Who knew that Canadian geese would also become fair game this Kerry season? Certainly they were given no advance warning. Nor were we. Despite these Canadians’ illegal status in our country, the subject of controlling the borders and airspace between the U.S. and Canada never came up in the presidential debates. No one needed to out these geese, given that they already live outdoors. Think too of all the jobs in the down industry they’ve kept from being outsourced. It required an exceptional politico to tap into the latent hostility of most northerners toward these despoilers of parks, lakes, and golf courses. Of course John Kerry may blow the advantage he gained when he goes off and starts bragging about bagging Cambodian geese.
And those clothes! For the first time Fidel Heinz Castro saw his doppelganger and promptly fell over not quite dead but close. If this is an example of Kerry’s powerful effect on allies, he should maybe steer clear of fatigues, camouflage wear, and other folk costumes. Pity poor Gerhardt Schroeder if in his next public appearance Kerry shows up in Lederhosen. Or dear Jacques Chirac if he sees Kerry in a beret. Peace in our time is at risk.
Mr. Bill Clinton, he of the lyin’ cheatin cold dead beatin’ mean mistreatin’ achy breaky heart, is in line to succeed Dr. Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations, a job he will fill while doubling as president of the World Bank, tripling as secretary-general of NATO, and quadrupling as U.S. Surgeon General. He will face some stiff competition on all fronts in the personage of Dame Teresa Kerry, who has held many jobs in her life, including cleaning lady, washrooom attendant, car hop, and Dairy Queen cashier. Currently she is attending librarian night school. If her husband, as promised, raises the minimum wage, she expects to find work by this time next year.
But that’s jumping ahead. The immediate concern is that Mr. Kerry will show up in Fenway Park wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt.
The nation remains in shock at the collapse of empire in the person of the New York Yankees. Stranger things haven’t happened, and this at a time when Al Gore remains at large and John Edwards is spotted powdering his nose. Saddest is that many a successful scribe is having to eat his words. Consider Thomas Boswell, the Boswell of the Washington Post‘s sports page. Last Sunday, after the Yankees had finished shelling the Sox to take an insurmountable 3 games to none lead, Boswell cockily wrote: “No team in baseball history has come back from such a postseason deficit. These Red Sox won’t be the first to do such a deed… It’s never over until it’s over. Except sometimes. And this is one of those times.” Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Boswell has yet to admit he was wrong.
At least no one has accused the scribe of phoning it in. Which leads us to the uncomfortable subject of tabloid conservative Mr. Bill O’Reilly. What he does in the privacy of his own area code is his business, to be sure. Or to put it another way, whatever transpired is between him and his service provider. But then lines got tangled and we had the latest revival of Pillow Talk, with Mr. O’Reilly in the role of Rock Hudson, a comparison he won’t appreciate. As best we can determine, Mr. O’Reilly was providing a young sometime employee with mentoring advice and she in turn kept him informed of her career trajectory. Now an entire nation is listening in, including the columnist Richard Cohen, who is drawn to such situations like a moth to flame, all so he can admonish O’Reilly while exonerating him and blaming the girl for their parts “in the oldest game known to mankind.” At last word, both O’Reilly and the girl’s sides were negotiating a settlement in their dispute. Were they doing so by phone? We won’t tell if you don’t.
But we will say we have a winner in this week’s EOW stakes. Thanks to early voting we even know who he is. Plus the convenient fact that he’s a convicted plagiarist makes it easier to send him up river again. Then there’s his proclivity to pass himself off as John Kerry’s sage adviser and mentor. What has he done now? Nothing unusual by his standards, but perhaps unfair to the publishers of his autobiography, “Braindead.” Was it nice, Joe Biden, to apply that title to the incumbent president?
