I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  Did you see the coverage I got with Oprah? I was on the front page of The Washington Post and The New York Times! The Post had a photo of me smooching Oprah! Take that, Al and Tipper. (I wonder if I should have slipped Oprah some tongue?)

  Hmmm, I’m just thinking out loud here. But if I get the front page of The Washington Post by kissing a black woman, maybe I can get the cover of Time by kissing Connie Chung. And since the Olympics are going on, maybe I should go to Australia and kiss me an Aborigine! I’m drawing the line at Will & Grace, though. I’m a compassionate conservative, but I’ll reach out just so far.

  My new strategy is to go on all the TV talk shows. I’m tired of seeing Al Gore on with Letterman and Leno, and Joe Lieberman getting big laughs with Conan O’Brien. I’ve got to give Gore credit, though. That Jew thing is working. Man, I was so wrong to pick Dick Cheney. What a lox this guy is. I should have picked a Jew, too. Maybe Whoopi Goldberg.

  The more talk shows I do, the less I have to debate. Debating is so boring. They ask you questions that never come up in real life. Like “Who’s the president of England?” What’s the difference as long as both countries can work together on issues of mutual concern, like, you know, what really happened to Princess Di?

  It’s not that I’m unwilling to debate. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping somebody asks Al Gore about the claim he made that his dog and his mother-in-law were taking the same kind of arthritis medication—and his mother-in-law’s cost three times as much as his dog’s. But maybe he made an honest mistake and confused his dog and his mother-in-law. I do that all the time. It’s just hard for me to believe that his dog and his mother-in-law take the same stuff. What HMO do the Gores belong to, Schnauzer Permanente? When they examine his mother-in-law, do they stand her up on an aluminum table and hold her snout shut?

  Anyway, to get back in good graces with women voters, my plan is to go on Leeza. And Jenny Jones. And Sally. And what about this Queen Latvia show? I don’t know how the Queen of Latvia got her own show in America, but if I go on with her maybe the press will stop writing how I don’t know any world leaders.

  I’m tired of people saying I’m dumb.

  How dumb can I be? I graduated from Yail.

  I will admit, though, that I’ve been watching the Olympics for over a week and I’m still confused by the time difference. I know it’s fifteen hours. My staff explained to me that if the little hand is on the 6 and the big hand is on the 12 in my office, it’s 9 in Australia. But is it yesterday, today, or tomorrow there? And if it’s today here and tomorrow in Australia, wouldn’t that mean they’d know everything that happened here before we do? So am I president yet?

  I haven’t been watching the Olympics that much. It’s too anticlimactic. By the time we see the events, the medal winners are eligible for Social Security. NBC’s announcers say, “Stay tuned and we’ll see if the U.S. beat Kuwait in baseball.” We’ll see? By the time they run tape, it’s been so long since the actual game that we could have invaded Kuwait!

  Um, W., the U.S. PROTECTS Kuwait, it doesn’t invade it.

  Whatever. My point is that the Olympics may be reality based, but they’re not reality. It’s like Survivor—but with a bigger torch and lower ratings. If you want to know the truth, I think the Olympics are already over. All the athletes have been flown to Hawaii and sworn to secrecy, and NBC will string out the results over the next three years, or until George Clooney comes back to ER.

  I tried to watch the first week, but there was too darned much swimming. I’ve never been all that interested in water, except as a chaser. And with all that churning water you couldn’t tell which stroke they were swimming, or whether it was a qualifying heat or the final—with the full-length bodysuits you couldn’t even tell if it was men swimming or women. Call me old-fashioned, but when I look at someone in a bathing suit, I don’t want to have to guess if it’s a man or a woman.

  Anyway, I’m George W. Bush. I’m running for president.

  Unless the election is already over.

  Al Gore’s New Stand: A Slouch

  Let me see if I have this right: Al Gore, who is running for president on the grounds that he is a regular guy who’s in touch with the people of this country, has hired feminist author Naomi Wolf to advise him on his campaign. Ms. Wolf, a big-haired cutie, is perhaps best known for her views on sex. She advocates teaching teenagers masturbation, mutual masturbation, and oral sex—a subject in which, she brags in her book Promiscuities, she was rather adroit.

  Hey, now!

  To use Gore’s own slogan, there’s “A Change That Works for Working Families.”

  Not to put too fine a point on the recent, um, forthright exchange of positions in the Oval Office, but wouldn’t you think any Democrat would go for garlic and a wooden stake if an adviser even mentioned oral sex?

  As the father of two teenagers, the last thing in the world I want the schools to teach my children is how to masturbate. Heck, let ’em be self-taught, like their father. (As political performance artist James Carville proclaims, “I must have been a prodigy. I learned it all on my own.”)

  Of course, I might sing a different tune if I could sign up for remedial adult education. Just out of curiosity, how would one teach a course on masturbation? “In an offhand manner,” suggests Don Imus’s cohort, Charles McCord.

  Wolf says teaching kids sex in this way “is as sensible as teaching kids to drive.”

  Whoa, dollface! Where were you when I wrote that column?

  Before he hooked up with Naomi Wolf, Al Gore’s standard campaign speech was about greenhouse gases. I take it that will change.

  It has been reported that in an attempt to make Gore appear less like a Doric column, Wolf has relaxed his wardrobe and told him to speak from the heart. It shows how far we’ve come as a culture that Wolf is an “adviser,” because long ago, in a universe far away, women who picked out a man’s clothes and told him what to say were called “nags.”

  Wolf’s concern is that Gore is a “beta male,” and he has to become more of an “alpha male.” (For purposes of identification I am classified as “overnight mail.”)

  Apparently, it’s Wolf’s belief that Gore has to get more in touch with his masculinity to win over the electorate. People like Wolf and her fellow babe-ette, writer Susan Faludi, have created an industry based on the conceit that men are horribly conflicted and confused about their masculinity.

  Personally, I suffer no such agony. I wear leg warmers because I like the way they feel on my soft, bare skin. You got a problem with that?

  Anyway, it’s not just famous politicians who have to deal with this masculinity issue. Did you read about the women’s rugby team from Ohio State University who took off their shirts on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial? The Washington Post published a photo of the women from behind, who were apparently responding to the common taunt, “Show us your backs!”)

  What could be more confusing to men?

  1. Rugby is a masculine sport. Why are women playing it?

  2. Not only are women playing it, but they’re TAKING OFF THEIR TOPS! Talk about psychic whiplash. Am I going to need a V-Chip in my set for the next women’s gymnastics championship?

  I have to say I agree with the U.S. Park Police spokesman who said that while the team’s action was legal, “the Lincoln Memorial is not the appropriate place” to bare one’s breasts. Okay. How about my office?

  I had a masculinity question the other night myself. About twelve of us had gathered at the Palm to celebrate my boss George’s good fortune at receiving a very prestigious award here at The Washington Post. We were in a private dining room, separated from another private dining room by a large wooden screen (which, come to think of it, bore an uncanny resemblance to Al Gore).

  We couldn’t have been there more than fifteen minutes when the maître d’ said to me, “There’s a man who would like to meet you.”

  He introduced himself as a gastroenterologist. I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve got fans in all the digestive subspecialties.

  I said something incredibly witty, like, “Heavens, is my large intestine hanging out?”

  The guy begins to tell me how he’s in the room next to ours listening to a lecture with a bunch of other gastroenterologists, but the noise from our room was so loud it drowned out the lecturer, and he had to stop.

  Excuse me?

  First of all, what is he doing going to a lecture in a steak house? That’s like holding a wedding at a construction site and asking the guys using the jackhammers for a little courtesy while the DJ cues up the “Wedding March.” This is the loudest restaurant in town. You couldn’t hear the person next to you if he was blasting for bauxite. Men bring their wives here so they don’t have to even pretend to listen to them. We should be quiet so these gasbags can hear a lecture on bile ducts?

  Second of all, this is red meat with huge mounds of hash brown potatoes. These guys call themselves physicians? This food’ll kill you. Your arteries will clog up like the Beltway after a tanker of Mazola Oil splits open.

  “I wanted you to know you were very, very loud,” he said.

  “What?” I asked, cupping my hand to my ear.

  And then it came to me: Al Gore could instantly become an alpha male by stepping out from behind that wooden screen and using those new earth-toned cowboy boots Naomi Wolf picked out to kick some girlie-man gastroenterologist butt.

  And then he could take off his blouse and run a victory lap.

  Down for the Recount

  My advice is to grab a Snickers bar. We’re not going anywhere for a while.

  The Democrats have already asked for a “hand count” of the Florida ballots. (Imagine if the person counting forgets whether the last number was 5,243,241 or 5,243,242 and has to start over again!) Later they’ll ask for a finger-and-toe count. Eventually, Bush will ask for a standing-eight count. (Have you seen the photos of Bush since the election was put on ice? His brow is furrowed. His lips are pinched. Bush looks so confused—like he’s holding one of those Palm Beach ballots.)

  This whole mess began on election night when the TV networks prematurely declared Florida for Al Gore. Their emphasis on being first to award states to one camp or another has led to sloppy reporting. For example, even before the polls closed the Sci Fi Channel declared, “A sudden voter surge from the Andromeda Galaxy has all but ensured a Buchanan presidency.”

  Let’s calm down, back up a minute, and show the public that the media can be responsible. Let’s get it right this time.

  I think we have enough solid information to declare Franklin Delano Roosevelt the winner in 1932 and 1936. There’s some question, though, about 1940. Also, about the name of FDR’s dog.

  Can you believe this? Can you believe it’s November 12 and I’m still writing election columns? I haven’t made a Florence Henderson plastic surgery joke in weeks. The woman could have gone through three more face-lifts in that time. That would get her close to Cher territory.

  On Election Night I became so bleary-eyed watching the colors swirl and change on the TV maps I thought I was back in college taking mescaline. I guess I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up in a state of delirium (“ABC can now project the state of Delirium to Bush”) the first thing I saw was Wolf Blitzer’s white beard. I thought he was Santa Claus and he had come down my chimney to deliver Florida to me.

  I actually felt sorry for some of the TV talking heads who were so sleep deprived their face-lifts exploded like Firestone tires. There came a point where they had to ditch the pancake makeup and use the hard stuff—wall spackle.

  Let’s be honest: After it became clear the election hinged on Florida, and there wouldn’t be a winner for days, what was left to say? How many times can Dan Rather explain how the electoral college works? By 4 A.M. the only one listening was George Bush; previous to this when he heard “electoral college,” he wondered which fraternity there had the best parties.

  Reportedly, Gore called Bush twice—the first time to concede, when Gore thought Florida had gone over to Bush, and the second time to withdraw that concession.

  That’s when they got in a catfight! Gore wound up mewing, “Don’t get snippy about it!”

  Don’t get snippy? Who talks like that? Somebody must have stopped taking his alpha male pills.

  What could have made Bush snippy? Maybe he misunderstood some complicated word that Gore used, like “transubstantiation” or “cat.”

  I’m sick that it all came down to Florida and I didn’t vote there. I could have, since I inherited my dad’s condominium in Broward County. Broward was one of the places where ballot boxes were misplaced. If ballot boxes were lost in Dade County, they could be anywhere. (I’d look in Marisleysis’s house, in the closet with the fisherman.) But in Broward, I know exactly where the ballots were dumped: by the salad bar during the early bird at Catfish Dewey’s. Everything in Broward stops from 3:30 to 6:00 for the early bird. Nobody over the age of sixty-five voted during those hours. They ate a five-course meal for $6.95, left no tip, and told the waitress, “Be a dear and pack up the rest of my boiled chicken—and the leftovers on that table over there as well.” No doubt somebody got confused and took home the ballot boxes thinking they were filled with chopped liver.

  Gore’s probably thinking: If only I’d spent more time at the assisted-living facilities. If only I’d spoken to the residents’ issues. (One is getting hearing aids free from Medicare; Gore would have to SPEAK REALLY LOUD.) If only I’d promised them five-mile-an-hour speed limits and a law allowing them to make left turns from the extreme right lane.

  I’m not sure what is the fairest way to settle this election. It’s not like soccer, where at the end of a lot of overtimes they have a “shootout.” You wouldn’t want to announce a “shootout” in Miami. Trust me on this.

  Surely there’s a remedy for thousands of yentas in Palm Beach County who wanted to vote for Gore, but got confused with the ballot and wound up voting for Pat Buchanan. Oy, vey iz mir! They’d sooner vote for Colonel Klink than Pat “What If I Don’t Want It on a Bagel?” Buchanan.

  The problem, obviously, is that none of them could read the ballots. The last few times my dad voted he couldn’t even see the giant sign that said POLLING PLACE. When they drew the curtain on the voting booth, my dad took off his clothes and waited for the doctor to come in.

  I thought of my dad again when I saw Gore’s campaign manager, Bill Daley, yapping about “wanting to protect the Constitution and the will of the people,” when what he really meant was: “Before this is over I’m going to press so many suits you’ll think I’m a tailor.”

  Daley’s Dad was Richard Daley, Chicago’s mayor-for-life. There was a guy who could deliver the votes. Daley’s people voted early, and often—not to mention posthumously. (So many dead guys voted in those days that there were Democrats elected to the House who should have rightfully dropped the “D-Cook County” designation and gone with “D-Composition.”) If Richard Daley was around, Gore would have won in Florida by fifteen thousand votes on Tuesday. Five of those votes would have been from my dad.

  The Good, the Chad, and the Ugly

  Hello. My name is Tony. I’m an electionaholic. And I have a confession to make:

  God help me, I don’t want this to end.

  I love the smell of churning chads in the morning.

  The hanging chads. The dimpled chads. The pregnant chads.

  (Sigh. All this talk about Chad, and none about Jeremy.)

  Chads are a sore point for my friend, the brilliant comic writer Norman Chad. “There’s a pregnant Chad?” he asked in horror. “It’s not mine. I never touched her. I’ll take a blood test.”

  Imagine my delight that my desire to prolong the election puts me at odds with James Baker, who insisted from the start that the election must be certified now, this very moment, “for the good of the American people.” Of course, by the American people Baker means himself, the Bush family, and the membership at River Oaks Country C
lub in Houston.

  But what’s the rush? Is Baker afraid that if the deadlock goes on much longer, his boy will get tired of filling his imaginary Cabinet and move on to other imaginary activities, like getting all the way to three hundred dollars on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire without using a lifeline?

  But admit it, you’ll miss Baker when he’s gone. The country will be in far worse shape when this whole mess is over and Baker, Warren Christopher, and Florida’s Secretary of State Cruella De Vil are off the air. We’ll all have to go back to watching The Michael Richards Show. That show is enough to make you take the ballot puncher to your own eyeballs.

  I love watching Baker’s briefings. Since he stopped being secretary of state, I’d forgotten how commanding he can be. You can almost see the steam rising off his head every time he’s forced to once again explain exactly how the world should function. “Hello? Hello? Don’t you people get it? If we actually counted all your votes, we’d lose.”

  Baker, at least, cuts a powerful figure. Warren Christopher, on the other hand—what happened to this guy? He appears to be melting. And what is he talking about? Every time any Florida court has ruled against the Democrats, Christopher says it’s a great thing for Al Gore. If the Florida Supreme Court had said Gore wouldn’t get a recount even if he crawled through the Everglades muck on his hands and knees, Christopher would have gleefully announced, “Florida justice obviously supports the vice president’s environmental initiatives.” (Tell the truth: In those natty British suits don’t Christopher and Baker look like aging actors doing The Importance of Being Earnest at a dinner theater?)

  I had to smile when Christopher mentioned he’d “run into Baker at breakfast the other day.” How great is it that these patricians are stuck in the same motel in Tallahassee, a place where a “gated community” is a trailer park surrounded by razor wire! Normally, Warren Christopher and James A. Baker III wouldn’t be caught dead in Tallahassee, and now they’re fighting over cold rubber French toast at the Motel 6 breakfast buffet.