SOMEONE WE'RE NOT FONDA
Someone We're Not Fonda Just when we are about to forget the horror that is Jane Fonda, something else always comes up. Margaret Carlson of Time devoted her column to the queen of workout videos...
...Does anybody in a position to make a difference have the guts to put a stop to this irresponsible gutting of the most important military in the world...
...She is the D.C...
...20, he was asked a question about tax cuts at a Capitol Hill session with reporters...
...You could hear the Republican fax machines whirring after that one...
...In other Fonda news, La Jane appeared in a New York Times story about Patagonia, the region in southern Argentina that President Clinton visited recently and where Fonda and Ted Turner have an 11,000-acre pleasure ranch...
...defense budget has been falling steadily throughout the Clinton administration, and under the terms of this summer's budget deal it's due to keep falling into the next century...
...The best guarantee of American interests, and world peace, is American military supremacy...
...Says Fonda, "I sometimes dream that there's a revolution in the United States and that we can't return and have to live [in Patagonia] forever...
...The Gingrich Re-armament The U.S...
...judges and the D.C...
...22, et seriatim)—gave an interview to Capital Style magazine recently...
...We have the lowest tax rate of any industrialized country in the world," said the earnest Daschle...
...School for Scandal_ Kaye Christian has given new meaning to the term "judicial activism...
...To receive federal funds, Carlson notes, "schools must preach 'abstinence only...
...Last week, however, Christian journeyed into the twilight zone...
...Fearful that the little darlings might be cold, she shut down an entire D.C...
...Kinsley's Law rings true again: It's only a gaffe when a politician says what he really means...
...And she has threatened to shut down another 46 buildings because of boiler problems...
...And what scares me a little bit is that I don't exist as much as I did two years ago...
...Frank Luntz: Going, Going, Gone The Republican pollster Frank Luntz—the ineffable Frank Luntz, the one, the only, whose Clin-tonesque advice to Republicans has often been reported in these pages ("Frank Luntz Does It for the Children," Sept...
...While the rest of us have shed our anti-war activism along with our bell bottoms," writes Carlson, Fonda is still remembered for her "shag cut in Hanoi" and Barbarella...
...I've studied all his characters...
...But do Republicans really want to make it their motto, too...
...Funny, Jane, some of us dream the same thing...
...I can synthesize for you: After I get out of a focus group, I, Frank Luntz, cease to exist, and I become those 12 people in the focus group...
...Enter Fonda, who, Carlson assures us, is concerned about the "below-the-waist aspects" of birth control, in the words of the revolu-tionary-turned-magnate's-wife...
...First out of the gate was Newt Gingrich's press secretary, Christina Martin, who asserted, "When NASA is done exploring Mars, they might want to send a probe to Planet Daschle...
...Displaying a much better grasp of America's strategic interests than a whole think-tank-full of defense experts, Gingrich went on to say that he didn't "want us to be strong enough to win narrowly...
...On Oct...
...Or perhaps we should call it "judicial brain-dead-ism...
...control board, there really can't be school choice soon enough for the children of the nation's capital...
...What with D.C...
...That was substantively ridiculous, but debatable as a political game of chicken with the school board...
...elementary school because—get this—its boiler needed to be replaced...
...This fall, she has forced the cancellation of the first three weeks of school on the grounds that the school buildings themselves were not up to her safety standards...
...It's about the children...
...In a bold statement before the House budget committee last week, House speaker Newt Gingrich shocked everyone by calling for a new defense buildup...
...Margaret Carlson of Time devoted her column to the queen of workout videos last week, beginning, "Where is Jane Fonda...
...Our view is that we've got to make the tax system more fair...
...We have lived off the Reagan buildup about as long as we can," Gingrich said...
...We highly recommend it to all those Republicans, particularly in Congress, who have lately taken to spouting focus-group-approved Luntzisms as their primary mode of communicating with voters ("It's about the future...
...superior-court judge who has taken it upon herself to protect the safety of the schoolchildren of the District of Columbia—and protect them she has these past five years to such a degree that they seem rarely to attend school at all...
...Look," Luntz adds, "there is no truth and there is no reality...
...Exactly right...
...He only existed in character...
...And "because we didn't let her grow up, she may have greater appeal to vulnerable teenagers than the icy perfection of a Nancy Reagan urging, 'Just say no!'" Fonda, you see, is "always more interested in making a difference than in making a movie...
...I am a focus group...
...Luntz approaches his work, he told Capital Style, "from a Peter Sellers mode...
...22, Daschle claimed Washington's oldest excuse—his comments were taken "out of context"— and then asserted that "Americans are overtaxed" three times during another session with reporters...
...The fact is that our defense structure is getting weaker, our equipment is getting obsolete, our troops are stretched too thin...
...Republicans should follow their leader on this one...
...Turns out Jane is off pushing condoms, because, as Carlson writes, an "enemy," the Republican Congress, has "attached strings to $250 million for sex education...
...And what a difference she made in Vietnam, where, shag cut and all, she commandeered a Communist anti-aircraft gun and, referring to American pilots as she mocked-fired into the air, said, "I wish I had them in my sights now...
...I want to be so strong that no one can compete with us...
...public-school officials and D.C...
...10, the Washington Post revealed that Daschle had recently taken $5,000 donors for a visit to the face of Mount Rushmore—an area off-limits to the general public but not to South Dakota senators...
...I've actually studied him...
...That's 46 out of 147 D.C...
...public schools...
...By the time he died, he did not exist...
...Say the word condom, and you don't get a cent...
...But certainly I don't think that many people are overtaxed...
...Then on Oct...
...By Oct...
...Well, finally it looks like the answer is yes...
...Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee, followed with a mischievous letter calling on his Democratic counterpart, Roy Romer, to repudiate Daschle's comments...
...In five years we will be spending a smaller share of our national economy on defense than at any time since before Pearl Harbor...
...Daschle Our Hopes It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for Tom Daschle, the Senate's minority leader...
...As a description of politics as practiced by Bill Clinton, this little aphorism can't be topped...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 8
