Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Say, Is There An Attila The Hun Prize?

Monday, June 5, 2000

Friday night, in a discussion with Ollie North and Kiki McLean on MSNBC's "Equal Time" about President Clinton receiving the "Charlemagne Prize," I noted that only Germany would give an award to a national leader with Clinton's resume. Kiki took me to task for "dissing" Germany.

Here's a portion of the entry for "Charlemagne" in the Online Encyclopedia without any additions from Mullings:
"[Charlemagne] consolidated his rule in his own kingdom, invaded Italy in support of the pope, and in 774 was crowned king of the Lombards. He took NE Spain from the Moors (778) and annexed Bavaria (788). After a long struggle (772-804) he subjugated and Christianized the Saxons."

The Encyclop�dia Britannica entry also includes the terms: fought, conquered, and subdued.

The "Charlemagne Prize" was given to commemorate Clinton's efforts toward a unified Europe which is exactly what Charlemagne did, and exactly what Germany tried to do - twice - in the last century.

That's a nice legacy entry: "Received a prize in celebration of an eighth century ruler whose verbs included: consolidated, invaded, took, annexed, fought, conquered, subdued, and subjugated."

Prior to being awarded the Charlemagne Prize, Clinton met with Helmut Kohl the former Chancellor of Germany who's reputation has collapsed because of a - give me a minute here - because of a campaign finance scandal. Clinton had presented Kohl with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Washington last year prior to the campaign finance scandal - that would be the Kohl campaign finance scandal not the Clinton/Gore version - becoming public.

What's German for quid pro quo? Maybe: Eine Hand w�scht der anderer?

A woman who rents land on Al Gore's farm finally had to go to the press to get the plumbing fixed in her apartment after the property manager ignored her pleas and threatened to evict her. Al "I-Invented-The-Wax-Ring" Gore, has offered to buy her dinner the next time he is in Carthage, Tennessee and will pay for the woman's rent while the repairs are being made � now that we've found out about it.

I went to see Mission: Impossible II over the weekend because everyone else had already seen it. I am still the only person who, not having wintered over in Antarctica, has never seen Titanic. Here's my review: "It's one thing to go to a movie which requires you suspend belief. It's something else to go to a movie which has so many plot holes it requires you undergo general anesthesia and suspend animation."

There was some discussion, over the weekend, about Microsoft moving north about 110 miles from its headquarters in Redmond, Washington to the Canadian border to avoid a federally-mandated break up. Mullings is taking the official position - on the record - of favoring this move by Microsoft.

Who wouldn't like to see, next January 20th, about five in the morning, seven hours before the Clinton Presidency ends, live coverage of a battalion of bald lawyers from the Anti-Trust Division, wearing ski goggles covering their bifocals, dressed in helicopter-black coveralls over their three-piece suits , armed with semi-automatic Temporary Restraining Orders (set to "safe") streaming off government Gulfstream jets invading Canada to get Bill Gates back?

A Newsweek poll released over the weekend headlined the fact that 60 percent of respondents thought Bush's 30 day reprieve of a murderer-rapist to look at DNA evidence was political. Fair enough, even if not true. A minor point in that poll, missed by most, was this (as summarized by the Associated Press): "Bush is substantially ahead in the crucial race for electoral votes, however. He leads in almost 20 states with more than two-thirds of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Gore is ahead in fewer than 10 states with less than half the votes he would need to win."

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