Small Favors
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Terrorism a la Mode Terrorism is the latest hula hoop in the political world. Terrorism hits their hot button in Washington. It's a la mode, it's trende. In May, the...
...My favorite part of the acne-extirpation effort is when it keeps turning out it wasn't Mad-Dog Qaddafi who done it after all...
...The down side you can see shaping up in stuff like the plan to put a big fence around the Capitol...
...Sometimes I think that boy belongs in a sheltered workshop...
...Only one of us will come out of the water alive," said Locke...
...But White, who has the deplorable taste to be a Democrat, is getting no help from Reagan even after his affecting pitch about national security...
...As long as everyone in Washington is on this terrorism kick, I think the rest of us should learn how to use it...
...Texas, as you may have heard, is going broke, which caused The New Republic to run a gentle-hearted article under the headline "Let 'Em Rot in the Sun...
...In May, the leaders of the Western world met for an economic summit in Tokyo, and all they could agree on is that terrorism is the gravest problem facing the world today...
...I thought you were talking about Croatians...
...However, El Presidente is interested only in popping zits these days...
...Madison...
...Muammar Qaddafi is a wart, a pimple, while nuclear weapons are a cancer...
...Our bombs missed Qaddafi, but killed one of his kids...
...Well, that's the up side of the terrorism fad...
...White said a secure domestic oil supply is "just as vital as support for the B-l bomber, the M-l tank, and the F-16 fighter...
...Texas needs to start a campaign urging people to "stop buying terrorist oil...
...This scam should work on any level...
...This is hooey of the highest order, of course...
...Anyway, next somebody blew up a nightclub in Berlin and with that Reagan bombed Libya, claiming there was "clear and irrefutable evidence" that Qaddafi had done it...
...If it doesn't have that 'Pumped in Texas' logo on it, your oil was probably made by mother-rapers and baby-killers...
...Ronald Reagan got so exercised at Qaddafi after the Christmas attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports he like to had a wall-eyed fit...
...Don't encourage Mad-Dog Qaddafi—buy your oil from Texas...
...El Presidente was tickled to death about it...
...Sometimes I think that boy's not right...
...Good thought: Get Weinberger in on this...
...I'm serious as a stroke...
...Some folks so mean they wouldn't spit in your ear if your brains were on fire...
...Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every other month...
...It's time for Texas to push the terrorism button...
...Because, you see, national security is passe...
...Need money for a day-care center...
...Now normally, your national-security argument is pure gold with this Administration...
...Seemed like a no-lose situation, so I voted for the guy...
...But the Israelis, whose intelligence in the Middle East is superior to our own, kept quietly pointing out that the attacks were not Libyan in origin, but Syrian...
...Just have a friendly sociologist whomp up a study saying your little tykes will turn into terrorists, yes, native American terrorists, if they don't get eight hours a day of finger-painting and storybooks...
...The guv said us not pumping oil threatens the nation's ability to defend itself and is "tantamount to unilateral disarmament...
...Bobby Locke, one of our gubernatorial candidates, sent a telegram to Qaddafi challenging him to hand-to-hand combat on the Line of Death...
...Never mind...
...Call the Feds, tell 'em it's the only way to stop a terrorist attack on Boynton...
...Just FYI: the Pentagon refers to those who survive the dropping of several tons of bombs as "interdictional non-succumb-ers...
...Need street lights in Boynton, Oklahoma...
...You know in your heart it will fly...
...Then we had the splendid episode of the big facedown on the Line of Death...
...It's like the old "Saturday Night Live" routine: "Crustaceans...
...Mark White, the only governor we've got, made a noble effort the other day to convince Washington it needs to bail out the oil business on account of national security...
...Yes, friends, if you want help from Washington any more, you gotta have terrorists involved...
...But the United States and the Soviet Union can blow the entire planet to hell, and get closer to doing so every day...
...01' James Madison wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on May 13, 1798, "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad...
...And now it turns out it wasn't Qaddafi but Sefior Assad of Damascus behind the Berlin bombing...
...Try to develop creeping terrorism or godless terrorism in your county and watch how fast the money flows in...
...A terrorist can blow up a plane, which is terrible...
...Shrewd fellow, Mr...
...All the would-be Walter Lippmanns back home were tugging their gray beards and calling it provocation, but you know in your heart John Wayne would have loved it...
...There's a Texas politician who went one better than Reagan...
Vol. 50 • July 1986 • No. 7
