SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins No Way to Go But Up What splendid entertainment! What frisks and jollifications! Who could have asked for anything more to light up our dreary winter skies than the...
...Let us begin with consideration of a littlenoted moment in the endless saga of George Bush, the luckless wimp...
...kept sternly warning us not to forget that the fangs of the Russian bear are dripping with blood...
...Next, who ever would ever have thought the Reagan Administration could be saved from historical ignominy by the Soviet Union—that Mikhail Gorbachev would come over here and pull Reagan's ox out of the ditch...
...Word has just arrived here that the 1980s are over...
...a son" to the President...
...Truly, we are a people blessed...
...Great stuff...
...Can market research do worse...
...Right now, I'd like to go out on a limb and say I think this presidential race is wide open and anything could happen...
...Since we live in a great nation, we can assume that the advertisers will soon have us buying toothpastes to improve our integrity...
...Deodorants to give us charity...
...The ever-vigilant researchers of the market inform us that people are looking for role models with "better values...
...George Will & Co...
...His voice took on that famous vibrato of sincerity as he said, "George Bush is the finest Vice President . . . in my memory...
...Did you ever see such a sight in your life...
...Many were disappointed when Deaver's defense against perjury charges—that Demon Rum made him do it—failed to impress the court...
...Ronald Reagan once promised to take us back to "traditional values," but all we got was greed, sleaze, and cant...
...Denture cleaners that will cause us to honor our fathers and our mothers...
...That one could have gotten a lot of us out of trouble if they had let it fly...
...As Calvin Trillin once observed, "That's more than they've ever claimed for any of his own children...
...And every right-winger in the country either bilious or apoplectic over it...
...From Doug Ginsburg to Gary Hart in the space of a single month, with Howie Phillips calling Ronald Reagan "a useful idiot" in between...
...He was asked about Bush...
...Fear not—I know we say this every year, but 1988 can't possibly be stranger than 1987...
...Just before the summit started, our only President underwent a joint interview with four network television anchormen...
...Who could have asked for anything more to light up our dreary winter skies than the fireworks and fizzles offered by national politics...
...Speaking of Reagan's relatives, it is often said that Michael Deaver is "just like Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...PAUL CORIO Gary Hartpence, Gary Hartpence, the nation's gag writers salute you...
...But some guy called from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and said he was writing an article about it, an obituary for the decade...
...I know, it seemed a little premature to me, too...
...They understand these things in Cleveland...
...Except he did forget to ask him about this supposed military build-up in Nicaragua...
...they were apparently worried lest the rest of us should decide to put Gorbachev on the list of the Ten Most Admired Americans...
...Getting to be like Lucy and the football, isn't it...
...Market researchers say Yuppies are Out...
...The matter was passed over during the summit, but a new defector was trotted out just in time to spook the Congress into voting for more aid to the contras...
...Yuppies don't sell...
...No sooner had Gorby left town than the Administration started crowing about how Reagan had brought him to his knees...
...As the rest of us know, it takes two to make a trend, but confirmatory evidence soon followed: Newsweek put it on the cover...
...This is the man who can't remember whether he ever signed any executive orders about selling arms to Iran, who can't remember why he sent the Marines to Lebanon, who can't remember the names of his grandchildren...
...And we have a whole nother year of this Administration to go...
Vol. 52 • February 1988 • No. 2
