There's Backwards and there's . . .

BurkeWords

Monday, October 27, 1997

My apologies for leaving this out on Monday.

The GOP is spending quite a bit of money on issue advertising in the Congressional race in Staten Island (NY), with good reason -- they need to keep the seat. To get around the spending limit laws, they never use the candidates name. They did the same kind of advertising last year during the major election races.

The Democrats are screaming "Foul!". They claim that because there is only one Congressional race being run in the entire country, that the very notion that this is issue advertising is ridiculous.

My opinion: Regardless of their legality, Take the Stupid things off the air! Now!

Excuse me, but can anyone tell me the name of the Republican running for the office? I'm being honest. I don't know it. Do you want to know who the Democrat is? Hell, he's a household name now. Thanks to the GOP.

In 1996, when the GOP came on strong with this type of advertising across the country, they picked on Congressman Toricelli from New Jersey. They ran negative ads that ended with, "Call Toricelli's office and tell him to vote with the majority's budget."

My first reaction when I saw this was, "What, he was already re-elected? They gave up on running an opponent for his seat?" No, in fact they hadn't given up on his seat. Senator Toricelli had given up his seat at that point to run for higher office. Anyone remember his Republican opponent's name? By the time I found out that there was a Republican in the race, Toricelli, once again, was a household name. He had name recognition across the state.

Attention, RNC, Listen Up!: They don't care what you say about them as long as you spell their names right. There is no BAD Press, just Press, and you're keeping the challenger on the front page. There's a reason why advertisers in the 50's use to use a Brand X for comparisons; they didn't want to give their opponents the free time.

Proving once again that the man occupying the Oval Office has no honor, the White House spin doctors chose to protect the President by diverting the attacks in an attempt to soil the integrity of another fine man (Well, actually, he's the first fine man I've mentioned so far in this story), namely Bob Dole.

Dole's response: "I am prepared to voluntarily come before your committee and submit to questions, under oath, that any member of your committee may have."

Clinton's response: "Catch me if you can!"

No, those aren't the President's actual words, but those are his deeds. Consider the following:

Accused Republicans have brought forth the documents necessary and attacked charges head on, without resorting to foot-dragging and judicial maneuvering.

Clinton's crack team can't find tapes of his own videotaped appearances, yet they've managed to find tapes of President Reagan, who is in no condition to defend himself.

Newt Gingrinch submitted thousands of pages to an ethics panel and because two pages contradicted each other, he was ordered to repay the panel's cost to the tune of $300,000 -- out of his own pocket, the media declared, not out of campaign funds. How often has President Clinton misled others, contradicted himself, spun around on his position, and -- let's face it -- out-and-out lied? What sort of fine will be levelled at him, and how will he pay for it?

In the meantime, it behooves Clinton to shift blame. It's worked so far. And the media and such great saps for it. I heard again over the weekend that in 1996, Republicans outraised Democrats by a wide margin, yet they're only investigating the Democrats. Maybe if they reported that the Democrats outraised the Republicans in illegal funds by an evil wider margins, the choice of subjects for the inquiry would become clearer.

It's a line I've used a number of times, but it bears repeating: If Clinton were cited for crossing the street against the light, his excuse would be that dozens of other Republicans crossed that street as well. He'd even have a camera crew out there filming them, and Koppel would have a panel arguing pro and con about crossing the street and whether we need to fix that light. But no one will even actually look at the light and check what color it is.

There actually has been some reaction from the media to V.P. Al Gore's praise of the title character of Ellen coming out on her show.

Cokie Roberts, in the nationally syndicated column she writes with her husband, thought his choice peculiar and suggested he should have chosen a show that has made a real difference, Touched By an Angel.

Dan Quayle, on the other hand, thinks Gore picked exactly the right show. He believes that Gore is starting his campaign fundraising early by pandering to the usual Hollywood elite.

Murphy Brown News: And, to illustrate just how right Dan Quayle was about the Murphy Brown situation: Name another single mother that gets to totally ignore her child for five or six years while she continues with her career and then when she rediscovers her son, he's acutally nine. Most parents would say, "Who are you? You're too old to be my son."

Hey, Murphy only wants to be a role model for breast cancer, not for candle counting.

The famous 18-1/2 minute gap of Watergate will never be forgotten.

Already, we've forgotten about missing billing records and diaries with missing pages. How soon will we forget about the coffee tapes with the altered audio?

Answer: as soon as Rep. Dan Burton hires his lip reader and the Press starts making fun of him.

Bill Gates, that is.

Now, I'm not defending the practices of the man hiding behind the windows, but just let me see if I have all of this straight:

Janet Reno can't find any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the President, but the head of Microsoft is up to something sinister with his free web browser. Were I playing Illuminati, I'd say she was under the influence of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers. But I'm not, so who should I say she's under the influence of . . . ?

All politics is local, okay? So I'm delving yet again into local politics, but bear with me. It's actually important stuff even if you're not from the NY-NJ-CT tri-state area.

There is a lot of focus on this area this year because of several very important elections. New Jersey has the Governor's office on the line, and it's the only state in the union where a Republican governor might lose her office. In Staten Island (and non-contiguous parts of Brooklyn), there's a race to replace Susan Molinari and whittle down the Republican edge in the House. And in New York City, the first Republican mayor in a generation is looking for re-election (not that he has to look very hard).

Last week, Hillary swung by yet again, this time to make an appearance at a candidate with Democratic mayoral hopeless Ruth Messinger. Of the three major races in the area, this is only one where the GOP is the runaway leader in the polls. So what happens? Hillary shows up for a fundraiser but doesn't allow any reporters in. You would think that that defeats the purpose of showing up in the first place.

Time to pack it in, Ruth.

More bad news for Ruth: When it comes to approval ratings, almost everyone has an opinion about Mayor Guiliani. They either like or not, strongly or not. Maybe 2 per cent will have No Opinion.

Not so for Ms. Messinger. A recent survey showed that SIXTY PERCENT of the voters have no opinion of her at all. A wee bit of a recognition problem, I think.

A recent study found that 4th, 8th and 12th graders are dismal in Science.

But I bet they all know that Heather has Two Mommies.

The Anti-Defamation League has found 250 "Hate" pages on Web, double the number from last year.

Frankly, if they only found 250, they aren't looking very hard. It's a big web out there. However, I should probably be thankful that they are searching for a narrow definition of "hate" speech, and not the broad category that some would use to include this page and the Joke-of-the-Day page.

That's akin to announcing that the Pope is Catholic.

Jackson claims that it violates the equal protection provision of the U.S. Constitution. Oddly enough, Jackson doesn't believe the Civil Rights Act, whose language was used in drafting Prop. 209, violates the equal protection provision of the U.S. Constitution. In fact, all California did was affirm its commitment to a law that's already in place.

I guess a race-blind society is a bad thing, according to Jesse. But think about it: where would Jesse be if he were white?

It may sound bad compared to Bush's ninety rating, but 55 is cause for celebration around the Clinton White House. The people are finally accepting him for what he is. Apparantly.

But you have to wonder: the economy is great and there isn't a major external threat to the security of our nation. And he's only got a 55? It's not even his highest numbers. Maybe I am having an impact of America. (Grin).

And now the loony of the week. Which participant in the following story is the loony is left as an excercise to the reader:

A woman in Roby, Ill, has withstood tear-gas and bean-bag bullet attacks in a month-long standoff. She has held deputies at bay with a shotgun. Officials want to drag her off for a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. She hasn't been accused of any crime. Police believe she has enough food to last for a couple more weeks.

Said a member of the woman's family, who was supporting the police: "We're just trying to get her some help."

It's nice to know that even nowadays some kids will still take care of their mama.