The Continuing Crisis
O'ROURKE, P.J.
THE CONTINUING CRISIS August marked the 40th anniversary of our dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima-an event which has caused untold suffering. September, however, marks the 40th anniversary of our...
...Speaking of plagues, dozens of field mice somehow got into the federal budget, and they ate all the deficit reductions...
...So chop that up on your mirror and snort it...
...The balding, partly dead, no longer harmonious Senior Surf Citizens promised the Park Service 10 percent of the concert's profits, but since the concert was free and had no T.V., video, or album tie-in . . . On his recent visit to Chicago, President of China Li Xiannian requested the following perks in his $l,200-a-day hotel suite: -Custom-made bed, -Room temperature set at 77°, -A copious supply of Perrier and green tea, -Arrangements of red roses and yellow lilies in every room, -1,000-year-old duck eggs for breakfast...
...The Shultz fashion disaster was a three-piece model...
...Just a joke, kids, don't go chaining selves, frisbees, to Spectator door handles...
...Nearby Manhattan is still full of the things...
...Animals in the News Connecticut has declared the rattlesnake an endangered species...
...As opposed to, say, impalpable, vague, phan-tasmagorical stuff like running the country...
...Score the Summit Conference Round 1 to the Soviets...
...is being criticized for nixing the suggestion...
...It's time for a seventh-inning stretch, fellows...
...Of course it will be turned into a mini-series, but will Jack Nicholson do the nude parts...
...There's been a grave reversal in U.S.Soviet relations...
...No one has ever worn a worse suit than a Russian Foreign Minister before, and experts agree it sets a grim precedent...
...Plutonium has been found in the New York City water supply...
...But who asked him...
...Nobody wears them anymore, George, and especially not in August...
...Deadly radiation will probably turn New Yorkers into some kind of weird mutants who congregate by night in bizarre locales, wear their hair in blue mohawks, and eat strange substances like tofutti...
...Some say French security agents were in on the deed...
...American Secretary of State George Shultz arrived in Helsinki actually wearing a worse suit than Russian Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze...
...They were much too horrid to keep...
...The kidnapping of an American peace group by pro-American contra rebels was more interesting...
...And here's further proof that former Interior Secretary James Watt was underrated, also a visionary: The Beach Boys failed to post bond to cover the cost of their 4th of July concert on the Washington Mall, and the National Park Service was stuck with a $98,000 bill for staging, security, and garbage removal...
...Come on, Don Greaser, pay up or we'll translate three years of U.S...
...And while we're on the subject, what can one possibly say about the UN...
...get the cable-cutters, they're chaining themselves to the door handles again...
...The Soviets have proposed a nuclear-weapons testing moratorium, and the U.S...
...What the hell, self-government is worth any price-ask the Lebanese...
...And the advice turned out to be as useful as advice from the National Security Council usually is...
...The "Affair of the President's Nose Blemish" proves we've reached that milepost in the history of free speech where there is finally more news media than there is news...
...Oppose extravagant eating and drinking and pay attention to thrift and economy," says Chairman Mao in his Little Red Book...
...Those "Rock HudsoaAIDS Victim" headlines gave a secret boost to short flabby (but at least we're heterosexual) guys the world over...
...At least this is how the White House is telling it...
...Color was fridge-mold gray with horrible multicolored stripes and cut resembled a carnival tent...
...Apparently he's no faster at carpentry than he was at figuring out what to do about the hostages in Iran...
...Killer bees have arrived in California...
...My mistake...
...And he might...
...Those of us who follow the tougher, more manly, full-contact sports (such as Senate confirmation hearings) had trouble telling the strike from the rest of the dull pauses which punctuate this national time-waster...
...I forgot...
...America's newspapers, magazines, and T.V...
...Jimmy Carter was back in New York this summer, butchering wood on the same low-income housing project as last year...
...And it comes along just as we baby-boomers are turning forty...
...Said the Millard Fillmore of the 1970s: "Roz and I both get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something tangible...
...Chalk it up to post-post-Watergate morality...
...Whoops...
...Shevardnadze, on the other hand, looked every inch the preppy banker in tidy blue pinstripes and regimental tie...
...Strike that last paragraph...
...Quick, Bob...
...The English language needs a word which means "producing or tending to produce a mysterious satisfaction that is not wholly in good taste...
...Alas, the storm blew over...
...First Amendment rights are fully recognized in the Soviet Union now and everybody can say what he wants...
...State Senate-style shiny cravat and cheap dress shirt completed the ensemble...
...News & World Report debt crisis stories into Spanish and make you read them standing on one leg...
...Presumably Afghanistan will send bombed-out villagers to India, and India will ship a touring group of Sikh terrorists to Kabul...
...It's still not finished...
...Said Richard Burton (famous Victorian explorer, not puffy dead actor): "He who renders warfare fatal to all engaged in it will be the greatest benefactor the world has yet known...
...Would he call in an air strike on NSC HQ...
...Women's Conference in Kenya...
...The great baseball strike, for example...
...Some recent news stories have come and gone so fast that if you took an afternoon nap you may have missed them...
...Actually, anti-nuke dipsticks might note August was also the anniversary of forty years without a major power conflict (if you don't count one small fracas on the Yalu...
...The Teamsters' president, the governor of Alaska, and traffic felon Ed Meese are all off the hook...
...Would Shultz hold Shultz responsible...
...A New York Air DC-9 struck and killed two deer at Washington's Dulles airport...
...But, if factional in-fighting among nature-loonies is anything like it is among the rest of the world's left wing, attack was probably launched by a splinter group of disaffected sea mammals...
...South Africa continues to raise idealist ire-the condition of black people there being so much worse than in Uganda or Ethiopia, for instance...
...A "Ransom of Red Chief sort of thing, surely...
...Well, fair's fair, and the U.S...
...Sooo-eeee...
...But environmentalists needn't worry...
...Ah, but there are fashions in repression just as there are in hats...
...But experts say they are not likely to breed there-high pressure movie deal-making and attempts to launch Top 40 recording careers are expected to destroy family life in the hive...
...What more edifying spectacle could middle-age desire...
...India and Afghanistan have signed a cultural exchange pact...
...Meanwhile the award for News Story with Most Dullness per Amount of Importance goes to the Latin American debt crisis...
...Let me be first to suggest that government document named in the preceding paragraph...
...The contras gave the peaceniks back...
...Latest news has contagion possible through contact with girls, even cute ones...
...Wlady...
...September, however, marks the 40th anniversary of our not dropping the A-bomb on Moscow- another event which has caused untold suffering...
...This writer won't be personally satisfied until Nick Nolte gets it too...
...This news came out the same day the New York Times announced that the National Security Council had been giving the contras advice...
...I mean, besides, "Sooo-eeee...
...Perversion, promiscuity, intravenous drug use- here's a disease that promises to punish every kind of sin...
...Viz...
...Bombing of the Greenpeace ecology scow, "Rainbow Warrior," is still under investigation...
...To add insult to improvidence, David Stockman has signed a $2 million book contract...
...The names of the deer have not been released, but neither Donner nor Blitzen has shown up at North Pole pre-season practice scrimmages...
...this item from the Associated Press wire, datelined New Orleans, August 1: "A guest at a party for lifeguards celebrating their first drowning-free swimming season drowned...
...stations should stand up and take a load off their minds...
...should propose a moratorium on jailing people for publicly advocating freedom of conscience...
...In all, something of a dud month for trouble fans-unless you enjoy airline crashes...
...No rational person will ever understand why the strictly organized horror of Communism is so voguish while the loosely organized horror of racism is so despised...
...And they are fully protected, too-by lawyers, accountants, executive secretaries, chauffeurs, and household help...
...No kidding...
...We'll have to fill the rest of this column with brief, cute feature stories...
...This issue may have us all selling pencils on the streets (and even those will be made in Singapore), but the subject still works quicker on the eyelids than a quart of Jim Beam...
...Montgomery Ward has discontinued its catalogue, leaving rural families wondering what to use for toilet tissue in the outhouse...
...Elsewhere in the big nut grove, the Fish and Game Department says California is suffering from an overpopulation of wild pigs...
...The Helsinki Accords flat slipped my mind...
Vol. 18 • October 1985 • No. 10
