Thursday, November 1, 1990
Lonesome George takes
"The Congress will push me
to raise taxes, and 11l say no, and
they'll push me, and I'll say no.
And they'll push again. And I'll
say to them: Read my lips, no
new taxes."
George Bush,
August 18, 1988
It has been a rough week for
most of us, but especially George
Bush. Republican congressmen
facing congressional elections
have publicly denounced the
president, abandoning him in his
hour of need like rats fleeing a
sinking ship. The rich are
demanding blood, and anti-tax
conservatives are urging people
like Housing Secretary Jack
Kemp to quit his cabinet post,
get in touch with his feelings,
and whip up a major hate
campaign against tax increases.
Even the man who stood by
Nixon and later Reagan during
their darkest days, Pat Buchanan,
looks worried.
The shame and humiliation
heaped upon George Bush during
the past week have taken their
toll. The president was forced to
flee Washington for the west
coast, winding up in Honolulu
this weekend feeling rejected and
betrayed. His early morning jogs
on the beach were empty and
lifeless. Old women shook their
fists with rage, children screamed
filthy curses, cheerleaders threw
Oh, the excitement of war-talk radio
by Mike Royko
Poking the car radio buttons, I
thought I had come across a
sports call-in show. The voice
was saying: "You gotta have a
plan, and you gotta get in there
and win."
I was about to punch the
button because there is nothing
more terrible to hear than sports
call-in shows, with those
seething fans demanding that a
coach be lynched, a quarterback
set afire, or--even worse--
concocting trades. ("Hey, why
don't the Cubs trade, uh, this
Luis Salazar for, uh, Jose
Canseco, huh? Whatya think?")
But before I could hit the
button,. the host of the show
asked if the caller meant we
should just seize Kuwait or
obliterate most of Iraq and kill
Saddam Hussein.
The caller thought about that
for a moment, and then said: "I'm
not sure. One or the other. But
we got to do it fast."
A moment later, a sweet,
grandmotherly voice came on.
She had no strategy or timetable,
but she wanted it known that
"I'm behind the boys over there.
We should all get behind the
boys over there."
Next came an elderly gent
who favored a no-nonsense, total
annihilation approach. "We ought
medical waste and mutilated
themselves.
Later, alone in his desolate,
empty room, George tried to
console himself. A hint of a
smile flashed across his face as he
recalled that the Senate failed to
override his veto of the Civil
Rights Bill.
He chuckled out loud as he
went over the details of his
administration's latest Supreme
Court case, the one that would
ban counseling on abortion at
federally funded family planning
clinics, despite the fee-speech
"thing."
Good, healthy laughter rose
from deep within him as he
realized that congress would never
override his veto of the Family
Leave Bill; that no workers
would be guaranteed six weeks
unpaid leave for childbirth or
medical emergencies.
But his joy was short lived.
Vice President Dan Quayle had
referred to the election process in
this country as "the political silly
season," Senator Bob Dole was
advising the president to "Join
the Red Cross," and National
Republican Congressional
Committee Co-chair Ed Rollins
was frantically urging everyone
who would listen to him to
"campaign against the budget bill
and the president's leadership."
I deal think- President Bush
will be able to bear much more
to blast 'em so hard we turn all
that sand into glass."
Before I got downtown and
parked, I heard all sorts of war
game plans: Blast Iraq with
everything we can put in the air,
demand that Japan junk the
constitution we gave them so it
can send troops over there; set a
deadline, start a countdown, and if
Saddam doesn't jump when the
alarm clock rings, pow, we
remove Iraq from the map.
I truly regretted having to turn
off my radio and leave my car.
Maybe I've become jaded, but I
no longer care if a coach is or
isn't exiled in disgrace; which
quarterback is humiliated before
that's the way it goes, and she's
behind the boys over there, you
have to hear the little tremble and
squeak in her voice to fully
appreciate the depths of
patriotism.
I don't know why we don't
have more radio call-in shows of
this sort. Instead of still another
sports-talk open line, we should
have more war-talk open lines.
Maybe programming directors
don't know it, but when this
thing breaks out, and the bombs
are falling, the rackets soaring,
and the tanks rolling, the infantry
charging, the buildings
disintegrating, and the bodies
bouncing, it is going to be big.
Bigger than the World Series,
The Collegian
of this treachery. This is the man
who brought us a thousand
points of light, who saved the
country from Michael Dukakis,
who stood up to Saddam
Hussein. George Bush , has
devoted his life to serving the
public, and now he is being
shunned like a leper with the
Black Plague and foul breath.
The American people can be
so ungrateful and cruel...
QUINN
SOLEM
I became emotionally troubled
and shamed by the injustice
George Bush was being forced to
endure. I wound up walking the
streets of East Erie late one
night, whispering harshly to
myself while the rain soaked my
clothes. I finally broke down
completely, leaned up against a
grimy cinder block wall, and
sobbed for what seemed like
hours...
Eventually I recovered and
looked around. On a street corner
ahead a hazy neon light flickered
"The Get Stabbed Bar" in the
darkness. I remembered Rob
Prindle saying that a visit to one
of the small provincial "Pubs,"
found on almost every street
bigger than the Rose Bowl,
bigger than the Sugar Bowl, even
bigger —and I hope nobody thinks
I'm irrelevant for saying this--
Mike Royko
than the Super Bowl. Well,
maybe not the Super Bowl, but
almost.
So I hope more radio stations
open their lines. If I thought I
could get through, I'd wait on
hold for a week just to get in my
two cents.
All I want is my minute or
it on the chin
corner of the East Side, would add
cultural seasoning to the rich mix
of exotic Erie night life. Rob
never lies, not even in print, so I
was certain that friendly people,
good food, and inexpensive drinks
waited for me on the other side of
the bar's rusty, steel-painted door.
In I was cheerfully greeted
by the barmaid, a hearty 300
pound woman with no front teeth
and a minor speech impediment.
She wiped off the bar with one
swipe of her massive forearm,
banged a can of Stroh's down in
front of me, then rushed off to
referee a chain-fight in the ladies
room.
The gentleman sitting on the
stool next to me must have
known that I needed to talk.
When I looked over at him,
taking in every detail of his
carefully groomed appearance, he
perceptively asked "You got a
problem, buddy?"
I began to relate the terrible
saga of George Bush, the golden
boy of the GOP, abandoned by
his party and shamed by a openly
biased media. As I talked he
scraped dried blood from under his
fingernails with an ice pick, and
carefully pondered the meaning of
my words.
"Yeah, but Bush lied about no
new taxes," the man said. "He
flat out lied."
"The Democrats made him do
it," I cried! "The pushed, and
two so I can say: "I'm Jack in
Naperville and I think we should
stop fooling around and blast Iraq
back to the Stone Age and then
go in and keep Kuwait for
ourselves and keep Iraq for
ourselves; then all the oil will be
ours and we can sell it to japan
and jack up prices, and then we
can make them give us back all
of our golf courses.
"And while I'm on the line,
how about if we trade Luis for
Jose, huh?"
his mother's eyes; and whether
Luis is traded for Jose. Every
season, every sport, it's the same
stuff; only the games and names
change.
But mass death and
destruction, fire in the sky, body
parts flying every which way--
that's something worth calling a
radio station and venting a
spleen.
And the call-in format makes
it much more invigorating than
when Ted Koppel gathers his
flock of staid White House
officials, thin-lipped think
tankers, quibbling congressman
and wild-eyed Arab diplomats.
All they think about are our
options, U.N. resolutions, the
hints of possible negotiations,
and President Bush's resolve to
halt the weed of aggression. you
hear now hint of negotiations,
you've heard them all.
Page
pushed, and pushed until he
couldn't take it any more. He's
been under tremendous pressure
lately."
"That what all you guys say,
but the president's been planning
to raise taxes since around
January," he growled, as he
carefully picked glass shards from
his face.
"No, those were User Fees,
not taxes," I explained. "There's
no comparison."
"Look, all I know is that I
have to pay more for gas, beer,
and smokes," he fumed. "I use all
those things, so you can call it a
user fee, but I call it a tax."
"But what about all the great
things President Bush has done
for this country? Doesn't that
count for anything," I asked?
"What great things? He gives
the rich tax loop-holes, the
economy is a mess, we're about
to go to war and nobody knows
why, and everyone is losing faith
in the government."
"Is there anything else you
have against George Bush," I
asked fearfully?
"Yeah," he said. "He shouldn't
have married his mother."
Quinn Solem is an eighth
semester communication major.
His column appears every other
week in The Collegian.
It makes me envy the talk
show hosts and, even more, those
who have the patience to sit with
phone to ear, kept on hold for
hours on end, maybe days, so
they can go on the air to say we
should bash Saddam, or bash
Kuwait's rich emir, or bash
Israel, or bash somebody.
And the best part of it is that
they don't even have to give their
names, so no disagreeable person
can say to them: "You know,
that was really an idiotic idea, and
I ought to punch you out." It's
just Joe or Sally or Ernie might
be Phil. And who's to know if
Joe might not really be Ed? Or
that Ernie might be Phil? It
doesn't matter. They can say what
they wish and be heard by a vast
radio audience, possibly shaping
the considered opinions of others.
Why am I envious? Because I,
too, have a strong opinion on the
Mideast crisis, but if I express
them, people will know they are
mine and will sputter on the
phone or write unkind letters.
Besides, it doesn't come across
in print the way it does on the
radio. When an old granny says
that if we have to spill blood,
Mike Royko is a Chicago-based,
nationally syndicated columnist.
His column appears weekly in
The Collegian.