Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Thomas Nast Redux

Wednesday, June 21, 2000

Mullings was honored, over the weekend, to be part of a panel during the annual meeting of the National Association of Newspaper Columnists to discuss on-line columns. I said that the notion of "leafing through" a newspaper on-line was different than doing it with a real newspaper and likely wouldn't change.

In the words of the great Dr. Conrad Steiner, "A case in point:"

I surf the New York Times website with some regularity. Call me small-minded. Call me too narrow in my thinking, but I never, ever search on the phrase "elephant repellant."

But right there, on page D3, is an article headlined: "Need Elephant Repellant? Try this Hot Pepper Brew" which precedes a piece by Andrew C. Revkin on a zoologist's attempt to find some non-lethal way to keep elephants out of fertile fields.

This, as it happens, is exactly what Al "I-Started-Growing-Haba�ero-Peppers-When-I-Stopped-Growing-Tobacco" Gore is trying to do to George W.

For the official recipe to keep elephants out of your tomato plants, click here:

Public Opinion Strategy's California survey maven, Steve Kinney, sent along the results of the latest POS poll in the Golden state. It seems that Gore's lead has dropped to a statistically insignificant three points over W - 41% to 38%. Kinney's analysis says that when those "most likely to vote" are measured, it flips five points and Bush leads 42-40.

Bill McInturff of POS who (regular readers will remember) did John McCain's polling, said this result makes sense when you look at the Bush numbers nationally remaining pretty much stable at eight to ten points ahead of Gore.

Another addition to our "With Friends like These" Department: Lloyd Grove in his Washington Post "The Reliable Source" column quotes former Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards (who lost to George W. in her campaign to be re-elected Governor) as saying: "I don't know if Gore is going to win. If I knew how to beat Dubya, I would have done it myself."

That's what we Texans would call getting a silver boot in the butt.

Washington Post headline on Lucy Spelman being named director of the National Zoo: "First Woman Named to Head Zoo." All over Your Nation's Capital women were reading that and saying, "Oh, yea? Come to my house any Saturday morning."

From Your Lips to Reno's Ears: Al Gore, desperately trying to pin high gasoline prices on someone, said he thought there should be a "much broader investigation into possible collusion, price gouging and anti-trust violations." Imagine. Al Gore calling FOR an investigation.

Meanwhile, America's Super-Sleuth, Janet Reno, attended a "Cyber Crime Summit" in suburban Washington the other day. Does tossing a year's worth of e-mails into the hexadecimal dumpster count as "cyber crime?" Hey, Al! Investigate THIS.

The Pentagon has announced it will conduct another test of a missile defense system on July 7. Defense Secretary Bill Cohen said this "will be our most challenging test to date." The system, if built, will allow an inbound missile to be destroyed in space.

Pentagon engineers plan to conduct this test in Chicago where a round object will be hurled at 100 miles per hour toward a leather target slightly over 66 feet away. The operator of the missile defense system will attempt to intercept the inbound object and send it 400 or more feet in the opposite direction. The Pentagon warned that last minute developments might require the test be moved to Yankee Stadium.

There is a certain Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince quality to this business of the State Department doing away with the designation of "rogue state" and replacing it with "state of concern." Let's see how many of these designations we can come up with:

    -- Country which gives Clinton a meaningless award: "State of Grace"
    -- Important country: "State of Matter"
    -- Country whose soccer team makes the World Cup: "State of Play"
    -- Region which is thinking about becoming independent: "State of Mind"
    -- Country with a region fighting for independence: "Such a State"
    -- Country which has no right to work laws: "State of the union"
    -- Alliance between Hungary and Germany: "State 'n Ale"
    -- Tennessee, where Gore headquarters is located: "State of Confusion"

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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