SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins The Year That Was People used to tell good news/bad news jokes. Last year, it got hard to tell the difference. In Texas, for example, 1986 was our Sesquicentennial—or, as...
...Known throughout the world as Yah-weh, Elohim, and Jehovah, the ancient but still serviceable deity is best remembered for creating the heavens and the earth in only six days, a feat Perot describes as "pretty darn impressive, especially for somebody with no money...
...It was the year we invented the free-enterprise war...
...The Southland Corporation, under pressure from the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, decided to stop selling Playboy in its convenience stores...
...Texas was his name and he was a Longhorn with a white splotch on his forehead that looked like a map of Texas...
...They had to shoot him after he broke his back...
...In 1986, botanists at Texas A&M University created pink bluebonnets...
...Praise God for an answer to the prayers of millions of Christians...
...Let me assure you that God is alive and well," he said...
...On the whole, good news...
...Is this good news or is it bad news...
...The new American hero is Oliver North, serving his country on the battlefield and at the shredder...
...In 1986, several blind people filed suit over the cut-off...
...No one spent money to determine whether there is intelligent life on Earth...
...Playboy retaliated by running a photo spread on "The Women of 7Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...And here's another item that may be good news or bad...
...No purchase price was disclosed, but Perot claims he got a significant discount for paying cash in a special end-of-the-year sale...
...You be the judge: Ross Perot Buys God Dallas—The entire human race was staggered today by the announcement that Dallas billionaire H. Ross Perot had purchased the Lord God Almighty, believed by many to be the creator of the universe, from the people of Israel and other Jews scattered throughout the world...
...But is this good news or bad news...
...Good news or bad news...
...Eleven...
...He should marry Imelda Marcos and the two of them could buy shoes together...
...Happy New Year, progressives...
...Perot has courted personal publicity in recent years with a series of costly and ostentatious purchases, including the Magna Carta, General Motors, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and two stone tablets said to contain the original Ten Commandments...
...Take it from a Texan—keep the money, surrender Harlingen...
...I especially liked having the Sultan of Brunei involved...
...Gossip columnist Rona Barrett left the Entertainment Tonight program, saying, "I feel it's time for me to pursue other interests...
...The Iraniragua scandal showed that everything you thought was your worst paranoid conspiracy fantasy about how the bozos in Washington operate turned out to be true...
...Investigators said they believed the dead bear, perhaps with the help of several others, ate millions of dollars worth of cocaine...
...NASA continued spending money on its program to determine whether there is intelligent life in space...
...Jehovah's puzzling lack of involvement in human affairs in recent times led Fried-rich Nietzsche and other philosophers to speculate on the possibility of His death...
...I don't know, and as far as I'm concerned, as Ronnie said to Nancy, you can "just get off my goddamn back...
...If He can come up with a snappier title and punch up the ending, I think we'll have an honest-to-God best-seller on our hands...
...In Texas, for example, 1986 was our Sesquicentennial—or, as our politicians who can't pronounce the word say, our 150th anniversary...
...In 1985, Congress cut off funds for the Library of Congress to have Playboy magazine put into Braille...
...In Blue Ridge, Georgia, a bear died of a cocaine overdose after an airborne smuggler dropped eighty-eight pounds of cocaine in the woods...
...As the drama called America Held Ridiculous continues, all we know for sure is that the cast of characters keeps getting better...
...Perot was quick to put this theory to rest...
...In an attempt to build support for the $100 million aid package for the contras, Reagan told a stunned nation, "Managua is just two days' drive from Harlingen, Texas...
...When the commissioners turned him down, he forwarded the request to Reagan...
...Davis also said God had recently warned him of the evils of television, and so he got rid of seven of his eight sets...
...The Ladies' Home Journal did a survey of registered women voters last summer and found that most Democrats like sleeping in pajamas and making love to their husbands, while Republicans prefer sexy nightgowns and watching TV...
...T. Cullen Davis, a Fort Worth millionaire and born-again Christian noted for having been twice acquitted of murder, said, "God brought the AIDS plague on the world...
...During the summer, our official Sesquicentennial bull died...
...This could be good news or bad, but it certainly proves we live in a great nation...
...They claimed they only read Playboy for the articles...
...Man is separated from the beasts by his ability to reason...
...Surrender him, too...
...Sometimes you have to leave an otherwise wonderful and workable marriage in order to grow...
...That's the way it was all year...
...The black bear was found dead near a duffel bag and forty one-kilo packages that had been ripped open...
...After Reagan's speech, Cameron County Sheriff Alex Perez asked the county commissioners to authorize $125,000 for riot gear to help repel a Sandinista invasion...
...It's always nice to have God on your side," Perot said, "but it's a lot nicer to have Him on your payroll...
...There's only one way a bull is going to break his back— the guy died in the saddle, as it were...
...Experts say these tablets have come down through the centuries virtually unchanged, except for a few corrections in grammar and punctuation made recently by Perot...
...He's out in my guest house right now, making some changes I suggested in the Bible...
Vol. 51 • February 1987 • No. 2
