkley offers a peek at the informal contract in existence for decades between a nonquesting American press corps and the newsmakers it covers. David Wessell, writing in the April 14 Wall Street Journal, told of a time when Brinkley was in Roosevelt's office and FDR telephoned Guy Helverson, head of the Bureau of Internal Revenue as it was then known. Roosevelt's call was on behalf of a friend who had been hit with some $420,000 in tax penalties. Within easy earshot of reporters the President told the commissioner to cut back the fines to $3,000. Brinkley was among those who heard the call and he remarked years later that, "Nobody seemed to think it was news, or very interesting." This is as candid an admission as we're likely to get of the truth about American journalism: the press spends more time in bed with its sources than covering them, and its idea of hard-hitting coverage has for the most part always been a wink and a nod and a bask in the reflected glory of power and celebrity.
  • Let's See If I've Got This Straight Department: Amy Grossberg, the 19-year-old-woman who gave birth to a baby in a hotel room in November, 1996, then joined her boyfriend in beating, shaking and killing the child and tossing the body into the motel's dumpster, has pled guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and told the judge she "never intended to harm the child." Grossberg is said to be anxious to get this trial behind her and get on with her life.
  • Silly Writing Department: A corporate shakeup by McDonald's brought cheers from business analysts and a $2.56 one-day increase in the company's stock price. This prompted the Chicago Tribune's Susan Chandler to write in the May 1 edition that "Wall Street couldn't have been happier" with the changes. What if the stock had gone up $3.56? Or $4.56? Would Wall Street have been happier? I think so.
  • More continues to be less in the world of television. The latest Nielsen report on TV viewing in America claims that while the number of channels keeps increasing, most viewers only watch a piddling portion of them. More than half the nation's viewers get 50 or more channels, but the average citizen watches only 12 of them--just under 25 percent. (We have about 58 on the local Comcast cable and at least 50 of them deal in round-the-clock rubbish.) Nielson reports the average American watches 29 hours of television each week (the set is on over seven hours a day in the average home) and that blacks watch more than any other group. Men and women over age 50 watch the most of any age group. If we are seeking even a grain of hope for the future of human civilization, it may be in the Nielsen notation that teen-agers watch the least television, only 20 hours a week. We don't need 50 television channels or a hundred or 500 any more than we need 25 choices of french fries in the local supermarket. We have more than enough choices already, most of them bad. (May 2, 1998)
  • Producers of the celebrated Jerry Springer Show say next year they'll forsake the screaming, chair-throwing, hair-pulling brawls involving the show's guests which have made it one of the most-watched programs in human history. A spokesman said the show "will eliminate all physical violence from the series" when a kinder, gentler Springer program debuts June 8. This is called signing your own death warrant. Americans will not tolerate this change and you can bet money on it.
  • Here's a clue about where we're going. A survey published April 20, 1998, in USA Today reports the percentage of American adults (possible contradiction here) who believe in astrology has increased from 17 percent in 1976 to 37 percent today. The percentage of believers in reincarnation has almost tripled (from 9 percent to 25 percent) and the number of adults who believe in spiritualism more than quadrupled, from 12 percent to 52 percent.
They Were Out To Get Stalin, Too, Isabella Reminds Us
  • The Chicago Tribune's Moscow correspondent, Colin McMahon, offered an enlightening dispatch May 12 from Gori, the birthplace of Josef Stalin, in the Caucasus Mountains where McMahon visited the Stalin Museum and talked to the locals about the big guy, their guy, Joe. A 50-foot high statue of Stalin dominates the town square. Some of the locals are having trouble dealing with facts the world has known for decades: Stalin murdered millions of Soviet citizens and imprisoned millions more. Stefano Zura, 34, told McMahon that at least there was work during Stalin's heydays. "Stalin was not the only leader to have his good side and his bad side," Zura said. A retired woman named Isabella, reminding us of humans in denial everywhere, dismissed the charges against Stalin as the work of negativists, destroyers, enemies and conspirators. "What they said Stalin did," Isabella said, referring to the death camps, the mass killings, the criminal state Stalin constructed, "it's all exaggerated." Bet money Larry King will have Isabella and Stefano on his show as soon as he hears about this. (May 13, 1998)
  • So Frank Sinatra's dead. We'll be pounded for months by the hucksters with TV miniseries, commemorative CDs, coffee table display books, Franklin Mint busts, interviews with famous friends, and so on. Bottom line: great singer, mediocre human being. Let's plant 'im and be done with it. (May 18, 1998)
  • News The World Has Eagerly Awaited Department: British business mogul Richard Branson has announced plans to market his new soft drink, Virgin Cola, in America, and he's vowing to take on the titans, Coca Cola and Pepsi. The peculiar name comes from another Branson enterprise, Virgin Airlines, which he founded.
Gore Has A Funny Feeling
  • Within hours of the legendary Viagra pill hitting the market, USA Today roared into print with a poll telling us how Americans feel about who should pay for the pill (at $10 per erection, there's a billion-dollar raid on the public treasury at stake here). A shocking one-half the respondents thought people should pay for it themselves. The same newspaper asked Americans the burning question, "What's your favorite Seinfeld expression?" Twenty-eight percent said "Yadda, Yadda, Yadda," and eight percent didn't know. And legendary author Gore Vidal told USA Today he has "a funny feeling" Kenneth Starr will be sent to prison for violating too many laws in his (Starr's) vicious pursuit of Slick Willie.
  • The Chicago Tribune quoted a 73-year-old Miami, Florida, man commenting on the worldwide stampede of men trying to buy Viagra, the new sexual potency pill: "These men don't need a pill. What they need is an 18-year-old girl." Precisely.
Unbridled Capitalism
  • Harper's magazine reports that within three weeks of the Monica Lewinsky story breaking a Denver company began selling "presidential kneepads."
Pupa, Inc.
  • The recent announcement of a $41 billion merger of Chrysler and Daimler-Benz has the business sections abuzz with excitement, although this is only the fifth biggest deal in the world to date. Each deal stirs up mention of where it ranks on the size scale. Lists of the Top 10 deals of all eternity are printed and revised regularly. It's easy to imagine corporate titans flexing, pawing the earth, ears twitching in anticipation of the phone ringing--the very next call could be that career-making boffo blockbuster! I can see a day when the smoke of a megamerger winter clears and there's just one big fat pupa of a corporation left. But it owns everything and everyone. The corporate logo will be slapped on the U.S Capitol dome, and they'll announce a plan to start killing us if we don't buy enough product to keep all the retired CEOs living comfortably in the style to which they've become accustomed. It can't be that far off, friends.
  • Now that the final episode has been shown, I am free to confess I've lived my entire life without seeing a single Seinfeld show. I fear this is lost ground I can never make up.
Three Too Many
  • Of the 37 prime-time television series that debuted last fall for the 1997-98 season, three will be retained next year. There's a clue in there somewhere about the wasteland.
  • The History Channel last week offered a special about one of my all-time favies, the legendary B-52 Stratofortress. The Strato's a truly awesome deliverer of high megatonnage. Capable of cruising below radar, as low as 300 feet, or miles high in eerie, silent near-space. They have near-unlimited range since they can be refueled in midair. They have four 50-caliber machine guns aft, racks of computer-guided Tomahawk missiles, a wingspan wider than three football fields, a staggeringly large bomb cargo capacity, and they can be outfitted for nuclear payloads in 15 minutes. Fully loaded, those incredible wings droop clear to the runway at their tips, so they put roller skates on them to keep the wingtips from sparking on the concrete. Eight big jet engines each blasting 10,000 horsepower. Not a jackrabbit in the world can hide from these big babies when they're pissed and prowling. (June 6,1998)
  • Annual review time at work. Scary. They take it seriously, too. Five-page form. Fill out your goals. Short-term. Long-term. Mid-term. Your dreams. Your hopes. Comment on your weaknesses, they tell you. Outline your personal action plan for the coming year. How can I escape them? I've offered them money to drop the subject. Big money. I dare not tell them the truth, that the answers to all their questions are: none and retire. Strengths? None that apply to this job. Weaknesses? Needing just a year or two of income, and not comprehending much of what they ask me to do. I could go on and on. Earnest conversations are planned. Let's meet and discuss! they say, with exclamation points. No, no, no, no-o-o-o-o, I secretly cry. There's nothing to talk about. I'm wearin' rope-soled shoes, going along by the wall, muttering "Help me, help me, tryin' to get out." They look at you blankly when you say that. What do you mean, my son? "Oh my boys, I tried to help ya," I reply. Feelers. Wooly worms. Up in a tree to get a sight o' the valley. Light a candle. Pray for me. Pray I can dodge and feint and fake and smoke-blow my way through this one more time.
We Need More Room At The Trough!
  • America has a new victim class: air ragers. The Wall Street Journal gave front-page treatment to a lengthy article in early June about our nation's latest crisis: sharply rising rates of in-flight sexual intercourse by air travelers. More and more passengers, it seems, are dropping trou and blou and humping away, and then getting very angry, hostile and abusive if crew members or other passengers disapprove. Only the head of Virgin Airlines sees a ray of sunshine in this: his company is offering a few flights with private bedroom facilities for customers. And really, how can we quarrel with in-flight grapplers? They are inspired by Slick Willie's White House humpalongs and quite rightly throw down this challenge: if The First Groper can do it, why can't we? Congressional approval of a massive federal grant program for these helpless victims of "air rage" can't be far behind. Is this a great, great country or what?
CBS Loves Stern, But Can't Handle Reggie
  • CBS, which turned down NFL player Reggie White for a sports analyst's job because of White's intolerance of homosexuality, has signed a deal to give Howard Stern, one of the vilest creatures presently dangling in the public eyeball, his own CBS television show starting this fall.
Oh Yes He Does Know
  • "We'll have a lot of nudity and lesbians. We plan to have a lot drunken dwarfs on the show. I don't know why it gets ratings, but it does." --Howard Stern, hyping his new CBS TV show, quoted in Daily Variety's April 2, 1998 issue.
  • Rumors out of Wonderland, D.C., had Congress toying with the idea of reforming bankruptcy laws, making it tougher for deadbeats to get away with it. Sure enough, a local "Fax Daily" circulating mostly to downtown Indianapolis employees asked its readers how they felt about this latest outrage. Big shocker here: by a 60-40 percent margin, Fax Daily readers saw no need to reform bankruptcy laws in the first place. Renee T. won free tickets to something with her keen insight that "with interest rates high, taxes, and the cost of living, why punish people for trying to survive? Why not punish the lenders? They prefer giving their money to someone who doesn't have a job or any source of income than those who do work hard for a living." Somehow, I don't think Renee will be offered a faculty position at the London School of Economics any time soon. But she will be storming into that voting booth this fall, by god, to vote for any politician who feels her pain, and to demand her god-given rights as a proud citizen of this great nation. (June 6, 1998)
  • It was such a routine story at first. There on the front page of the June 27 Indianapolis Star was a report of how busy the city's animal rescue folks have been during the past week's intense heat wave. Five dogs had to be rescued from parked, locked cars Friday alone. One of them was Caesar, a black German shepherd found inside a vehicle on a downtown street. Police got the animal out and revived him, then arrested the car owner, Daniel McDermott, on an initial charge of cruelty to animals. Here the story took on a distinct So Who's Surprised? tinge. Police found that McDermott had failed to register his dog, failed to get the animal its required rabies vaccination, had parked the car illegally in a handicapped space, had an expired parking meter, and was driving with expired auto license plates. Is it reasonable to surmise that McDermott has a bit of trouble following society's rules? (June 28, 1998)
Gee, Wonder What Made 'em Suspicious?
  • Tucked inside the June 27 Indianapolis Star was a brief report from Dayton, Ohio, where authorities decided to remove to protective custody four children ages 7 through 12 after another child, a two-year-old boy, died at his grandmother's house. Someone put three and one together and realized that four children have died at granny's house in the past seven months. Sumpin' funny goin' on here, looks like.
  • The front page of the Indianapolis Star (June 29) carried a huge wirephoto of Slick Willie on the Great Wall of China. And what a coincidence it was. The Wall stretches endlessly into the distance behind Slick and in a nation of over a billion people there just happened not to be a single one in view or visiting the landmark on this fine day. Out of camera range, no doubt, were the Chinese Army and the throngs of handlers, lackeys, and hangers-on who arranged for this humanless vista photo-op so Slick could be presented to the American people--indeed, the world--walking pensively, lost in thought, contemplating. . . the great set of tits he just spotted on the girl in the souvenir shop. (June 29, 1998)
  • One of the national newspaper columnists asked a pertinent question the other day, too: How come Kathy Lee Gifford is crucified in the media when it's learned the foreigners who sew her clothing make a nickel every other day but Michael Jordan gets a free pass for the exploitation of foreign workers perpetrated by Nike, for whom Jordan shills "Air Jordans" and which pays Jordan millions for doing it?
  • CNN has 'fessed up now. That sensational story it put out about Americans using nerve gas in the Vietnam War, it now admits, was an unsupportable fraud. I saw a brief snippet on CNN News the night of July 2, and on the screen for a brief moment was our old friend, Peter "Blame America First" Arnett, who revisited fame with his edgy (and in my opinion anti-American) coverage of the Gulf War. This was an ever-so-brief-film clip of Arnett, face pugnacious, lips curled in smug self-satisfaction, telling the American public, "The United States used nerve gas in Vietnam" or words to that effect. The original story must have been a delicious moment for Arnett. But no more delicious than my getting to see him have to eat his words. Later, CNN issued Arnett an offical reprimand after he convinced them that about all he did was read scripted questions for the show. He admitted he hadn't researched the nerve-gas story but "had no reason to doubt it." Arnett gave us a brief but piercing insight into his animating principles when he told breathless reporters, "I don't know whether it was true or not. Laos was a black hole during the war. A lot went on there we didn't know about." Apparently Arnett had no qualms about passing off as true a story he knew nothing about.
Honk If You Think You've Spotted Another Aggrieved Citizen
  • A French judge has ordered Paul Birch, a 43-year-old soccer fan from London, jailed after Birch admitted fatally stabbing a stranger on a train after a World Soccer Cup match in which England lost to Argentina. The dead man was Eric Frachet, a French actor. Authorities said Birch told them that Frachet was sitting across the aisle from him on a train from Lyon to Grenoble and was smiling. Birch decided the Frenchman was actually an Argentinian fan who was mocking him over the English defeat. So Birch stabbed him to death.
  • The July 4 Indianapolis Star offered a huge wire story celebrating Norman Mailer's 75th birthday. The Associated Press writer, Hillel Italie, fairly rhapsodized over "The Reporter. The Dean. The violent prince of American letters. . .the embattled aging enfant terrible (code for: juvenile asshole) of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hardworking author, champion of obscenity. . .bold and cunning, drinking and fighting, marrying and remarrying (six times). . .." And so on and on, ad nauseum, actually. Italie mentioned nearly everything Mailer ever wrote, but left out One Unpleasantness, the story of Mailer's book, In the Belly of the Beast. This was written in the 1970s or 1980s as part of Mailer's personal campaign to free a convicted killer whose fashionable cause Mailer and his leftie friends had taken up. The man was released from prison, Broadway cocktail parties were held to honor the killer and celebrate Mailer's great triumph for justice and human freedom. Within six months of his release, the man stabbed to death a waiter in a restaurant. No word then or now, years later, whether the Great Man's conscience ever bothers him. I suspect not. To millions, Mailer is an icon god, worthy of worship, adulation. To me he's just another foul-mouthed scumbag who was a master at working the system.
  • Down at work at Universal Export they're passing out order sheets trying to get employees into the UE Apparel Program. Crew neck sweaters, windbreakers, polo shirts, denim shirts, briefcases, leather-bound Dayplanners, canvas bags, and others items are for sale at prices ranging from $25 to $40 and all bear the United Export logo. The concept is amazing and has taken our great nation by storm: hucksters convincing consumers to pay top dollar for the privilege of wearing clothing bearing company advertising. It ought to be the other way around: companies should pay customers to wear their advertising. As it is, we're idiots twice: once for buying into the scam, then for actually forking over money for the honor of being a walking billboard. It speaks volumes about the emptiness of our lives, though, when we define them this way.
  • Columnist Thomas Sowell noted in a July offering that more children die annually from bicycle accidents than from gun accidents. . .and that since the mid-1980s there's been a 50 per cent increase in gun ownership but murder and violent crime rates have gone down. Obviously he's trying to drive liberals and anti-gun wackos crazy, citing stuff like this. (July 18, 1998)
Wait Till The ACLU Hears About This!
  • Chapel Rock Christian Church on Indianapolis's far west side has a huge display of American flags on its front lawn, set off by a large "God Bless America" sign. This has to drive liberals crazy. There aren't two more deadly enemies of liberalism than Christianity and patriotism.
Snickering
  • MSNBC's Brian Williams this week interviewed Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and a woman representing the National Organization of Women (NOW) about one of the burning issues of our times: broadcaster Marv Albert's return to work after serving a short spell in prison on a Sexual Harassment Unpleasantness. Barnicle echoed America: Marv's paid a price for his error in judgment, this wasn't that serious a matter to begin, so let's let Marv get back to the work he was elected to do for America, and let's get on with our lives and put this behind us, because Americans have more important things to think about. The NOW representative tried to make the case that sex offenses were serious and that our society historically trivializes them and seemed to again be doing so in Albert's case. Barnicle snickered throughout, along with most of the audience, I'd bet. Williams refereed and missed, I thought, a chance to ask one burning question; How do we explain NOW's outrage about Marv Albert but its curious inability to get riled up even a little bit over Slick Willie's repeated degradations of women? I know we're not supposed to notice these little inconsistencies, and I'm sorry for peeking.
  • Say adios to another American legend: little Jimmy Driftwood died July 12 at age 91. Driftwood was born James Corbett Morris but changed his name when he switched careers from schoolteaching to music. He wrote about 6,000 songs, 300 of which were published or recorded. He won Grammy awards for "The Battle of New Orleans," a 1960 hit popularized by Johnny Horton, and for several other tunes, including "Tennessee Stud," sung by Eddie Arnold. He lived most of his life in the Ozark Mountains in northern Arkansas, and died there in a Fayetteville hospital following a stroke. Adios, Jimmy.
  • The lead story in the Sunday (July 19) Indianapolis Star's business section explored the huge expansion of retail shopping opportunities at the local airport. In just the past four years, retail space has more than doubled and the number of shops has gone from seven to 19. Sales are soaring. Customers were interviewed and found to be ecstatic. Shopkeepers, too. Consulting firms have calculated how much each passenger spends. Superb minds are working 'round the clock to figure out how to increase these amounts. Nothing short of awesome. These are but incremental steps toward mankind's ultimate destiny: the day when they come to our homes with guns and force us to shop. (July 19, 1998)
  • The latest model of Air Jordan sneakers goes on sale soon. Will American murder rates to go up as youngsters kill each other over them? Ours is a certifiably insane society. (July 23, 1998)
  • Next time you hear some wacko liberal bleeder extremist from the Religious Left wailing about how this or that proposed tax legislation favors the evil rich, remember this: Internal Revenue Service statistics show that the wealthiest five percent of Americans already pay over 50 percent of all tax money collected. I know, I know, I know. . .the IRS is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy united in unholy conspiracy to destroy every hope and dream of the poor, the downtrodden, the homeless, the liberal, the dimbulbed. . .
  • USA Today reports (July 23) that Reggie Jackson's quit his $100,000-a-year advisory job with the New York Yankees. Seems Yankees owner George Steinbrenner held up a Jackson paycheck when he learned Jackson was charging personal expenses to his Yankees credit card. Jackson stormed off in a huff, but the newspaper noted that he agreed to repay $14,000 to the team. Jackson was said to be "upset by the incident." Care to bet an arm or a leg that Jackson is upset with Steinbrenner and the team for having the audacity to object to paying for personal expenses, and sees absolutely no wrong in his own conduct? The last place Reggie will look is in the mirror. Yet that's almost always where the culprit can be found.
Confirmed Sighting!
  • Federal Judge Hugh Dillin has approved a settlement to end 30 years of forced school busing in Indianapolis which Dillin himself imposed in the late 1960s. The key element to the agreement appears to be a pledge by state and county officials to encourage neighborhood desegregation by encouraging blacks to move from the central city to surrounding (heavily white) townships. The Indianapolis Star's July 6 account by reporter Marcella Fleming covered 32 paragraphs and 26 column inches of text. From my own perversely cynical viewpoint, the single most interesting aspect of the story--aside from the preposterousness of its assumption that any significant desegregation will occur "voluntarily" and its denial of obvious realities--was buried in the last four inches of the story. There readers were given a rare glimpse of a species seldom seen operating in the bright light of day, the liberal social engineer, when Fleming quoted Kevin Brown, an Indiana University law professor and "desegregation expert." Brown, noting (and presumably stoutly disapproving of) that Americans "hold a deep reverence for personal choice," acknowledged that this peculiar fondness for personal freedom isn't likely to "spur widespread integration" and offered his own vision. He was quoted (italics mine) saying, "To produce the vision of a racially and ethnically integrated society, you have to override individual choice, because we're still not at a point where people will choose, voluntarily, an integrated society." This, friends, is a confirmed sighting!
  • It was just a local interest business news story for the Lafayette Journal and Courier but it was the first I've heard on the topic since the 1950s in the days of my youth on the plains of Central Indiana: A Lafayette area business, Hobby Lobby, has announced that starting in August it's going to close about one-third of its 169 Midwest-based stores on Sundays. Within 18 months the chain will close all its stores on Sunday. This will strike some as a revolutionary idea, but coots among us can remember a time when it was rare for any business to be open Sundays. Lefties, social engineers, New Age One-Worlders, wacko bleeder liberals, and the American Civil Liberties Union will find the closed-on-Sunday resurrection a sinister and dangerous idea, and one made worse by public comments from Hobby Lobby spokescritters like Bill Hane, who told Courier and Journal reporter Sean Hao that part of Hobby Lobby's corporate mission statement pledges the company to "Honor the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principals." Hane confessed that Hobby Lobby's ownership and upper management "have a distinct Christian orientation" which actually includes a committment to "honor the Lord." "We're definitely a company that's run by Christians," he said. Hobby Lobby had better get ready for a rough ride. By admitting an interest in God and by refusing to take part in the national religion of 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week shopping it has taken on enemies whose strength and ferocity it cannot imagine. A few heretics deep in their caves already have candles lit for Hobby Lobby and fellow travelers.
  • At work all employees received an e-mail message from a co-worker who had compact discs for sale from his personal collection. I perused the list and spotted these uplifting treasures: "Jar of Flies" by a group calling itself Alice in Chains; "Everybody Else Is Doing It. . ." by Cranberries; "Kill 'em All" by Metallica; "Mother Love Bone" by Mother Love Bone; "Doggystyle" by Snoop Doggy Dogg; and "Rotting Pinata" by Sponge. I've filed the chap's name away among those of people I hope never to meet.
  • On the floor of my small downstairs home office is a cardboard box of personal belongings: old photographs, letters to my parents and friends, old newspapers, that sort of thing. The box has been there, unmoved by even an inch, since July of 1994 when we moved into this house. That fact says something about the role of inertia in my life, I suspect.
  • Vanity Fair magazine recently devoted its Art section to a commentary--a paean, actually--by A.M. Holmes on the work of artist Mark Rothko, who the magazine headline writer described as a "great abstract expressionist." The National Gallery of Art in Wonderland, D.C., offered an exhibit in May of some 115 of Rothko's works. As might be expected, everyone Holmes interviewed hyperventilated with praise and adoration. Many found mystical insights into the human experience in Rothko's paintings: Holmes used terms such as "brutally elegant," "deceptively simple," "metaphysical magic" and "radical distillations of human experience." National Gallery curator Jeffrey Weiss referred to Rothko as the "last old master" whose "themes of philosophical and mythological significance" were of "almost Utopian idealism." Holmes said that a room full of Rothkos "has a cumulative effect," one of "a sublime, deeply intimate, almost overwhelming physical relationship between the canvas and the viewer." Weiss said we stand before a Rothko painting "as if it's a breathing entity." Holmes topped that by calling the paintings "dramatic forces of nature" which remain "an inexhaustible mystery." The article brought to mind my own personal exposure to Rothko, on a visit to London's Tate Gallery in the mid-1990s. There, I stood in several rooms full of Rothko paintings and had a decidedly different reaction. Rothko paintings--at least those I saw--are for the most part large, and almost without exception rendered in muddy, dull, dreary shades of black, grey, brown, purple, with occasional smears of dark oranges and reds. They are indeed abstract, for nothing from any recognizable human experience can be found in them. A typical "painting" was an entire canvas of solid color, no different than my painting the front door to my house brown, hanging it on a gallery wall and saying it bore mystical significance. If we agree to define painting as anything smeared upon a surface by machine or by man, dog, chimpanzee, field mouse, wombat, elephant, carp or any other living creature, then we can call Rothko's gigantic smears art. To claim or pretend they contain any mystical insights or deep meaning is utterly preposterous. Holmes recounted what doubtless is the adoring glitterati's favorite Rothko anecdote, his 1958 commission to create a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue in New York City. Rothko described Four Seasons--and here he was probably correct-- as "a place where the richest bastards in New York . . .come to feed and show off." He added that he'd accepted the assignment with "strictly malicious intentions," adding that he hoped to "paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room." He was well on his way to succeeding. But then, Holmes wrote, after completing more than 30 panels, Rothko put them in storage, returned the fee, and declared that "anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine." At this point, one surmises, any sane person intending to eat in Four Seasons breathed a sigh of relief, knowing they could do so without throwing up on being confronted with Rothko murals. The "old master" committed suicide in his studio in 1970. Judging from what I've seen of his work, he finally came to his senses and did the right thing.
  • News stories lately in the Indianapolis Star report that--here's a big shocker--gambling among teen-agers is on the rise in Indiana. This is great news for the folks who spend millions of dollars hyping the Hoosier Lottery, not such good news for society. Add this to the list of destructive behaviors government subsidizes, then taxes the rest of us for the consequences. Another victim group, too, headin' for its rightful place at the trough.
  • I was thumbing through the Indianapolis Yellow Pages looking for a refrigerator repair fella when I spotted it. There on page 1095 was a small ad in the Refrigerator Repairs section for Norm Vogel & Son, self-described as a business Founded in 1921 on Christian Principles. On the opposite page was another one: A-Affordable Appliance Repair Service on East Elbert Street. . .A Christian Appliance Repair Service. Stunned, I backed away. I didn't have the heart to search for more. If you know, they can make you testify. Safer this way.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported August 4 on another blockbuster trend sweeping our great nation: exercise clubs for children, special clubs for kids under 13. Lots of music, lots of products for sale, lots of equipment, games, distractions--above all, a place to park the little critters. When I was a child, kids went outside and played till they got tired. That's how they got their exercise. Where do these people come up with ideas like this, anyway?
  • My employer apparently has contracted the disease, too. Last week someone passed out a list of Universal Export properties by Region: East 1, East 2, East 3, Midwest, Great Lakes, Plains 1 and 2, West 1 and 2, Southeast, Southwest, Florida 1, Florida 2, and so on and on and on. This reminded me of my days with Price Waterhouse when, in the 1980s mostly, the firm nearly tore itself apart organizing, reorganizing, restructuring, and reorganizing the reshuffled reconstructions. The firm organized its offices into Clusters, then Patches, Regions, Groups, and Areas. No sooner would one scheme be put in place than somebody powerful wanted to put his personal stamp on the firm by reorganizing again. Consultants were hired.Task forces met. It gave everyone at the top a sense of something important going on. Down in the ranks, it resembled nothing more than a giant ocean liner plowing along with nobody at the helm, veering left, banging into something, veering right, banging into something else. It's part of mankind's ceaseless questing, I believe.
Coots on Radar
  • America's booze industry is targeting a new market segment: geezers. A delightful report in the August 5 Wall Street Journal says the over-50 crowd came onto industry radar when a 1997 Gallup poll revealed that 39 percent of all drinkers over age 50 said they'd had a drink within 24 hours of the Gallup interview. Eagle-eyed marketers pounced. Anheuser-Busch is trotting out a new beer, the suggestively named Catalina Blonde, aimed at senior citizens. People over 50 represent "a growth opportunity," says August A. Busch IV. E & J Gallo Winery is plugging its new Livingston Cellars wine in Modern Maturity, the flagship magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Mike Pommer, described as a former vice-president at distiller Diageo PLC, offered this cryptic quote to the Journal: "It makes much more sense to fish where the fish are." The Journal noted that such tactics put the distillers and brewers in "murky ethical waters" and pointed out that coots face higher health risks from booze in later years, that tolerance for alcohol diminishes with age and cited an American Medical Association study claiming over three million senior citizens have a drinking problem. In addition, the paper said, older people take more medicine and many medicines are harmful when combined with alcohol. Pommer stoutly denied his company was out to get coots to drink more. He said Diageo just wants to increase its share of what old-timers already drink. I have a hunch these folks will find smooth sailing through these murky ethical waters.
  • At work I sit in an area of six cubicles. Each person in the other five has his own personal radio. The radios play all day, loud enough for all to hear. Amazing. What is it about silence that so bothers people?
  • Another stinking troublemaker has written to the Indianapolis Star. Kent Rebman of Brownsburg claims there are five times more women in the National Rifle Association than in the National Organization of Women. Kent and I are both struck by how few times--none, in our experience--questing journalists ever contact an NRA female member when seeking a "woman's view" of this or that. We both know the answer, believe that answer to be legally accurate, and are sorry for peeking. (August 22, 1998)
  • Snapshot of America Department: A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and published in USA Today June 22 reports that 95 percent of children 10 to 17 years old knew the major characters in "The Simpsons" while six percent could name one of two women on the U.S. Supreme Court. Seventy-four percent knew the major characters on "Seinfeld." and 58 percent could identify the vice president.
  • The September issue of Vanity Fair begins with 24 full-page ads. The table of contents takes up two of the next 26 pages. Next is a page of legal notice, the names of editors, writers, janitors, house lackeys; then 24 of the next 25 pages are full-page ads. A single page of text, then 138 more pages of advertising. By this time I'm reeling from my fruitless search for something to read. Numerous ads are populated with persons whose sex is not ascertainable. Most ads feature women with scrawny breasts nearly flopped out and leathery nipples fairly clawing at the fabric of whatever dreary rags they're wearing. These women wear surly looks, the dope addict's classic pale pallor. Many of the men are grizzled, and sport "bed hair." Male nipples are prominently displayed. Everyone seems to be writhing in gritty, edgy poses, and on the verge of ripping off their clothes. Who are these people? Where does Vanity Fair find them? I believe there's some kind of clue about American Society in there. It's not a confidence-builder.
  • Increasingly we run our lives by polls and government governs by them. Americans worship polls and give them a status equivalent to the Word of God. If we're going to have government by mood ring, then it's long past time for some government regulation. I propose laws to require that anyone participating in a poll first demonstrate some minimal level of knowledge and understanding of the topic at hand. So that, for example, when a soccer mom is poised to tell a pollster she thinks it's about nothing but sex and the vast rightwing conspiracy ought to just leave Slick alone and let him get back to the job he was elected (by 43 percent of those voting) to do, she would first be required to recognize and define or identify any five of a list of 10 items. Selections might include: Craig Livingtone, Jim Guy Tucker, Vince Foster, Mena, Billy Dale, Filegate, Madison Savings & Loan, James Carville, Lanny Davis, Charles Ruff, Dan Lasater, and Webster Hubbell. I'd require that the poll questions be published, too. Even pollsters acknowledge that a polling outcome can be steered and influenced by how the questions are worded. In addition, no person could be polled more than once in a ten-year period. That would assure that eventually every American's opinion would be taken. We already have ample evidence that shocking percentages of citizens are illiterate about the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and are unable to locate cities, countries, even continents on a world map. If we're unwilling to set polling standards, then all polls should include a disclaimer such as this: "Studies show that approximately 80 percent of those participating in this poll, if chosen at random, know and understand little to nothing about the poll topic, but their opinions will influence the fate of nations, anyway. Just thought you'd want to know."
  • The most amazing and alarming aspect of The Entire Unpleasantness, the one covering Slick's entire adult life, is the public's tolerance, acceptance and embracing of conduct that common sense and moral teachings in previous generations would have unanimously rejected as sordid, disgraceful, completely unacceptable. Polls show 70 percent or more of Americans feel it's OK to lie under oath, and support the President's right to break the law and to defile not only the country and the presidency but one of the nation's sacred shrines (the White House) as well. I'm baffled. Only two conclusions seem possible: either the public is completely ignorant of what's going on, or huge majorities of citizens no longer have any moral framework in their lives. The first is far-fetched; the latter is plausible. The world I knew, in other words, has turned upside down, disappeared.
  • CNN offered three specials the week of August 17-21, national "Town Hall" meetings featuring a panel of presumed experts and a small but specially selected audience. Jeff Greenfield served as moderator. The programs tried to examine the impact of the Most Recent Slick Willie Unpleasantness, or The Whole Series of Them, on society, the law, and so on. What a disappointment. The first program featured a panel including longtime Clintonista and Democratic strategist Mandy Grunwald, columnist Robert Novak, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, ultraliberal Michigan congressman John Conyers, Lynn Martin, a former Labor Secretary in the Reagan Administration, the current ardently liberal Democratic Colorado governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, Roy Romer, and a few lesser lights. In the audience were 50 to 100 young people from the Wonderland, D.C., area, some of them employed on Capitol Hill (and, one couldn't help but hope, not under their bosses). Greenfield had difficulty getting his panel to focus on the questions. Grunwald and Conyers tested Greenfield's patience by "politicizing" nearly every question or comment. Conyers in particular, embarrassed himself with dull-witted partisan attacks on Newt Gingrich when replying to a question not even remotely related to Newtie. Questions from the audience were shallow, self-centered and silly, the sort of "What are you going to do for me?" crap that's a part of the Generation X-Boomer-Yuppie mantra these days. The adults present were gracious enough to overlook the insipidness. All hands agreed that politics ranks down there with sleazy lawyers and car salesmen on the Lowlife Index, and that few people young or old see it as an appealing career. Simpson and Novak were salty and outspoken, though often at odds. Novak felt the country would get along fine without politicians and Simpson, doubtless feeling tribal loyalty, felt politics was truly a noble calling. The next night, Greenfield tried to get a panel of lawyers to talk in simple English and failed. The attorneys mostly weaseled and argued back and forth about legal circumlocution and minutia. I wondered what ever possessed these people to go on television and create additional embarrassment for their profession. Thoroughly depressed by the first two programs, I skipped the third. A nice idea that fell short for CNN.
Trend-Spotting--Windows Which Actually Open!
  • The August 26 Wall Street Journal reports an old American favorite is making a comeback: office buildings with windows which actually open. Until central air conditioning took over the nation in the 1960s, office (and home) windows that opened were the norm. The Journal says new buildings with operable windows have recently been built in Zeeland, Michigan, Columbia, Missouri, and the San Francisco Bay area in California. Cheers!
  • Noted in Passing Department: My TV screen has been filled this past week with promos for specials commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. All week long I've heard not a single word about the one-year anniversary of the death of another woman, this one of infinitely greater value to the human race than the departed Princess: Mother Theresa. Must not be a market for Mother Theresa products.
  • Pornography and other Internet abuses present society with difficult problems, mostly age-old freedom of speech issues. The Internet--I have been "on it" once since I got my first computer in the 1990s, and then only to type "Some Mornings It Just Doesn't Seem Worth It To Gnaw Through The Leather Straps" to someone in one of those dopey AOL chat rooms--is a wonderful force for freedom for those of us who want to see graft, corruption and crime exposed. It's a nightmare for journalists who are lazy, indifferent, or trying to cover up stories, and for politicians and others who want to keep the lid on. The Internet offers instant and worldwide dissemination of information the news managers don't want us to have. And there's nothing the pooh-bahs can do to stop it. A wonderful development, I say, and a mighty blow for freedom. (August 28, 1998)
  • This morning's big Sunday edition of the Indianapolis Star brought an unusually large number of clues about the state of human uncivilization. A front-page headline screamed "Internet Use Linked to Depression" and reported on a Carnegie Mellon University study which shows that Internet use causes "a decline in psychological well-being" and the more you use it the more depressed you are. In the hard-hitting news department, Rachel Beck of the Associated Press breathlessly reported on the latest rage sweeping this great nation: a huge increase in catalogues aimed specifically at teen-agers." "This is great," burbled one teen-ager, "Now you can buy anything without ever having to leave your house." Big high-end retailers such as Nordstrom and Land's End are trampling one another to get their teen catalogues into print. Then Max Jarman of the Arizona Republic let us in on the latest and trendiest in human resources initiatives: more and more companies are allowing employees to bring their pets with them to work. (Someone please contact me when companies start paying their employees to stay home and not work.) The entire front-page of the Bogs of Treacle Section was devoted to a worshipful perspective on the late Princess of Wales by William Macklin of Knight-Ridder Newspapers: "Diana: One Year Later" intoned the big headline (the rest of which is: Still Dead, Still Rotting). Macklin quoted one British woman remembering that one year ago "I stayed home all week and cried and watched television." Buried in a separate section of the paper was a smaller story noting a Gallup Poll which showed 94 percent of the people in London don't plan to mark the deathiversary in any particular way. This will have the marketers up all night, for it could signal a decline in Diana product sales. And still not a word about a perspective for Mother Theresa, who also died a year ago but lacks marketability. Over in sports, equally the province of dirtbags and lowlifes, St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire blew his stack over a rookie umpire's strike call and got himself thrown out of the game Saturday. On TV news clips you could hear the broadcaster saying, "He'd better watch out" as McGwire went postal and began swearing at the umpire. St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa, a close personal friend of Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight, stormed onto the field and was also thrown out of the game. Fans screamed and threw debris onto the field. The game was halted for 10 minutes and police were summoned. TV crews swooped in to interview angry fans who, acting for all the world like the Clintonistas blaming Ken Starr, blamed the umpire for ruining their day at the ballpark. The broadcasters blamed the umpire, too. McGwire, by most accounts normally an unusually decent man, jokingly blamed a pregame chat with Knight, who--and this is merely coincidence--was in town as LaRussa's guest for the game. Finally, the Star's resident wacko Religious Left bleeder extremist attack dog columnist, Dan Carpenter, vented his anger over the Most Recent Clintonian Unpleasantness and blamed it all on the rightwing jihad led by Kenneth Starr. I set my big Mach V Barcalounger on "Spin" and threw myself out of the room, finger jammed halfway down my throat, gagging. (August 30, 1998)
  • Wrapping up a week of Princess Diana griefmongering, Gallup sent intrepid pollsters into American homes to ask breathless citizens these cosmic questions: How do you feel about Princess Diana's death? Are you still sad? Sadder than you were a year ago? Not as sad as a year ago? Who do you think is responsible for her death? The paparazzi? Her driver? Poll results were broadcast at 8:39 p.m., Sunday, August 30. I am not making this up. (September 3, 1998)
  • I recently provoked a conversation with a group of co-workers at Universal Export on the Lewinsky Unpleasantness. I was curious to learn what regular, everyday folks thought. All but one person in the group of eight of us had a college degree. Most were CPA's, several with master's degrees in business. I asked a few questions to get things going. No one in the group knew what Filegate referred to. A female co-worker, about 40 years old, said she thought the reason women so strongly supported Sick was that the women he degraded and seduced were generally "trailer park trash." She used the same logic to explain why feminists savaged Clarence Thomas but are silent about Sick Willie. Feminists believed Anita Hill's never-proven allegations, she said, because Hill was "an educated woman." While agreeing they wouldn't feel comfortable leaving their own daughters alone with Sick, they declined to be critical of his behavior. The one person without a college education offered this comment, however: "He ain't got no morals. He's worse than an alley cat." There was approximately a 6-2 margin in the group who felt this whole thing was much ado about nothing, about equal to what the national polls show.
Leonard's Full Up To Here
  • WGN radio's delightful and popular Roy Leonard has announced his retirement at the end of the year after 31 years at the station. Leonard in recent years has handled movie, theater, restaurant and travel reviews and says he's finally had enough. Too many crappy movies that leave him feeling out of touch. "Maybe I'm out of the loop; maybe it's not for me," he said, lamenting what he felt was the increasingly raunchy nature of popular culture.
  • Larry King had Dr. Laura Schlesinger on for a full hour tonight. She made Larry very uneasy. She believes in prehistoric, unfashionable things like right and wrong and morality and personal responsibility. She believes there are moral absolutes in the universe. Larry was in full attack mode the entire hour. He endlessly returned to his obsession that nothing is black or white, that each person decides what is moral and what is not: moral relativism from one of America's foremost dirtbags. She held up pretty well, but was outnumbered even by the callers Larry let through. Three out of four were hostile to Dr. Laura. This was a mere coincidence, of course. (September 16, 1998)
Jack And Missy Stay Busy Managing The News
  • Last evening MSNBC hosted another of its "Town Hall" series exploring the most recent sordid episodes in the sordid adult life of Sick Willie. Jack Ford and Missy Somethingorother hosted the event on the Harvard campus. Things got off to a shaky start when Missy told her national audience that MSNBC had assembled a real cross section of people for the evening's harangue. Unfortunately, it was a cross-section taken from the most liberal enclave of the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the nation. This was hardly a cross-section of America. A cross-section of liberalism, yes; the spontaneous cheers and applause greeting each pro-Clinton soliloquy confirmed we were deep in Leftie Land. Missy invited viewers nationwide to join in by e-mailing or phoning their "vote" on a fairly straightforward question: If the charges in the Starr Report are found to be true, should Clinton be: (1) Impeached? (2) Censured? (3)The charges are minor, and nothing should be done. Missy and Jack glided to and fro, picking people from the audience, asking them how they felt. A panel of four guests included former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, and left-wing extremist liberal attorney and O.J. Simpson defender, Alan Dershowitz. The latter was allowed to stray far from the question he was asked and lecture us about "sexual McCarthyism," high crimes and misdemeanors. Simpson, now free of the obligation to lick constituent boots, was his usual feisty, plainspoken self. He and Dershowitz got into several sharp exchanges. A young man who attempted to point out that Dershowitz defended Simpson was cut off in mid-sentence by Missy, who told him he was straying off the topic. As is always the case with television, it was difficult for anyone to finish a sentence, much less pursue any thought. Either the moderators were tediously framing a question or a respondent was being interrupted by a host eager to keep the pace moving. As these programs go, this was a shade better than typical. A few individuals actually seemed thoughtful and well-informed. A black female identifying herself as a local pastor fairly swooned in a rambling monologue of New Age psychobabble--it was plain she loved Sick and felt it was time to move on. A couple of folks strongly urged impeachment. About halfway through, Missy spoke to the staffer handling the phone banks and computers, who had some up-to-the-second poll results for us. Over 30,000 people voted and 77 percent said Sick should be impeached. Another 14 percent said censure was needed. Nine percent felt we should drop the whole thing and do nothing to Sick even if every charge is true. Missy quickly went back to working the crowd and said not another word about the poll results. Do these results square with the avalanche of poll news in recent months, showing huge majorities embrace and support Sick and oppose impeachment? There's some sort of disconnect here, but I can assure you of one thing: this poll--MSNBC's showing 77 percent favor impeachment--is one the big talking heads and the slipstream media will not be picking up overnight and trumpeting to America. It doesn't fit their notion of newsworthiness.
Why Spin Works
  • Here's my theory on the underlying dynamic behind spin. The spinners, the image-manipulators, have discovered something fundamental about information and the way it is transmitted and processed in American society. This is why the Clintonistas emphasize information and image management to a degree unprecedented in human history. It's why our television screens have been populated for months and years--and in recent months, nightly--by Slick Willie's handlers endlessy reciting the mantra. This is what they've discovered. They know several simple facts. First, most Americans get the overwhelming majority of their information input from television. Secondly, the very nature of television means that no thought or concept is ever pursued beyond a few often convoluted sentences. No idea is ever examined in depth. Sound-bites of mere seconds-duration are the rule. Anyone attempting follow-up or elaboration of anything will be interrupted by the next commercial break. They know that flash and sizzle, not substance, are all-dominant. They know human attention spans are short. They know the exploding proliferation of television channel choices daily make it increasingly unlikely that any follow-up corrections or exploration of ideas will ever reach any citizen exposed to the initial sound-bites. These ideas, when understood and linked, explain what's going on, why people appear on television night after night chanting the mantra, offering up bizarre, patently absurd versions of things in disregard of reality. What they ultimately know is this: if you go on television and say anything often enough and unswervingly enough over a long enough period of time, you will emerge from the process with a core of committed, convinced believers. I don't know what the percentage might be--twenty percent? forty? sixty? Somebody has probably quantified that, too--but I'm convinced this is the dynamic as it's refined in the late 1990s. It does not bode well for any human society, let alone late 20th century American. (September 23, 1998)
  • Veteran New York Times writer Max Frankel's speech at The Aspen Institute was broadcast by C-Span in August and his observations were noteworthy. Among them: Docudramas of the sort exemplified by Oliver Stone's films on Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, which took considerable liberty with historical facts, "have overpowered journalism and history" and represent a danger to the public's understanding of history. . ."Celebrity journalism"--interviews with and stories about celebrities and pop culture stars--is crowding out discourse on important social issues. "News," Frankel said, "has survived largely as a form of nonfiction entertainment. The great mass of citizens are content with superficial news." People "vote their fears, not their hopes". . .the era of wealthy philanthropists--the Binghams, Sulzbergers, and Grahams, for example-- who bankrolled and practiced journalism for its own sake, is gone, replaced by corporate ownership. . ."the quest for novelty and popularity will always seduce (most journalistic organizations)". . ."there's only one practical hope--the best response to 'bad speech' is more speech. Even if (newspapers) don't bring us the truth, they expose falsehood. We must respect what the media sometimes can become even as we deplore what they usually are." Fair enough, Max. Good job. (September 26, 1998)
Devil's In The Phone Bill Details, Too
  • For reasons unknown, I examined my phone bill last month. This was a mistake. It contains a mind-numbing array of charges, surcharges, taxes, fees. An Ameritech "monthly service" fee is there, and I understand that. It's for having the telephone lines in my house. Fair enough. But there are also information charges, local and state additional charges, a federal, state, and local surcharge, a pay phone access fee, state and local taxes, an out-of-state state and local tax, a federal universal service fee, a national access fee, and fees for MCI and MCI card calls. That's not all. There's a 911 emergency fee, miscellaneous charges and credits and taxes for "OAN Plus," something (or someone) I've never heard of, a Cable & Wireless Inc. service charge and a universal service charge, plus a tax on the service charge. Here's a charge for "Telecomm Relay Services." Sick Willie was right, and I should have known it: it's best we not get caught up in the details, for only heartbreak and disappointment will be found there. (September 26, 1998)
  • Fidelity Investments is said by the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 30) to be internally discussing bringing its fee structure "inline with other fund supermarket programs." This is code for: raising its fees.
Trash, Plain And Simple
  • Mogo and I recently paid $7 apiece to see the movie Blade starring Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson. It is apparently based on a comic book character who wages eternal war against vampires. Mogo walked out of the movie in its first five minutes. I stayed approximately halfway through the film, then left. Blade drenches viewers in blood, from a "bloodbath" scene in a vampire nighclub which kicks off the movie, to countless episodes of characters gnawing open victims' throats or munching on the stumps of severed hands, all amid gushing fountains of blood, to spears, hooks, swords and knives dismembering bodies. There are seemingly endless sprays of Uzi fire, explosions, cocaine-snorting and injections in penthouse and nightclub settings, male and female vampires licking blood off each others' faces. In our view this is an evil film, and certainly one with no redeeming social value. I'd rank it in my personal sewer with Pulp Fiction among the most despicable films I've ever seen. It is a film which cannot but wound the human spirit.
  • It took a jail sentence to finally get Wayne A. Brandon Jarrett, 18, out of the starting lineup at Princeton High School in Butler County, Ohio. USA Today reported October 16 that Jarrett had continued to play for his team even after his conviction for cocaine trafficking and possession because neither his high school nor the Ohio High School Athletic Association had any rules making athletes ineligible in such instances. Jarrett was sentenced to one year in jail in mid-October. His supporters aren't giving up, though. There's always the chance of an appeal or game-day furloughs from jail to keep the young lad, his many fans, and school administrators feeling good about themselves.
Yeah, But These Are Our Eco-Terrorists
  • "Vail Fire Called Eco-Terrorism," screamed the headline in this morning's Indianapolis Star. The news out of Denver was that "an underground organization calling itself the Earth Liberation Front" had stepped forward to claim responsibility for a series of seven arson attacks at ski resorts in the Vail, Colorado, area earlier in the week. My weeklong monitoring of America's streets and auditorium stages has not revealed a trace of any Wacko Religious Left Extremists stamping their feet, marching and screaming to protest this lawlessness. And where is vice president Al Gore, America's most prominent tree hugger in the most ethical administration in the history of our country? Not a peep from him. This is not quite the reception lefty bleeders would give identical crimes committed by conservatives on the right. But then if it weren't for hypocrisy, many of these people would have nothing to do at all. (October 25, 1998)
You Can Laugh But You Better Bet Money George and Kathleen Chamales Will Prevail
  • George and Kathleen Chamales have sued the IRS to force it to allow them a $751,427 casualty loss deduction based on their claim that their home has declined in value because it's located a block away from O. J. Simpson's former mansion. The IRS denied the deduction and levied additional tax and penalties. The Chamales sued, claiming that worldwide publicity from Simpson's murder trial ruined their investment. Here's hoping they reassemble the Simpson jury for this one. That will assure a multibillion-dollar verdict against the government and a marketing bonanza for the Chamales as well as the jurors, whose celebrity careers have already slipped into obscurity in America's fast-moving hypermalled culture.
One Stupid Thing Dr. Laura Did
  • Pop radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlesinger got a court order Oct. 23 tostop an Internet site from posting nude photos of her, according to USA Today. The pictures were taken in the 1970s by a man who claimed he had an affair with her while she was still married to her first husband. Dr. Laura, the author of Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives, has obviously done one of them. As Esquire magazine famously wrote years ago about Raquel Welsh, "Cut the crap and get 'em out there!"
  • The Chicago Tribune's post-election coverage November 5 included a lengthy article about Jesse Ventura, the maverick Reform Party candidate who shocked the punditocracy by winning a three-man race for the governorship of Minnesota. Ventura is a former professional wrestler and radio disc jockey. The Tribune found and printed a 1985 publicity photo of Ventura in an outlandish getup featuring a pink sequined suit, a yellow feather boa, earrings, some sort of skull bandana and winged red plastic sunglasses. The picture drove home an unintended point: it requires no stretch of the imagination to believe that this is the future face of American national politics. It's already the dominant image of American public life, as seen in shopping malls, on television, in the haunts of the glitterati, in films and magazines and on billboards. As American culture moves inexorably toward the worship of celebrity, the day can't be far off when a wide-angle view of the U.S. Congress will look like the bar scene in Star Wars or the climactic moments of Edgar Allen Poe's The Mask of the Red Death, the castle rooms filled with a seething, writhing, undulating mass of sideshow freaks, deformed mutants and mummers, braying, moaning half-human- half-beast creatures, a ghastly, outlandish phantasmagoria of the bizarre. (November 5, 1998)
Yeah, But These Are Our Fat Pay Raises
  • "One Per Cent Jump in Wages Lifts Inflation Fears" cried the headline in USA Today. Funny how nobody cries out in pain like this when American CEOs and Wall Street slickers get their 947 percent increases and their multimillion dollar signing bonuses and buyouts. (October 30, 1998)
Revisiting Archie
  • Cable television companies are adding channels in bunches in their desperate fight to stave off competition from satellite dishes and other technology. It's been my experience that the extra channels add nothing but more trash to an already trashy wasteland of programming. Comcast's latest additions, however, contain one national treasure, reruns five nights a week of All in the Family. I'd forgotten what a superb program this was. The dialogue, characterizations and acting are far superior to anything I've seen on television in years. I'd forgotten what it was to laugh uproariously, too. The reruns resurrect one of my favorite aspects of the show: Archie Bunker's malaprops. Last night's show, for example, was about Edith experiencing menopause (Jean Stapleton as Edith gave a career-best performance in this program). A baffled and exasperated Archie finally said that Edith would have to go back to see her groinecologist if things didn't calm down soon. Later, referring to a meeting scheduled in advance, he talked of a pre-deranged appointment. On other shows he's told his son-in-law, Meathead, that capital punishment was a detergent to crime and told Edith her poems certainly didn't remind him of Edna St. Louis Millay. He's lectured his family about how Christmas should be a time for quiet contemptation, told them they didn't need to draw him any diaphragms, and commented on the many different religions of the world, including your Catholics and your Persbyterians. He expressed reservations about helping another person cheat, for fear of being an accessity after the fact. But he cautioned his family not to be casting dispersions on the fellow's reputation. And that was not a pigment of our imagination, either. Carroll O'Connor as Archie literally defines the term irascible. It's been a pure delight having Edith, Gloria, Michael, and Archie back in our home.
But Would You Want To Be Martha?
  • "(Martha) Stewart has 30 telephone and fax numbers and more than 40 separate phones, as well as seven cellular phones, five car phones, and two portable phones. She. . .uses five Macintosh desktop computers, two Mac PowerBook laptops, an IBM ThinkPad 770 notebook computer, and carries one laptop at all times. She also has four laser printers, two scanners, two 21-inch NEC computer monitors and (uncountable e-mail addresses). Her cars are equipped with fax machines and VCRs. . .her Chevy Suburban is outfitted with a telephone, a laptop computer and a fax that doubles as a photocopier. (In her purse) is a 3Com Palmpilot Organizer, a Sharp Wizard for addresses and phone numbers, and a 35mm filmless Sony digital camera that shoots her photos onto a floppy disk, which are then instantly developed and transmitted to her Web site. . .(in her basement) is a muscular Compaq PC that functions as a network server and powers the videoconferencing system that pumps her ideas through her vast multimedia empire. . .she's never out of touch. Even when she's relaxing, she's working. . ." (From a feature article on Martha Stewart in Modern Maturity's November-December, 1998 edition.)
  • Has anyone else noticed the startling number of people carrying over-the-shoulder bags now? Some people carry more than one. I've never asked, buta reasonable assumption is that the bags contain computers. I see people streaming out of downtown office buildings loaded down with these shoulder bags and often briefcases in hand. That must mean they're taking their work home with them. A sign of the times and one which must bring deep satisfaction to employers.
Gimme The Flu And I'll Take That Deal!
  • My employer, Universal Export, offered cheap flu shots to employees in early November. My co-workers streamed downstairs to get theirs. I declined, reasoning that my chances of getting the flu and thereby being able to stay home are better without the vaccination. And why doesn't someone invent a pill that would make you ill and lose your appetite? That would be a double bonanza: stay home sick and lose weight in the process. This anecdote pretty much sums up my life: my associates wanting to get to work, me wanting to get home. I must run with the wrong crowd.
That Roaring Din You Hear Is Your Life, Pilgrim!
  • Columnist Bob Greene wrote about one my favorite topics in today's Chicago Tribune: our culture's increasing demand to be entertained. He referred readers to Neil Postman's book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," writtten in the mid-1980s, which dealt with the topic in depth. Evidence is all about us. Television and movies are jammed with quick-cut scenes of explosions, fires, shootings, car wrecks, screaming, fighting, deafening music. So-called "talk shows" mostly consist of as many as four or five people all yelling simultaneously. Thousands of new books and magazine titles appear every year. Sellers of products divide the market into ever-tinier increments, all frantically seeking a niche or segment where they survive and dominate. Schools are overwhelmed with agitated, fidgety children who can't concentrate or focus or even follow simple rules of behavior. Fashions change with startling rapidity. Greene couldn't help but be drawn to the increasing bizarreness of professional wrestling and of course the election last week of former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota to illustrate Postman's case. But few things symbolize this national disease better than the television remote control, Greene wrote, and the slack-jawed American sitting there spasmodically punching buttons every few seconds. "Substance and content are secondary--by miles--to stimulation and flashing lights," Greene wrote. (November 11, 1998)
More Uplifting News from Hollywood Department: Pedophilia's On A Roll!
  • Following the remake and re-release of Lolita, Universal Pictures has bankrolled another film featuring pedophilia that's sure to win the hearts and minds of America's glitterati (it's already won the International Critics Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival) and pack 'em standing in the aisles at Hell Plaza Octoplexes across this great land. The film, entitled Happiness, was released in October and has won favorable reviews in Newsweek, Time, andEntertainment Weekly and an enthusiastic three-and-a-half stars (out of four) from USA Today. It deals with that plague of us all, dysfunctional family life, and features on-screen masturbation, a fantasy about mass killings, and a main character (a psychiatrist) who drugs and then rapes his 11-year-old son's friends. (Adapted from the American Family Association Journal, November/December 1998 issue.)
  • Some years ago I wrote that the day would come when television would provide live murders for viewing audiences. Another incremental step along that path occurred November 22 when CBS aired on Sixty Minutes a videotape of Dr. Jack Kevorkian administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient. This is the first known broadcast of an assisted suicide. Ratings soared, of course, as one of every four TV sets in use that evening in this great land of ours was zeroed in for the big CBS event. The patient's family publicly supported Dr. Jack, who promised he will starve himself todeath in prison if he's convicted of a crime for his taped euthanasia. CBS officials hustled about defending their decision. The broadcast came by sheer coincidence at the end of the November "sweeps" period, when viewer ratings are used to determine advertising rates TV stations can charge. Be patient, viewers, we're inching toward those live murders we've promised. And now, a few words about next week's show. . .
  • We've got our tickets to New York, and there's still time to protest and turn this thing around! We know the enemy: New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and William Donahue, head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. There may be more. But these two troglodytes have acknowledged responsiblity for the canceling of a gala World AIDS Day concert to have been held in New York's Central Park December 1. Levi Strauss & Co., based in--where else?--San Francisco, was sponsoring the big show, whose crowning feature was to be a 30-foot Christmas tree--a "Tree of Life"--festooned with thousands and thousands of condoms. Giuliani confirmed his status as a leading wacko extremist far rightwing jihad negativist destroyer kook when he told eager reporters that a condom tree was "one of the most idiotic ideas I have ever heard of." Donahue said his organization was ready to boycott Levi Strauss products if the event was held. Let's hope this is only a temporary setback for the cause of human rights. We're decorating our home and shrubs with condoms this year as ashow of support.
  • It's noteworthy that for all Hillary's prattling and preaching about families and child-raising and her assiduous work at creating for herself the image of devoted mother, she never delivered Sick an ultimatum about his whoring and infidelities that would have spared her daughter, Chelsea, the horrendous humiliation she's endured.
  • One of the TV talk-show gasbags said last night that 78 percent of the people contacted by pollsters decline to be polled and hang up.
  • An October poll cited in National Review says 63 percent of the public--those who don't hang up, anyway-- believe Slick Hillary has long known about--and tolerated--the Lewinsky Unpleasantness, and only 18 percent believe the official First Family spin that theirs is a "loving marriage that has troubles."
  • Trend-Spotting Department: Informed of the murder of his 18-year-old-grandson, who was stabbed to death Thanksgiving Day while using a pay telephone in Paris, a grief-stricken Richard Collings of Rockville, Indiana, speculated that phone rage may have been the cause of the tragedy. This reference follows close on the heels of heavy publicity about road rage and assorted other rage-related disabilities, and may signal a new category of victims for liberals to embrace. The real victims--the dead, the maimed, the blasted--will of course be overlooked in all this.
A City Coming to Its Senses?
  • A committee formed to obtain the 2012 Summer Olympics for Seattle, Washington, disbanded this week after the city council voted 8-1 against supporting an Olympics bid. A Puget Sound Regional Council declined even to vote on the bid proposal.
  • A Product The World Was Not Waiting For Department: You know about the mouse you use with your computer. Now they're advertising a revolutionary telephone with a built-in mouse. Apparently they hope to convince us it's just too stressful to have to punch in all those numbers with our fingers. (December 20, 1998)
  • If I could have just one wish granted it would be to be able to do a full-throated imitation of an elephant trumpeting.
Ornery Little Devils Department
  • "Basically, we needed to keep checking his fly every few hours because people keep taking photos of him with his zipper down." --Joanne Ashby, sales manager at Madame Tussaud's traveling wax museum exhibition in Sydney, Australia, on why managers decided to sew shut the fly on a figure of American President Bill Clinton. (from the "Quotables" section of a recent Chicago Tribune).
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