SMALL FAVORS

Ivins, Molly

SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Profiteers and Loons All over this great nation, your public servants are at work, restricting the release of turkeys, making it a felony to disturb bats, and...

...A scruple raised...
...Weren't there a lot of lectures thrown in on the Founding Fathers and how the system is supposed to work and all that do-right bidness...
...Has anyone heard a moral judgment being made in these present hearings...
...It is best to be suspicious of sentimentality...
...You have noticed, I trust, a certain dearth of moral outrage in the Iran/ contra hearings...
...And that the killing of four-year-olds is not an inevitable consequence of war...
...And still you kvetch...
...Perhaps the great lesson of history is that there never was such a thing as the good old days...
...the love and support of our families...
...years of age who've been shot while trying to flee Nicaragua to a safe haven/ We have a burning desire to strike back at those whose intent is to enslave us, to try and stem the red tide that threatens to overwhelm us...
...Could this not have unpleasant consequences in the future...
...Does no one on this committee feel so much as startled to learn that the President and his minions hit up foreign leaders for the greedus to conduct his illegal foreign policy...
...Now the Victor claims he not only knew about all this, he set it up, it was his idea...
...Members of Congress hold hearings on the nest of fascists who were running a secret foreign policy and manage to restrain their indignation so successfully that we turn for excitement to the topic of milk price-supports...
...And that the side that overthrew Somoza is completely evil...
...A 300 per cent mark-up on the arms he was supplying to those heroic freedom fighters, what's wrong with that...
...North was doing what...
...It would be nice if any members of Congress serving on this committee seemed to notice that...
...They would have made great inquisitors: They are people who have enemies but no doubts...
...Maybe we don't need constitutional scholars at the Iran/contra hearings...
...Did Richard Secord ever say, "That would be wrong...
...I'll tell you who believes stuff like that: Loons...
...maybe what we need is some shrinks...
...A new role: R. Reagan, constitutional scholar...
...What kind of mind does it take to believe the "poem" that Robert Owen read at the end of his testimony: "We have held in our arms children no more than four Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...You may recall that when last we heard from the Victor of Grenada on this topic, he didn't know a thing about it...
...Iraq accidentally blasts the hell out of an American frigate and our only President observes alertly, "The real villain is Iran...
...Does no one think it strange that the State Department was mooching from the Sultan of Brunei and the President was putting the bite on the King of Saudi Arabia...
...because the law doesn't apply to him or to his aides...
...Some of these guys are profiteers and the rest of them are loons...
...I, for one, think there is something seriously wrong with these folks...
...Many of them seem to be possessed of absolute certitude...
...Only patriots and heroes on his side...
...SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Profiteers and Loons All over this great nation, your public servants are at work, restricting the release of turkeys, making it a felony to disturb bats, and contributing immortal lines to the archives of political rhetoric: "In ancient Roman times, when the gladiators were in battle, they would look up to Pharaoh and ask for his judgment...
...But check me on this: During the Watergate hearings, didn't we get a free education on the Constitution...
...Fear, anguish and despair are with us daily/ Yet in our darkest hours we have three things that help sustain us: our faith in Almighty God...
...O.K., so the meter's a little off, pass that...
...It was big news to him that all this stuff was going to the contras, that there was this network of foundations, and that of B.G...
...Is this the way we traditionally finance our foreign policy...
...But given what we know about Central American dictators and about the history of Nicaragua, who here believes that all right, good, truth, and justice appertain to the side that consists of Anastasio So-moza's old National Guard...
...Did Robert Owen ever think he might be wrong, running around passing boodle on street corners and in Chinese markets...
...And it's all O.K...
...But pick nits as we might with the committee's work, it has already served to cause a 180-degree turn in the President's explanation of his role in all this...
...the knowledge that on this troubled earth there still walk men like Ollie North...
...for Blood and Guts," Owen testified) North like a brother...
...Even the Unindicted Co-conspirator once said, "But that would be wrong...
...He says he loves old B.G...

Vol. 51 • July 1987 • No. 7


 
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