Thursday, February 18, 1993
Happy Un-Valentine's Day
by Alicia Hartman
Co.luitor
Please Note: The names
that I use in this column have
no msemblance to couples that I
presently know, That does not
mean, however, that two people
bearing such names could pot
someday be bonded.
How was your Valentine's
Day? Special as always? I
thought so. Did you get
anything exciting? Flowers,
dinner, candy? Speaking of
candy, did you ever have those
candy Conversation Hearts?
I had a box a couple of
weekends ago and there were
some pretty dumb sayings: Not
now; Maybe; Holy Cow; Oh
man; No way; Yes; Cutie pie;
Oh boy; Will you...
What if you put all those
phrases together and made a
sentence? Sexual implications
are quite prevalent here. And to
think that little kids eat this
candy!
I am going to declare today
official UN-Valentine's Day
because of all the things that
bother me about "couples".
First of all, Valentine's Day is
too close to Christmas (no one
has any money) and because the
weather is so yucky, you can't
go outside to do anything.
Thus. Valentine's Day should
be moved to June. it's• six
How Bill Clinton got lost in his
by Dave Barry
Syndicated Cdumnisi
Allow me to be the first
professional news commentator
to point out that the Clinton
administration has failed. Look
at the evidence. Bill Clinton
has been President for over two
weeks now and:
The national debt is still
enormous.
The world is still rife with
oppression, famine and
genocide.
George Steinbrenner is still at
large.
The time has come to ask:
What went wrong? How could
failure have come so quickly to
Bill Clinton, who started out
with so much promise, so many
ideas, such a large volume of
hair? As is so often true with
great historical issues; we will
not truly know the answer until
we mad the next sentence.
ite answer is, Clinton wore
himself out selecting his
Cabinet. Previous presidents
didn't waste a lot of energy on
this task. They appointed
Cabinet members pretty much
at random from a small pool of
wealthy golf-playing respected
establishment white males,
replacing them as they became
indicted. Nobody cared who the
months before and six months
after Christmas, and the weather
is great (Unless you live here in
the Erie area. The temperature
can range from 45-95 degrees
Fahrenheit in June).
Ben and Tammy sitting in 'a
tree. K-I-S-S-1-N.G. First
comes love, then comes
marriage, then comes Ben
pushing a baby carriage.
And you would retaliate, "So
what! Shut up}"
THEY would shout back in
whiney voices, "So, so, suck
my toe, all the way to Mexico.
When you get there cut your
hair and don't fdrget your
underwear."
As we grew older, we no
longer "went" with members of
the opposite sex. We
pmgressed to "goinpoutn.
If you have younger siblings
you've probably noticed that
little kids don't "go" with each
other anymore. They "go-out".
But how can little kids "go
out"? They aren't even old
enough to drivel If they do "go
out", they are often chaperoned.
Then, of course, you can be
DATING/GOING-OUT with
someone. SEEING him/her, or
GOING TOGETHER with
someone.
When you are DATING or
GOING-OUT with someone,
you are dating someone
particular, but you may also
specific appointments were.
(Ronald Reagan had to wait for
the "World Almanac" to be
published to find out who was
in his Cabinet.)
It didn't MATTER who the
appointees were, because under
our constitutional system of
government, most Cabinet
members have no actual duties
other than to pose for their
official oil portraits. The only
Cabinet members with
responsibilities beyond that are:
The Secretary of State, who is
required to fly to the Middle
East every three weeks to deliver
a historic peace initiative, to be
placed with all the others in the
huge, climate-controlled Peace
Initiative Storage Facility;
The Secretary of the Treasury,
who signs all the money;
The Surgeon General, who
treats the blisters on the
Secretary of the Treasury's hand.
I bet you can't name one
newsworthy thing that a
Cabinet member has done since
Gerald "R." Ford's Secretary of
Agriculture and Rocket Science,
Earl Butz, decided that it would
be a good idea to tell a bad
ethnic joke to a reporter. Sure,
sometimes in the news you see
Photo Opportunities of the
president sitting with his full
Cabinet around a bi table
Opinion
OtherpeoPle.
When you are SEEING
someone, you are dating a
particular person and really
shomin't date , anyone else.
When you are GOING
TOGETHER with someone,
you belong to that person and
that person only.
Now that we have that
straight, let's talk about
couples. How about those
couples with rhyming names
like Wandu (the guy) and Zandu
(the girl). Did you ever see
those T-shirts which couples
can get specially made-to-order?
I think they're queer. Jan wears
a T-shirt that says, "I love Bill,"
accompanied by a picture of
Bill. And Bill wears a T-shirt
that says, "I love Jan,"
accompanied by a picture °flan.
How cute.
I also hate couples who
overdo PDA's (public displays
of affection). Holding hands,
kissing and hugging are
acceptable in public as long as
it doesn't go too far. However,
these couples who are grabbing
each other's butts or are backed
against a wall getting it on, are
really disgusting. They could at
last seek the privacy of a car. if
a , house, aPitruuctument, or
other living quarters are
unobtainable.
Couples who go, to school
TOGETHER, work TO•
everybody frowning and looking
important, but you never hear
what actually goes ON in these
meetings:
PRESIDENT: OK, so we
want, let's see ... 14 jelly
doughnuts and nine powdered
sugar, am I right?
CABINET MEMBER: And a
prune Danish. .
Dave Barry
PRESIDENT: Who the hell
are you?
CABINET MEMBER: I'm
the Secretary of Vegetable and
Mineral Affairs.
PRESIDENT (sus:
GETHER, and live TO
GETHER also bother me.
That's just a little too much
bonding for me, thanks.
1 hate how some girls and
guys attempt to impress one
another. The girls who wear
clothes so TIGHT and five sizes
too small, and then prance
around thrusting their melons
and be-hints. The guys then
strut around with their butts
tucked up and in like something
is choking their Wild Willie.
I'm not trying to offend either
sex here. I'm just relating my
personal observations to you. ,
(Please excuse my genitalia
vocabulary. Some "medically
correct" terms just didn't make
the grade.)
What about girls who suck-up
to guys by playing the dumb
blonde?
"Oh Breu...Cguld you please
help me with this... You're
soon smart."
The wives who just HAVE to
be home by five o'clock to cook
dinner for their husbands really
kill me. Let him cook his own
dinner. And then the wife has
to ask her husband's
PERMISSION to go anywhere
or do anything. It'll be a cold
day in holy fainolees before my
husband runs my life.
Males have the ultimate 'Atm
ego, They can do all, and
anything thaes broken—they can
Let's see your Cabinet
membership card. (He examines
the card.) You bonehead! This
expired in 1978! You were in
the CARTER Cabinet.
CABINET MEMBER
Whoops!
(General laughter.)
Then along came Bill
Clinton, who owed his election
to the approximately 17,000
feisty special-interest groups we
like to call "the Democratic
Party." Clinton could not
merely select traditional random
white males. Instead, he spent
what seemed like the better part
of 1992 in a grueling effort to
select a Cabinet that, as he put
it, "looks like America," by
which he meant, "looks like one
of those comically artificial TV
commercials so determined to
exhibit one member of every
major minority group that they
practically make the actors wear
large signs with labels like
'ORIENTAL. - Clinton was
obsessed with getting the right
mixture, to the point where it
seemed to be more important
than anything else:
CLINTON: I am pleased to
announce that I am appointing,
to the critical Cabinet post of
Secretary of Fisheries and
Hatcheries, a person who is not
only a . - rson of tender but is
iciousl )
fix all. Yeah right.
How about this dating thing?
The guy pays? The girl pays?
Or do you go Dutch? Yes, we
women want to be liberated but
we still want the guys to pay
for everything. Although, I'd
hate to be a guy and have to
foot the bill all the time, so I
guess going Dutch is the best
thing to do.
Girls love to receive flowers,
cards, etc... But did you ever
notice that guys never give girls
cards or flowers (only when they
screw-up?) Girls always send
guys flowers and cards, but the
guys hate it. Just because you
guys don't like "romance"
doesn't mean the girls don't.
Couple fights are pretty
special also. Couples who
'NEVER fight don't spend
enough time toghether. And
why do couples who ALWAYS
fight stay together?
Did you ever notice how
many songs have been written
about LOVE (mostly by female
artists)? Songs about love,
falling in love, falling out of
love, why you need love, why
you don't need 10ve...
"Love is a wonderfid thing..."
Hah.
Alicia Hartman is second
semester communication major.
Her column appears every other
week in The Collegian.
cabinet
also a learning-disabled diabetic
Norwegian-American Southern
person of partly Aleutian
descent.
REPORTERS: What is this
person's name?
CLINTON: I have no idea
So he was clearly exhausted
by the Cabinet-selection
process, and that was just the
beginning. He also had to find
appointees of the correct ethnic
genders for the thousands of
other key positions in the many
crucial agencies that make up
the vast, ever-mutating,
multitentacled, money-sucking
blob we like to call "the federal
government," including the
Christopher Columbus
Commission, the Marine
Mammal Commission and, of
course, the Inter-American Tuna
Commission (these are real
federal agencies). This was a
MASSIVE job. Imagine trying
to determine the gender of tuna.
No wonder that, after all this
appointing, Clinton has no
energy left to be the actual
president. I'm getting tired just
THINKING about it. Wake me
up when it's 1996.
Dave Barry is a syndicated
columnist from the Miami
Herald.
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