“The Blame Game: We
Might As Well Be Haitians”
Leonard’s response to the political pontificating over the
root cause of the “Rodney King” riots in LA in 1992. The blame: “…sixties
liberal programs.” The solution: “Free Enterprise Zones.” You get the point of
where Leonard shakes out on all of this in an early passage:
Free Enterprise Zones! More tax breaks and zoning
variances for a handful of fast-buck businessmen to build something ugly on
cinder blocks, surround it with barbed wire, bring in a few managers from
outside the neighborhood for the high-paying jobs, hire a couple of hundred
locals at minimum wage (non-union, of course; no health plan), and so compete,
on a Third World level, with the sweat shops of Santo Domingo…”
Hence, the title, “We
Might As Well Be Haitians.”
A very funny piece with send-ups of Dan Quayle (“Mr. ‘Potatoe’ Head”), Ross Perot (“proposing
to govern by Gong Show plebescite”),
Bill Clinton (“mushpuppy"), Joan Didion (…“alert to every paranoid vibration”)
and Ronald and Nancy Regan (“King Babar and Queen Celste”). He calls Marlin
Fitzwater (remember him, Bush’s Press Secretary) “…the Mortimer Snerd who
waffles for the biggest collection of empty suits since the Congress of
Vienna.”
He ends with an interesting line about G. Bush, “Why should
you want so passionately, and stoop so willingly to anything, to be elected and
then re-elected when you haven’t an interest in, a talent for, or a clue about governing?”
New learning: In the nineties there was a Pentagon program
called “Island Sun” that was funded for $86MM a year at it’s height. It
consisted of a plan to deploy a convoy of lead lined tractor trailers to drive
the top military brass around to launch nukes after we’ve been hit by a first
strike and “everyone and everything else has been destroyed.” No shit.
New word (actually, old reference): Mortimer Snerd = one of
Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummies. Interest reference since Edgar Bergen was
Candice Bergen’s father. Candice Bergen played Murphy Brown on TV. Leonard also
talks about Dan Quayle’s famous lines about Murphy Brown’s unwed pregnancy in
this piece. Hmmmm..
…oh, and the Congress of Vienna was a meeting of European
diplomats in 1814-15. It divided up Europe after the Napoleanic wars and “ignored
demands for greater democracy and nationalism; this led to the majority of
conflicts in the Nineteenth Century, between and within countries.” (Wikipedia)
Marlin Fitzwater on Da Ali G show:
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