Beating Around the Bush

by Buchwald, Art

“This means we don’t have to boycott our friends anymore?” I asked.

  “Au contraire. We have to embrace them and tell them how much we love them,” he replied.

  “Just when you put Americans in one mode, you ask us to change to another one.”

  “It can be done. If the president is willing to make up with the countries he thought did him in, everyone should do the same thing.”

  “Flip-Flopping is one of most important posts in the State Department.

  How did you get it?” I asked.

  “I was on Condoleezza Rice’s National Security team. When she realized the U.S. could no longer go it alone, she told me the president asked for the most dedicated flip-flopper on her staff—a post that doesn’t need congressional approval.”

  “And your duties?”

  “I go where our leader goes and I have a briefcase full of flip-flops he can use on any of his stops.”

  I said, “Despite his flip-flopping, his unpopularity in Europe is still at an all time high. The man on the street, the Champs Elysee that is, doesn’t believe we did the right thing by going into Iraq.”

  He replied, “We don’t care what the man in the street thinks. Our flip-flopping is concerned with the leaders. If we can win their hearts and minds, and also buy French perfume, we will consider it a major diplomatic victory.”

  “They say the president has never been too interested in foreign affairs.”

  “That is true, but it is a plus and not a minus. Since he is not emotionally involved he can switch horses in midstream, and coming from Texas, he knows how to do it.”

  “Spoken like a true diplomat,” I declared.

  “Do you think that someday the president will flip-flop on Iran, Syria and North Korea?”

  “Not at the moment, but now that the elections are over we are waiting to flip-flop on who will be Prime Minister in Iraq. If our guy doesn’t get in, we will announce we always wanted the candidate who does win.”

  He continued, “The nice thing about a democracy is the president can flip-flop anytime he wants to, and still do great in the polls.”

  Harvard, Dear Harvard

  AS EVERYONE KNOWS, Harvard is in crisis. It is not in as much crisis as Social Security, but it is in enough of a crisis to be on the front pages for something other than winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

  The trouble started when Harvard’s President, Larry Summers, delivered a speech in which he said, among other things, that women were not as successful in engineering and math as men. He also said that men would work eighty hours a week, while women had other things to do. (Read: give birth, clean, cook, and raise a family).

  This and other gender and ethnic slurs enraged the faculty, and they held angry meetings where Summers was pilloried and denounced by professors for sullying Harvard’s good name.

  As with any crisis, there are two sides of the story. On one you have an unyielding university president who speaks out on academic issues, but also raised the school endowment by millions. And since he was a former secretary of the treasury, he has clout in Washington. The alumni and the Board of Governors backed him, and the students were split on his remarks.

  On the other side were the faculty, who accused him of being abrasive and using his position to speak publicly on issues that they considered politically incorrect.

  While this began as an in-house crisis, it became everybody’s problem when it got into the newspapers and on TV.

  The country became divided. Those who believe Harvard is the Taj Mahal of learning (students and alumni) were grief stricken that their school’s name was muddied.

  The campus filled up with more national reporters than the number of attendees at a Harvard-Yale football game.

  President Summers brought the gender gap out of the closet.

  It is sad to say not everyone cried for Harvard. Many people enjoyed its misfortune. These were not Harvard people, but those who didn’t go to the university.

  Harvard is considered by many to be an elite school attended by snobs, who look down on everyone, and let them know it. To say you went there is enough. It is a smug indication that you are on the top of the educational food chain. As far as Harvard is concerned, Yale, Princeton and other Ivy League institutions are no more than trade schools, where you learn how to build bookshelves.

  Unlike Notre Dame, which is beloved by everyone, Harvard has never had a Knute Rockne, or a former president who asked the coach to “win one for the Gipper.”

  I am not one who enjoys bashing the school because of what Larry Summers said. I flunked math and science, so I can sympathize with women who are not too good at these subjects. Also, I have no problem working an 80-hour week, especially since I don’t belong to a longshoreman’s union.

  Underneath their hubris, Harvard people are just like you and me, ready to take on the world by hook or crook or networking.

  The Larry Summers remarks will blow over. Someday a woman will invent a new light bulb that will never go out. Thanks to paltry Social Security payments, everyone, men and women, will have to work 80 hours a week—at three different jobs.

  Like so many people who never went to Harvard, the Summers flap is not my problem, but that doesn’t mean we can’t sit back and enjoy it.

  Well Hello, Martha

  Well hello, Martha

  Welcome home Martha

  It’s so nice to have you back where you belong.

  You’re looking swell, Martha

  You’ve been through hell, Martha

  You’re still glowin’, you’re still crowin’

  And still coming on strong.

  We hear the money tinkle

  We see the profits twinkle

  One of our favorite stocks from way back when…

  Wow, wow, wow

  Martha never go away again.

  Martha Stewart paid her dues and is home (or at least serving the rest of her sentence there).

  The world is a better place now that Martha once again can go about her business and tell the rest of us how to mind ours.

  It goes without saying there will now be thousands, no millions, of jokes about her on the Internet, in beauty parlors, and at office water coolers, not to mention Jay Leno, David Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

  What makes this such a great country is that when someone gets in trouble the rest of us can laugh at him or her. But the jokes have a short shelf life and soon go stale. Then we become ashamed. I have a plan for when this happens.

  Every time you tell a Martha Stewart joke or hear one, you have to send a $10 check to the tsunami relief fund ($20 if you have heard the joke before).

  If someone uses a Stewart joke on television he has to donate $2,500 to rebuild Sri Lanka.

  The fact that someone tells a joke about Martha doesn’t mean he doesn’t admire her. We sleep on her sheets, bake her cupcakes, and smell her roses. When we go into a Kmart (now Sears) Martha is everywhere. We find her in the bookstores peering from magazine racks, and the Web. As a wise man said, “it’s Martha’s world—we just live in it.”

  Is Martha a better woman for being found guilty of insider trading? The Wall Street pundits are split on what she did. Fifty percent say she should never have been tried, and the other fifty percent say she was guilty, not of insider trading, but of making the paltry sum of $40,000 on the deal.

  It’s too late to cry over spilled milk, or Martha’s cream puffs. The future is now, or as another press agent said, “Today is the beginning of the rest of Martha’s life—as long as she sells more advertising pages for her Living magazine and has a hit television show.”

  No matter where you stand concerning her, you have to admit she is a household name—more famous than Janet Jackson or Betty Crocker.

  The public is the jury. Will she once again become a billionaire, or will she have to live on her Social Security checks? Will she be remembered for the quilts she made in Bedford, New York, or those sewn during the last five months in Alderson, West Virginia?r />
  Because I’ve devoted so much space to Martha Stewart, I am sending a $100 check for the tsunami victims in care of Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr.

  Okay, all together now, “Hello, Martha, well hello Martha, it’s so nice to have you back where you belong . . .”

  Smoking Guns

  “THE CLASS WILL COME TO ORDER. Today we will discuss the ‘Smoking Gun,’ the most important subject you will learn in Law School. Who knows what a ‘Smoking Gun’ is? The man in the back.”

  “A smoking gun is a piece of evidence that is produced in a trial, most of the time as a surprise to the other side.”

  “Very good. Where will you find a smoking gun? The lady over there.”

  “The best place to find it is in e-mails that people have sent to each other because they never dreamed a third party would read them.”

  “Example please?”

  “I am the plaintiff’s lawyer in a suit against an automobile company. I want the in-house e-mails written by executives pointing out the brakes don’t work, the vehicle rolls over when another car passes it, and the wheels fall off when you go down a hill. If I can prove the company knew all this I have my ‘smoking gun.’”

  “Good answer. So the first thing you must confiscate is a defendant’s computer before they erase the messages on it. In most cases you need a judge’s order. Now who knows of any other examples?”

  “Enron v. United States. The government used the company’s confidential e-mails to prove fraudulent bookkeeping, greed, conspiracy, offshore banking and natural gas that never existed.”

  “Professor, what if I defend Enron executives?”

  “Then be sure and get your fee in advance. Now, next question. What is a perfect ‘Smoking Gun’ case? The gentleman in the front.”

  “That’s easy—the state of New York against General Electric.”

  “What was the smoking gun?”

  “The Hudson River.”

  “Professor, do most Smoking Guns come from computers?”

  “No. Many come from whistleblowers. Let’s us say an ex-employee at a drug company found out that an antidepressant caused depressions. The whistleblower would produce e-mails proving the executives insisted on doubling their advertising budget to sell the pill before the FDA made them take it off the market.”

  “Professor, suppose I was defending the drug company?”

  “Then you would try to prove the whistleblower was a disgruntled employee, a wife beater, and someone who cheats at solitaire.”

  “Are smoking guns permitted in court under the Second Amendment?”

  (Laughter)

  “That is not as funny as it sounds. There will be lots of work for you when you get out of school defending gun manufacturers, dealers, and the National Rifle Association who, every day, are being sued by the relatives of people who were shot. The most important thing to remember today is people on a jury have seen thousands of hours of television, and are influenced by what they have seen. On every show it ends with the good-guy lawyers producing a ‘smoking gun’ and the bad guys going off to jail. You will never see a Law and Order segment with a hung jury.”

  A Constitutional Solution

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE became a celebrity when he said, “Kill all the lawyers.”

  A serial conservative friend of mine, Sam Sampson, went one step further and said, “Let’s kill all the judges.”

  I whistled. “Does this mean you want to pull the rug out from under the judicial system?”

  “Yes. If they don’t want to interpret the Constitution as we know it, then I say off with their robes.”

  “But if you are for Right to Life you are not supposed to kill anybody.”

  “There can always be exceptions.”

  “Judges are human like everybody else,” I said.

  “Not necessarily. There are human judges and non-human judges.”

  “How can you tell the difference?”

  Sampson said, “All you have to do is read their decisions and watch their body language.”

  “How would you know?”

  “You may not know, but our people do.”

  “Meaning those who believe in the Right God?”

  “I am not going to name names.”

  “Are there some judges that you don’t want to kill?” I asked.

  “Yes. All the ones the president has nominated that the Democrats won’t confirm because of their ideology. Their party would rather filibuster than confirm.”

  I said, “Senator Frist says the same thing.”

  “The thing we are most concerned about is the Supreme Court. Sooner or later a justice has to be replaced. And we don’t want a turncoat, who, once he gets affirmed, votes in favor of Roe v. Wade,” Sampson said.

  I said, “Supreme Court justices are funny that way. Once she gets in she has a mind of her own.”

  Sampson said, “The only ones we can count on are Scalia and Thomas.”

  I agreed. “You can say what you want to about them, but they are always on the Right side.”

  I then said, “Here is one thing I don’t understand. Why do the Right-to-Life people believe in the death penalty?”

  Sampson said, “In many states it is the law. But people on death row can escape execution if they have a living will. That’s a joke.”

  “I like it when right-wing people joke. It makes them more human.”

  Sampson said, “Can we get serious? The court system is in a mess and has to be reformed.”

  I asked, “What should we do?”

  “We must file a ‘Friend of the Court’ brief on cases we like, and an ‘Enemy of the Court’ on cases we don’t.”

  “Why are you so bitter about liberal judges that now sit on the bench?”

  “In the case of federal ones, they serve for life. We can’t kick the liberal ones out, even if we want to.”

  He said, “The Right has always been against liberal judges, and for the first time our voices are being heard on radio and television talk shows.”

  “Then it is nothing personal, it is political?” I asked. “Where does the Right stand on the American Civil Liberties Union?”

  “We don’t like them. They are always taking flag-burning cases.”

  “If what you want comes true, the very fabric of the court system will be changed.”

  “And our Constitution will be obeyed as our founding fathers had in mind. The Ten Commandments will be where they wanted them to be—on court property so everyone can read them.”

  Oil Tasting For Snobs

  IT IS NO SECRET that the price of oil is going up. But very few people have any idea what it tastes like.

  Therefore when I was invited to an oil tasting event at my Exxon gas station I accepted.

  The owner had his garage set up with tables. On the tables were gallons and barrels of oil from all over the world.

  “How do you decide which one to sell?” I asked.

  “In this market we have to take what we can get. Here is a new barrel of Saudi Arabian that just arrived. It has a beautiful color and an aroma you won’t find in other Middle Eastern countries.”

  He gave me a cup to taste.

  I said, “It has a nutty taste, but goes down smoothly. I think it has a lot of promise.” I spit it out.

  “We will age it in the barrel for another year, when the price will go up.”

  He continued, “Here is a Kuwait Desert Red. It only can be found in the southern part of the country. I find people with SUVs prefer it over the Libyan Beaujolais, which is mixed with a cheap Algerian product.”

  I took a sip, then swirled it around and spit it out. “I’ll take the Kuwait anytime.” I then asked, “Are there some years that are better for oil than others?”

  He replied, “Of course there are. I would not sell an Iraqi Bordeaux while the war is going on.”

  “This mean the 2003s and 2004s are hardly drinkable?”

  “It is not only that. The Halliburton distributor marks up
every gallon three times what it is worth.”

  We went over to another barrel. “This is a hard-to-get Venezuelan Burgundy. The oil workers had been on strike for two years, and this is all we could buy.”

  Next to it was an English Channel red.

  The station owner said, “English Channel red, when mixed with Norwegian Fjord, is good for trucks and school busses.”

  Then he told me there was still a shortage of Alaskan crude, because for the first time the Chinese are thirstier than we are.

  I said, “I hear Alaskan oil is being drilled in the tundra, and moose and polar bears are always tripping over the pipeline.”

  He said, “Right. Since Alaskan crude comes from the Arctic, it should always be served at room temperature.”

  He continued. “Over here we have several barrels of Nigerian and Equatorial blends. We carry them in case a customer asks for them for his Hyundai or Kia.”

  I asked, “Do you have any Russian samples for tasting?”

  “They are starting to become very popular. A Russian Ivanovich is being swallowed up by European cars like the Mercedes Benz, Volvo, and BMW.”

  “And the Volkswagen?” I asked.

  “Yes, but only if you pay in Eurodollars.” Then the owner said, “That’s about it. A year ago we sold a gallon of regular for $1.40. Now it is $2.40.”

  “Same gas?”

  “Would you like a blindfold test?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  He put a red bandana around my eyes. I tasted five of them. As far as I was concerned, like most Americans, I couldn’t tell the difference.

  The News

  HOW DO PEOPLE get their news? Let me count the ways.

  In the old days I got my news primarily from newspapers, then radio, followed by television and, in the last few years, on the Internet. It is a tortuous path, but as Walter Cronkite might say today, “That is the way it is now.”

  Let me give you an example.

  Tom DeLay. My first solid news came from a friend who claimed he heard it in a bar on K Street.

  He said Congressman Tom DeLay, the Republican majority leader, took a trip to Great Britain in 2000, with a stopover at the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland. It was partially paid for by the Choctaw Indian tribe, who wanted gambling permits in Mississippi in the worst way.