Archives of the Absurd
Newspapers have so many columns to fill every day that a certain amount of
good stuff is bound to sneak in despite the editors. Usually it’s buried
where you can’t find it, and so Bad Attitudes finds it for you. This is a
collection of very old absurd items. Many of them date all the way back to
those long-ago times when we had an elected president, such as he was.
It All Depends on Whose
Mouse is Getting Gored...
“The fact is that corporate America speaks with two voices. As a
collective, it is reflexively hostile to what it sees as government
interference. But individual corporations just as reflexively demand that
government restrain their rivals.
“‘Sometimes a highly regulated administration is helpful and
sometimes it is not helpful,’ said Preston Padden, chief lobbyist for
Disney, who has argued for more and for less regulation. ‘What I would
really like is the Gore administration to be regulating my competitors and
the Bush administration to be regulating me.’” (New York Times,
February 11, 2001)
What the President-select
Neglected to Mention...
Last week George W. Bush gathered several specimen taxpayers and had them
stand by as he flacked his $1.6 trillion tax cut on TV. Paul and Debbie Peterson, for
instance, would theoretically save $1,100 a year...
“Here is what the president didn’t say: If his full income-tax cut
had been in place in 1999, the most recent year for which he has released his
tax returns, he and Laura Bush could have gotten a break 20 to 60 times that
of the Petersons. Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, meanwhile, could
have gotten a break in 1999 of more than a quarter of a million dollars.”
(Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2001)
Folks Just Can’t Seem to Keep
Their Hands Off Donald Luck...
“For some reason, many think of me as lucky. When I walk down the street,
people come up and start touching me. At first, I wanted to hide. I’ve
gotten used to it over time. Recently, while I walked down Fifth Avenue with a
group of visiting international bankers, at least 10 people came up to me,
tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Thank you.’ The bankers had
these looks of dismay on their faces as strangers rubbed my overcoat like a
rabbit’s foot.”
(Written ‘with’ Jobert E. Abueva
‘by’ Donald J. Trump for the New York Times of February 7, 2001)
Why Church and State
Should Remain Separate...
“Many economists still think that electricity deregulation will work. A
product is a product, they say, and competition always works better than
state control. ‘I believe that premise as a matter of religious faith,’ said
Philip J. Romero, dean of the business school at the University of Oregon and
one of the architects of California’s deregulation plan.’” (New York
Times, February 4, 2001)
Why Church, etc
Chapter II...
Pennsylvania State University professor of history and religion Philip Jenkins,
author of “Mystics and Messiahs: Cult and New Religions in American History:”
“‘Running a faith-based program raises the question, what faiths are out of
bounds?’ Mr. Jenkins said. ‘Either you fund all faith groups, even groups you
radically don’t like, or you fund none. I have nothing against funding everybody,
but I think people need to be prepared for the issues that might arise. How do you
distinguish between a Methodist and a Moonie? The answer is, you can’t.’”
(New York Times, February 20, 2001)
N.H. Theologian Reveals:
Jesus Was Anti-abortion!
Senator Bob Smith, Republican of New Hampshire: “You know, there’s a long line of
people who on the basis of their position on life couldn’t be attorney
general. We could start with Jesus Christ himself. We could also add to that list the Pope,
Mother Theresa, all the cardinals in the United States. We’re going to have to
eliminate a whole lot of people. It is so outrageous and frankly pathetic, and
it really exposes the left for what they are. It really does. It exposes the left
for what they are...” (New York Times, February 1, 2001)
How Do Democrats Get to Be
Such Good Losers? Practice!
“One dramatic break in party lines came when Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut,
a former senior official of the Democratic National Committee, said he would support
Mr. Ashcroft despite misgivings about him on racial issues and concern about how he had
treated several of President Clinton's nominees.
“‘There is a record here of (Ashcroft’s) going after people too hard, in too unfair
a manner,’ Mr. Dodd said, but added, ‘I will not engage in the same
form of payback politics.’” (New York Times, February 1, 2001)
Denial Isn’t Just
A River in Egypt...
The 88th annual dinner of the Alfalfa Club was held January 27 in Washington.
Katherine Harris, Florida’s secretary of state, attended in a form-fitting
black and green gown. Afterward, according
to The Washington Post, “Harris said she was heading back to Florida to
focus on the state’s election system to ‘make certain it reflects the will
of the voter.’” (January 29, 2001)
A Struggle in Which the Loser
Becomes the Real Winner...
“Now masochism...has even become a matter of national pride. The Ukrainians
and Russians are fighting over which country is the true home of masochism.”
(New York Times, January 27, 2001)
President-select Bush
Stricken with Echolalia!
George W. Bush: “The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating
plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”
(New York Times, January 13, 2001)
G-men Nix Georgie Neck’s
Splendid Sperm Scheme!
“Investigators have said that Mr. Tangorra’s crew was once led by
a Luchese captain named George Zappola, who was known to mobsters and federal
agents as Georgie Neck. Mr. Zappola is serving a 22-year sentence in a
federal prison in Brooklyn where, four years ago, he attempted an unusual
scheme to perpetuate his family name.
“Hoping to have a grown child waiting for him when he got out of prison,
Mr. Zappola arranged to have his sperm smuggled out of the Metropolitan Detention
Center in 1996 with the help of a corrupt guard, court papers show. Although the
sperm was eventually sent to a Manhattan fertility clinic, where it was frozen for
future use, the woman who was to carry Mr. Zappola’s child changed her mind about
being artificially inseminated and cooperated with federal agents long enough to
derail the plan.” (New York Times, November 29, 2000)
When Slimemolds Merge...
Mega-moneylender Citigroup plans to buy mega-moneylender Associates First
Capital for 31,000,000,000 of other people’s hard-earned dollars. Regulators
are concerned, as the Associates mob is rumored
to be even more vicious than the Citigroup mob:
“In North Carolina, some Associates practices are being investigated
by Michael Easley, the attorney general, for possible violations of lending laws.
Officials in Mr. Easley’s office said they had become more determined after learning
that some homeowners’ zero-interest loans from Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit
housing group, had been refinanced with high-interest loans from Associates.”
(New York Times, October 22, 2000)
Why Waste Money on a Bunch of Brats Who
Are Just Going
to Get Blown Up Anyway? ...
“...a woman pointedly asked Mr. Cheney why, as Wyoming’s lone
congressman, he had repeatedly voted against money for the Head Start
program in the 1980s. ‘The cold war was raging,’ he explained. ‘We were
faced with the specter, the possibility, of all-out global conflict with the
Soviets that could begin with little warning, and my top priority was a strong
national defense.’”
(New York Times, October 22, 2000)
The Road Not Taken...
“Ho Chi Minh did not want war with the French...He courted
United States support through the O.S.S. officers he had cultivated
during the war --- going so far as to offer the United States a naval
base at Cam Ranh Bay.”
(New York Times, October 15, 2000, review of William J. Duiker’s
Ho Chi Minh)
Slowly but Surely, America Matures...
Maxwell Perkins of Scribner’s edits Thomas Wolfe: “Another passage
was cut because Perkins thought it would be interpreted as a criticism
of sportsmanship, which in 1929 was equated with patriotism.”
(New York Times, October 2, 2000)
•
American wrestlers Brandon Slay and Sammie Henson won silver medals at the
Sydney Olympics. After Slay lost the gold, he would not let the referee raise
his hand. Henson, beaten in the final, “rushed from the mat, crying, wailing
and screaming.” Their coach, wrestling legend Dan Gable, explains: “I know some
people don’t like us for not shaking hands, but we have freedom in America.
Our reactions aren’t the same as other people.” (Elsewhere in the New York Times
of October 2, 2000)
But You Get a Placebo Effect from the Ads...
“Mary Nell Lehnhard, senior vice president of the Blue Cross
and Blue Shield Association, said...‘Drugs advertised on
television are often high-cost substitutes for other therapies.
Except in a small number of people with gastrointestinal bleeding,
Celebrex is no more effective than generic Tylenol or ibuprofen
that you can buy at the drug store for pennies a day to treat
arthritis pain.’”
(New York Times, September 20, 2000)
Ex-LBJ Aide Tells It Like It Is...
“Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association
of America, said today that Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman were ‘very wise
people’ who understood that ‘the reason the F.T.C. did not recommend
government intervention...is that they know such legislation would
be dead on arrival in the first federal court that reviews it.’
“Mr Valenti dismissed the Democrats’ proposal (on cutting movie
and TV violence) as carefully calibrated political posturing. ‘Frankly,’
he said, ‘if I were running for office I’d be trashing the movie industry
myself.’”
(New York Times, September 11, 2000)
How They Spell Charisma in Wyoming...
“Mr. Cheney is not exactly the kind of politician who goes around
kissing babies. The opportunity came up on Wednesday when he met
with the Lierenz family--John, Sherry, and 9-month-old Jessalyn--in
Wilmington, Del., to talk about the benefits they could expect under
Gov. George W. Bush’s proposed tax cut. ‘He kind of shook her hand,’
Mr. Lierenz said.”
(New York Times, September 11, 2000)
Why Rupert Murdoch Keeps the
New York Post on Life Support...
“The press baron William Randolph Hearst was once asked why he didn’t
devote himself fully to movies rather than journalism. He said, ‘You can
crush a man with journalism, but not with motion pictures.’”
(New York Times, September 8, 2000)
Might as Well Admit It, You Didn’t Watch
The Reform Party Convention in Long Beach...
...but luckily for you, we did. Thoughts from Chairman Buchanan:
“As long as there is life in me, I will never run away from the unborn!”
On Mr. Clinton’s foreign policy: “Drive-by shootings with Cruise missiles!”
On Mr. Bush’s: “Dubya’s being home-schooled in foreign policy by Miss Condoleeza
Rice!”
On Washington, where he was born and has lived all his life: “It’s time to
pick up the pitchforks and go down and clean out the pigpen!”
On the estate tax: “End the government’s role as graverobber of the American
family!”
On campaign finance reform: “Neither party is going to drain this swamp,
because to them it’s not a swamp, it’s a protected wetland!” (Nor can we expect
much help from what Mr. Buchanan calls “the Commissars of the U.S.
Supreme Court!”)
(The exclamation points may or may not have appeared in the official
transcript. Bad Attitudes infers them from the candidate’s delivery, which was
lively.)
A Populist for the New Millenium...
Herbert Perone of the American Council of Life Insurers:
“Joe Lieberman understands the needs of business and
doesn’t view industry with hostility. You can count on
Joe Lieberman to understand why something is important to
us and vote the right way and not scoff at our reasons.
He’s been a friend to us.” (New York Times,
August 28, 2000)
It Tolls for Thee...
Georgetown University business school professor Willis
Emmons, on deregulation of the power industry:
“Deregulation and privatization were sold implicitly
on the assumption that everybody can win from this, but I’m
hard pressed to find an example in the real world where
that has happened...Maybe somebody is winning, but it
isn’t the consumer.” (New York Times, August 28, 2000)
He’s Nuts, All Right.
Actually Jodie Foster is God...
Alexander Williams, now 32, is on Georgia’s death row for raping and
killing a 16-year-old girl when he himself was 17. “Mr. Williams
is described in prison records as mentally ill; they say he has
schizoaffective disorder, which leads him to worship the actress
Sigourney Weaver as God.” (New York Times, August 22, 2000)
Sure It Was Expensive, But at
Least It Got Us Rid of Starr...
“The independent counsel Robert W. Ray has paid contractors nearly
$742,000 since taking over the investigation of President Clinton
eight months ago, including $210,777 for private investigators, a report
released today shows. Totaling more than $52 million, the Clinton
investigation is the most expensive independent counsel inquiry ever.”
(Associated Press, August 22, 2000)
You Be the Judge...
“As early as 1964, (George W. Bush) had a run-in with one of
the avatars of the new order, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, the Yale
chaplain...Bush bitterly recalled Coffin’s telling him, after his
father had lost the 1964 Senate race in Texas to Ralph Yarborough,
‘I knew your father, and he lost to a better man.’”
(Newsweek, August 7, 2000)
William Sloane Coffin, recalling the 60s at Yale: “I am sorry to say
that during these years I knew only Mr. Lieberman, neither Mr. Bush
nor Mr. Cheney.” (New York Times op-ed piece, August 10, 2000)
Distress Drives Candidate
for Second Lady Crazy...
Lynne Cheney, speaking at a recent American Enterprise Institute panel:
“What really drives me crazy is when Hillary acts like the happy wife,
walking hand in hand off the helicopter together at critical moments. It’s
just so distressing to me.”
(Washington Post, August 4, 2000)
Former First Son Isn’t
Feeling All That Hot, Either...
Ron Reagan, in Philadelphia on other business during the GOP convention,
told a reporter, “The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George
W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job...What is his accomplishment?
That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?” (Washington Post, August 4, 2000)
Plus There’s a Whole Bunch of
Some Kind of Black, Gooey Stuff...
Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader briefly raided the Republican
convention in Philadelphia which anointed oilman George W. Bush and oilman Dick
Cheney. As Mr. Nader was denouncing Big Oil to the press,
a delegate called out, “Sir, there’s integrity in those oil rigs.”
(Washington Post, August 4, 2000)
Actually the Really Big Dough
Is in Postmodernism...
Last August the Kansas Board of Education voted to drop evolution from
the subjects included in state assessment tests. Now the board’s conservative
Republicans find themselves challenged in an upcoming primary by comparatively
liberal Republicans. An anti-evolution member, Mary Douglass Brown of Wichita,
wasn’t surprised at the strength of the opposition. “There’s a lot of money
in evolution,” she said. (New York Times, July 29, 2000)
Barbara Harris Cuts
Right to the Chase...
Barbara Harris is the founder of Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK)
of Anaheim, California, an organization which pays female addicts $200 to let
themselves be sterilized. CRACK’s official slogan is, “Don’t Let a Pregnancy
Interfere With Your Drug Habit.” At recent count, 246 women had
accepted the offer. (New York Times, July 23, 2000)
Unfortunately, It Was Off Camera...
Initially no American network was interested in the concept of a “Survivor”
show, but its British promoters were able to sell their idea
in Sweden. There the show was called “Expedition Robinson,” and was
a huge success. “The only problem,” The New York Times reports,
“was that the first participant to be kicked off the island committed
suicide.” (July 18, 2000)
The Judicial Temperament in Texas...
Reprimanded by the state for repairing his two single-action Colt revolvers
during jury selection for a murder trial, Houston Judge H. Lon Harper said, “Almost
all the judges carry guns. I should have just kept mine under the robe instead of
outside of it with a screwdriver.”
(Washington Post, July 14, 2000)
Hey, If It’s Good Enough for Texas,
It’s Good Enough for Anybody...
The House of Representatives has passed on to the Senate a bill to allow all federal
judges to carry concealed firearms even in states where it’s illegal. The bill is
silent on the question of gun repair.
(Washington Post, July 17, 2000)
If It Ain’t Broke, Congress Will Fix It...
Republicans and Democrats are locked in furious symbolic combat
over the best way to cut estate taxes so that heirs won’t have to sell the family
farm to pay the taxes on it. Professor Neil Hart is an Iowa State University
economist who has seen the devastation first hand, or rather tried to. From
The New York Times, of July 13, 2000:
“Professor Hart...said that he had heard many horror stories about people
having to sell farms to pay estate taxes. But in 35 years of conducting estate
tax seminars for farmers, he added, ‘I have pushed and pushed and hunted and probed
and I have not been able to find a single case where estate taxes caused the sale of
a family farm; it’s a myth.’”
Women and Children First,
Southern California Style...
“In the dry summer months, Southern California’s beaches are considered
among the cleanest in the nation, with pollution concentrated near storm
drain outlets and in the protected coves preferred by mothers and their children.”
(New York Times, July 12, 2000)
A Thought No American
Father Has Ever Thought...
In 1929 the young Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, got his father
to pay for him to attend the summer session at Columbia University. Why?
“The father thought the trip might be good for his son’s poetry.”
(New York Times, July 4, 2000)
Next Thing You Know, Those Iraqis
Will Be Cranking Out Corvairs...
On June 27 Iraq flight-tested a short-range missile, causing concern in
Washington. Pentagon officials called the test
“evidence that Iraq is still working to perfect its ballistic missile
technology, which could be adapted to missiles with a longer range...The missile
is believed to be a variant of the Soviet-era SA-2, the type of surface-to-air
missile that shot down the U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers over the
Soviet Union in 1960.” (New York Times, July 1, 2000)
Webster’s International:
“more nuanced \ adjA a : -- less simpleminded”
The rogue nations of North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Sudan and Syria no longer exist. “We are now calling these states
‘states of concern,’” Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright explained
on June 19. According to the New York Times, “State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said the shift signaled a change in the
administration’s approach to an unofficial gallery of nations ... where
internal reforms might best be advanced by a
more nuanced American vocabulary.”
(New York Times, June 20,
2000)
What's a Boy to Do?
“After Abner Louima was sodomized at a police station
house in Brooklyn in 1997, the Police Department, sensitive
to community anger in the racially charged case, decided
to transfer 24 black officers into the precinct to diversify
it. But yesterday a jury found that the transfers themselves
were discriminatory. As a result, the 24 officers, who had sued
the department over the transfers in Federal District Court in
Manhattan, were awarded $50,000 each by the jury.”
(New York Times, June 16,
2000)
Father, I Have Committed Bad Actions...
“The other plaintiffs tell similar stories of trauma and falling away from
the church. Ms. See, 35, came forward as part of therapy to rebuild her
life, after speaking to a childhood friend, Mr. Freibott, who said he, too,
had been molested by their parish priest, the Rev.
Raymond S. Pcolka. In three years of abuse at Holy Name Church in
Stratford, Connecticut, Ms. See said, Father Pcolka told her that
by submitting, she was sparing Brian from similar treatment. She
said the priest, a frequent guest at her family’s home, heard
her confession after he abused her the first time.”
(New York Times, June 16,
2000)
Those Who Read Those Words of Wit...
Ikea, a retailer of furniture, caused help-wanted ads to be written on the
walls of restaurant toilets in Malmo, Sweden. The graffiti got “four or five
times more responses than we would from a normal newspaper ad,”
a spokesman said. “In the toilet, people are more relaxed and receptive to
our message.” (New York Times, June 12,
2000)
Wipe That Smirk from Your Face, Semple...
“As he graduated from Andover, George was a well-known character on campus,
a young man with warm and loyal friends but not one who seemed destined for
greatness. He was not a finalist in voting for Most Likely to Succeed, Most
Respected, Politico, or any of the other main categories. But, in a
reflection of his people skills, he did come in second for Big Man on Campus.
What would those Andover students have thought if they had been told back
then that George W. Bush would become a candidate for president? ‘The reaction,’
said William T. Semple, a classmate, ‘would have been gales of laughter.’”
(New York Times, June 10, 2000)
Cream Rises to the Top in Alabama...
Because he broke the law by posting the Ten Commandments
in his courtroom, Circuit Court Judge Roy S. Moore of
Gadsden has a good chance of being elected chief justice
of the Alabama Supreme Court. His legal philosophy is
drawn from the Constitution as well as from the writings of
Jefferson, Madison, Washington, John Locke, and God. Applying their
wisdom to Vermont’s legalization of gay civil unions,
Judge Moore recently said the logical next step would be
interspecies civil unions. “Are you going to pay your
tax money to support a man and a sheep on welfare?” he
asked voters. “Hmmm?” (New York Times, June
5, 2000)
Addendum:
“Despite being vastly outspent, Roy S. Moore...won a convincing
victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary for chief justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court.” (New York Times, June 8, 2000)
Addendum to Addendum:
On January 15, 2001, Judge Moore was sworn in as Alabama’s chief justice.
“God’s law will be publicly acknowledged in our court,” he said. God
was reported to be well pleased.
Addendum to Addendum to Addendum:
“With no fanfare, Alabama’s new chief justice has hung a copy of the Ten
Commandments in his chambers...Chief Justice Moore’s decision to display the
Ten Commandments in his office may end speculation on whether he would try to
display them in the Supreme Court courtroom.” (New York Times, January
26, 2001)
Nothing Queer About Mary Jane Rachner Either...
In 1992 a candidate for local office named Mary Jane Rachner was asked by
the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to provide information on herself for
its election guide. Among her endorsers she listed (and the
paper trustingly printed) the United Brotherhood of Workers at Kisahomo’s Tool
and Die Mfg. Due to a shortage of Alabama Republicans in Minneapolis, Ms. Rachner was
crushingly defeated.
Breakfast at Presley’s...
Elvis Presley’s recently deceased cook, Mary Jenkins
Langston, once told an interviewer, “For breakfast,
he’d have homemade biscuits fried in butter, sausage
patties, four scrambled eggs and sometimes fried bacon.
I’d bring the tray up to his room, he’d say,
‘This is good, Mary.’ He’d have butter running
down his arms.” (New York Times, June 5,
2000)
Copyright © 2004 by Jerome Doolittle
remnant@badattitudes.com
