Subject:      CODY'S COL.#5:  I'M SORRRRRRY!
From:         mithryl@walrus.com (Mithryl)
Date:         1997/07/11
Message-Id:   <5q3tq1$9om@alice.walrus.com>
Newsgroups:   rec.arts.prose,alt.sex.stories,alt.politics.sex

                         COLUMN #5 (tm)

                   HEY, JOE, I'M SORRRRRRRRY!!!

                      By Cody Ann Michaels
                     c. All rights reserved.

	"In my country, politicians would go to jail if they sold their
votes like Americans."  -- Canadian prime minister to Belgian one, unaware
he was talking in front of an open mike while they waited for Bill Clinton
to show up. 

	The way I see it, the reason the Democrats get so uptight about
the Starr investigation into the Clinton scandals is they're deathly
afraid Leon... I mean, Ken, might actually have something on their boy. 
Leon?  Now why did I say Leon?  Oh yeah.  I reme mber.  Leon Jarouski
(sp?) was in charge of prosecuting Oliver North et. al. for Contragate as
the Democrats stood on their chairs and cheered and the Republicans
worried over the waste of taxpayer money.  I also remember the Dems' howls
of anquish when G eorge Bush, on the eve of leaving office, let the evil
doers like Caspar Weinberger slink off into the night with pardons.  Now
we have come full circle, and the real question is not whether the
Clintons are guilty, but when they will get theirs.  Pardons , I mean. 
Will Clinton pardon Hillary?  I mean, he puts up with a lot already from
the smirky bitch, considering what she must have on him -- Geneffer,
Paula, the white tramp population of Arkansas -- but would a pardon be
going too far?  Let Al do it.  If Al makes it.  Al may need some letting
off, himself.  Did Nixon pardon Spiro?  Would Newt pardon any of them? 
How about Strom?  He's next in line.  Would Strom even know what a pardon
is by this time?  He has enough trouble with our armed forces.  How about
all those guys in uniform who persist in going out on dates?  Should they
be pardoned?  Or stood against a wall?  How about forgiveness?  Will God
forgive any of them?  How about a national day of atonement, like in
Germany, for what they did to th e Jews, only in this case, it will be for
what they do to us.  Clinton et. al., I mean.  Not the Jews.  Or Germans. 
Frankly, I would have a lot of trouble forgiving Clinton.  I could forgive
Newt, because, let's face it, the man can't help it.  But Clint on... 
"The Unforgiven."  That was the song Melissa Drexler asked the band to
play after she dumped her baby in the trash at the high school prom. 
Maybe Clinton should have had it on the victrola last year when he threw
millions of kids into the trash wi th his anti-welfare law to show
Republicans who's side he was really on.  Or when he trashed the civil
rights of immigrants with his terrorism laws.  Or when his crime act took
away Pell education grants for prisoners; the same law that makes legal
fifty ways to kill your neighbor.  Nuremberg established that there are
some acts that are too heineous to be pardoned or forgiven. 

	This meditation was inspired by an op-ed column in what passes for
the local paper.  I've already forgotten who wrote it; someone of the
politically correct left lamenting that the Starr investigation would go
on forever, even posthumous Clinton, dredgin g up the by then late
president's grade school piccadillos.  Oh please!  So sad.  Let me say, my
politics are somewhere west of the late Josef Stalin's, but listening to
liberals whine about the trials of a president who has betrayed everything
they think they stand for is to me, well, unforgiveable.

	Still, it got me thinking.  About contrition and things like that. 
For instance, a big non-issue right now is should whites apologize to
blacks for slavery?  If they do, should blacks forgive them?  To err is
human.  To forgive, divine.  We have a lot o f potential for sainthood in
this country.  Newt said blacks would rather have an education.  Well, the
way things stand now, they aren't going to get one.  So wouldn't it be
better to take what they can get?  And who should do the apologizing?  Oh
yeah.  Clinton.  Well, we already know what that's worth.  Sorry means
nothing if it doesn't come with a check. 

	In Mike Tyson's case, the check is 3 million plus costs to atone
for biting off Evander Holyfeld's ear.  That and revocation of his license
to beat people senseless in Nevada.  Should Nevada have forgiven Tyson? 
Holyfeld said he had forgiven Mike, but p ossibly that was because, in the
heat of logic, the divinity of the purse of the next Tyson-Holyfelt fight
had appeared to him. 

	My gran watched the entire proceeding of the Nevada Boxing
Commission as it deliberated how to keep Tyson from ever again bringing
hundreds of millions of dollars into Nevada.  I was surprised.  Watching
heads in suits talk and say stupid things is usual ly not my gran's speed. 
I bet there were guys in rooms all over the world screaming in holy
ecstacy when it came down that Tyson was unforgiven and thus could not
fight in Vegas or anywhere else occupied by the U.S. government.  This is
the same as forei gn aid to places like Australia, Hong Kong, Tokyo,
Paris, Helsinki, Cayman Islands, Barcelona... Winnepeg; any place where a
pay per view billion dollar fight can be put on and not have to be
bothered by U.S. boxing laws.  With money like that, who needs
forgiveness?  (That was my first take on the proceedings, but later, naif
that I am, it was pointed out that in all that double talk, if the
Commissioners had merely suspended Tyson, they might have done it for
years, but by revoking his license, all he h as to do is wait a year
before reapplying.  The $27 million he was allowed to keep should tide him
over until next mealtime.)

	Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall is not going to forgive
2nd Lt. William Kite for dating the woman he married.  In a memorandum,
Secretary Widnall, said it would set a bad precedent, apparently feeling
the spectacle of the U.S. Air Force continu ing to make an ass of itself
is a better one.  Whatever happened to the image of the heroic American
flyboy?  Steve Canyon and all that?  Today the average junior birdman in
his BV-52 seems to be a twit with the soul of a bookkeeper, desperately in
fear o f losing his commission if he is caught in the company of a
tenderfoot or whatever they call women from an inferior class in the
military.  And forget about bringing her to the country club. 
Incidentally, now that we have gotten -- at least in some place s -- to
where it's okay for people of different races to marry, isn't this a hot
new form of discrimination?  If a girl in the Air Force isn't allowed to
upwardly mobile herself by dating or marrying say a general or even a lt.
col., aren't her civil righ ts being extremely violated?  What's next? 
Separate bathrooms?  Segregated schools?  Ya all move to the back of the
bus, honey.  And if a honky... excuse me, superior officer gets on board,
you give him your seat.  Got that?  Yeah.  Right.  We've come a long way,
baby.  No apologies necessary.  Then there's Joe Camel. 

	Smokey Joe is also not going to be forgiven.  In fact, the word
is, Smokey Joe is dead.  So is Che.  So what?  The anti-smoking people
took an ad cartoon barely anyone noticed and turned it into a national
icon.  It doesn't matter if the cigarette compan ies don't use Joe
anymore.  Thanks to the anti-smoking nuts, he's immortal.  Test yourself: 
What tastes good like a da da should?  And I wasn't even born when they
took that off tv.  Joe is now gone underground.  He's the fugitive.  He's
Elvis.  The ultimate rebel.  The tobacco drug lords must be rolling on 
their plush carpets laughing. 

	I don't like to sound mystical, but in keeping with this, this
evening I was sitting out on the deck.  The noise from Gran watching Peter
the Liar was coming through the door.  The sky was filled with white
clouds, and as Peter kept saying over and over that Joe Camel was fin
ished, dead, kaput, I noticed this black cloud against the white ones.  It
was shaped just like a camel with two humps; it had a smile on it's face,
and it was smoking a cigarette.  Now, like wow!  Is that a vision or what? 
I never see things in the clouds.  But this one was crystal clear.  Later,
when I told Gran, she said it meant that Joe had gone to heaven.  But I
don't know.  Maybe he was bad.  Maybe he did bad things.  But deep in my
heart, I know there will always be a hundred acre wood where Joe and the
other animals are still fucking around.