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by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo
Froday, July 30, 1999 --- New York (APJP) -- Thursday was one of those days -- the type where half the news stinks to high heaven like a compost heap and the other half has you rolling on the floor.
Dateline: ATLANTA -- Of course, yesterday's TV news was dominated by a shooting rampage in Atlanta. The shooter killed his wife and children at home, then went to two brokerage firms in an upscale Buckhead office complex and blew away nine more people. There are reports that the shooter's marriage was on the rocks, but another underlying factor seems to have been huge stock and securities losses that the shooter suffered.
Now here's irony for you! Shortly after the horrific spree killings at Columbine High School, moralists like William Bennett and Pat Robertson decided to blame, among other things, computer-driven video games like Doom, making the false claim that they turn fresh-faced innocents into stone-cold killers. Well, in the Atlanta incident, it looks as if a "video game" called day trading was one of the underlying causes of the gunplay -- and the killer even went so far as to do his business in the very "video arcade" where he reportedly lost his own shirt.
Let that be a lesson to the evangelical hypocrites: it's the computer "games" without the guns that pose a bigger hazard than those in which you blow away evil demons, bloodthirsty mutants or rampaging monsters.
Dateline: LITTLE ROCK -- Events in Atlanta denied the ratings-crazed news division of the big TV networks the chance to "go medieval" on Clinton over this news -- but the pundits are sure to "spin" this on Sunday. Judge Susan Webber Wright, the not-so-impartial federal judge who lorded over the Paula Jones lawsuit (when she should have recused herself), yesterday ordered President Clinton to pay just under $90,000 to Jones' legal team for "giving false testimony" concerning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Of course, any first-year law student will tell you that there has been no conclusive proof that Clinton lied during his testimony. In fact, Judge Wright approved a weasely and confusing definition of "sex" before the lawsuit got tossed that looks in retrospect as if it were designed to elicit a denial from President Clinton -- and counterclaims that Clinton had committed perjury from Jones's sleazy team of hard-right religious wacko attorneys and pals in Ken Starr's Office of Scaife-dependent Counsel.
The award is less than the Jones lawyers asked for by some $400,000 dollars, and Clinton's legal team said that the money will be paid "without further legal protest." Jones's legal team has been blustering about appealing the ruling, but run the risk of having such a move explode in their face after essentially extorting more money and embarrassment from President Clinton.
And the big loser is, again, Paula Jones. Her marriage is ruined. Her "winnings" were only a tiny fraction of the settlement cash after her lawyers and "advisors" took their cut. And her situation has gone so far south that the celebrity wanna-be had to move from California back to Arkansas and, hopefully, oblivion.
Dateline: NEW YORK CITY -- The Arkansas colors are no longer flying over City Hall!
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is carpetbagging for campaign buckaroos in Clinton territory, had ordered the state flag of Arkansas to fly over City Hall in his absence -- only to see the city's two tabloids, the Daily News and usually Rudy-friendly New York Post, take him to the woodshed for flying a "rebel" flag. Former Mayor Ed Koch went so far as to call it an "abuse of power."
But we think presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart was more on point when he called it "…a little goofy."
Sort of like short-fuse Rudy's prospects for higher office.
Dateline: GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Can rock DJ's be as dumb as, say, Dan Quayle? Can you say "potatoe?"
We'd heard reports of an email that's been making the rounds among Clinton-bashers attributing "Dan Quayleisms" to Al Gore -- including dates on which "Gore" allegedly said them.
Thanks to one of our readers for alerting us to this one: "[yesterday] morning, on Greensboro [rock] station WKZL, the deejay READ THE WHOLE DANG THING, laughing all along at how stupid Al Gore is -- yet another example of entertainment' media bringing down the standards of political journalism."
So we called WKZL this morning to see if their "on crack" team of DJs had retracted the story to their audience. A station official promised to call us back -- but hasn't.
We can only wonder how dumb they all feel by now.
THIS JUST IN: After our email edition went out, we got a call from Jamie Kerr of WKLZ. He said that the e-mail message had indeed gotten some airplay the previous morning -- but he also claimed that the DJ in question had said that he thought the quotes were attributable to Quayle. Sounds to us like the DJ wasn't all that clear about that final point.
We think the Gore campaign should request equal time...
Dateline: IOWA -- Speaking of Quayle, here's something he said on the campaign trail recently:
" We've got to return honor and decency and respect to the White House. Bill Clinton has done more damage to the White House than anyone since the British burned it in 1812."
BZZZZT! Oh, I'm sorry, Dan, but the correct answer is that the British burned the White House in 1814! But thanks for playing "GOP Candidate!" Paula Parkinson, tell Dan about his lovely parting gifts….
'Nuff said.
Copyright © 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications.
