I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  The trouble with this millennium is it has no sense of history. Any schmo can go to court to contest a traffic ticket and declare it “The Trial of the Millennium.”

  The biggest problem with this millennium, though, is that none of us are getting out of it alive. Look to your left / Look to your right / We’re all going toes up / In that long good night.

  Yes, even Cher.

  My Peeps

  There She Goes,

  Miss America

  In light of the Paula Jones decision, I think I speak for all American men when I say:

  I want to be president, too.

  You can do anything! Hi, I’m the president, say hello to Mister Happy.

  I’m no legal expert, but it seems to me Judge Susan Webber Wright’s ruling pretty much says, “Let the big dog run.”

  Is this a great country, or what?

  Clinton now can do pretty much as he pleases with whoever pleases him. It doesn’t matter who comes out of the woodwork and says, “Bill Clinton nibbled my ear while I was reciting the Lord’s Prayer to a visiting group of Belgian nuns.” Everybody will believe it, and nobody will care.

  It doesn’t even matter if he’s completely innocent of everything he’s been accused of. It all just adds to the legend of his studliness.

  Lincoln was called the Great Emancipator. Reagan was called the Great Communicator. Historians will look back on President Clinton as the Commander in Briefs.

  Of course, like many Americans, I am deeply troubled about what has happened to the prestigious office of the presidency.

  It’s shameful that we have grown so accustomed to randy news stories, day after day, about our leader. We’ve become dismissive of genuine historic breakthroughs. I am not talking about the Paula Jones ruling, which was predictably splashed across the newspaper in type the same size as SEPTUPLETS BORN TO HICKS!

  I am talking, instead, about the report last week that former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen willingly, happily, and eagerly gave it up to Bill Clinton. Gracen was unhappy with folks saying Clinton pressured her to have sex. Au contraire, she said. She was hot to trot.

  This was on page 12 of the newspaper.

  Page 12! Behind some story about a skeleton being found near Spokane. Behind a story about the guano-infested Northern Mariana Islands.

  Page 12! Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Gennifer. Thank you, Kathleen. You have ruined it for everyone. You have cheapened the notion of Bill Clinton’s conquests.

  The man bags Miss America, and it only rates A12?

  Show some respect, people.

  If I scored Miss America, I’d want that on A1, baby! I’d want it out there every day for a week, as a five-part series. Above the fold.

  May I remind you: “There she is, Miss America/ Oh, there she is, your ideal …” If that only gets Clinton on 12, it makes you wonder who he has to sleep with to get on the front page.

  Yeltsin?

  Normally, we don’t find out how overheated our presidents were until after they’re dead. Sometimes it comes out in a biography or a John Travolta movie. Or maybe some former lover comes forward to tell her story, though by then she’s a hag and nobody cares. But all these stories are about Clinton in his elected prime. The Miss America thing. The stewardess thing—the recent claim that on a campaign plane Clinton copped a feel while Hillary was snoring a few feet away. Does it never end?

  I mean, you could lay these women end to end—oops, an unfortunate verb—you could line these women up, and the line would stretch from Washington to Arkansas. And their hair is so big it blocks out the sun.

  And now back to Ms. Paula “My Heart Will Go On” Jones.

  For those of you keeping score at home, here are some winners and losers:

  Winner: You know him, you love him, you can’t live without him … Slick Willie.

  I’m sure you’ve heard that when Clinton got the news in Senegal, he celebrated by sucking on a cigar and banging an African bongo drum. How studly! Robert Bly, eat your heart out. In every picture I’ve seen, Clinton is so happy. (He looks like he just, well, crowned Miss America!)

  Don’t you wish Clinton would have called a news conference and said, “As I stand here at this lectern, I am reminded of a quote from … from … Oh, man I’m [expletive] psyched! Anybody want to party?”

  Winner: Bob Bennett. Have another sirloin, counselor.

  I hear Bennett’s next client will be Wilt Chamberlain.

  Winner: Monica the Harmonica. She can go in front of the grand jury now and say whatever she wants. That she went to the White House to have sex with the president, that she was only there to feed Buddy, that she was shopping for pantyhose when Ken Starr and a group of nihilists abducted her and forced her to go bowling. It doesn’t matter anymore, except to people like … me.

  Loser: Me. I’m going to miss the joys of the civil discovery process. They were hauling in every woman whose perfume Clinton had ever sniffed. Man, when did the guy have time to govern?

  Now I’m going to have to start writing about more substantive issues, stuff I’ve never addressed before. Like my baldness.

  Loser: Paula Jones. Thank you for coming, drive home safely.

  I figure she can stay on the talk show circuit for about a month, and then if she’s lucky it’s, “I’ll take Paula Jones to block.”

  Big Loser: Ken Starr.

  You can stop singing hymns now, Ken. It’s over. One man’s “white lies” are another man’s “alternative scenarios.”

  Will the last one out of the grand jury room please turn off the lights?

  The Best Pictures I Didn’t See

  I hate the Oscar column. You hate the Oscar column. Everybody hates the Oscar column.

  But it’s tradition. Last year I didn’t write it, and I got hundreds of letters protesting its absence. Here’s a typical letter: “Your Oscar column stinks. You never see more than two of the nominated movies, and you make stupid wisecracks about the Supporting Actress category, to wit: ‘Act, shmact. Did you check out her casabas?’ You’re really an imbecile. But I’d rather read your odoriferous Oscar column than the slanderous crap you write about dedicated meteorologists. (Signed) Bob Ryan.”

  Bobby, sweetheart. It’s not personal. It’s Tradition!

  Didn’t see Gladiator. Why bother? It’s old news. Management types unleash tigers to maul and kill labor. Loads of folks get their body parts sheared off. Heads are rolling like bowling balls on league night. Big deal. You see one head on a stick, you’ve seen ’em all. And the emperor wants to boink his sister. But, hey, it’s only a movie so it’s not really his sister—and did you check out her casabas?

  Didn’t see Erin Brockovich. Am I nuts, or did this flick come out in the Reagan administration? Seriously, this movie has been playing longer than Derek Jeter. What’s the attraction—Julia Roberts in a push-up bra? That’s worth eight bucks? Hey, I get NakedNews for free.

  Didn’t see Chocolat. It sounds like a girl movie. The plot is like: You eat chocolate, you feel amorous. Okay, fine. It’s a small-town morality tale—without the morality; it’s Footloose with hot fudge. Life is too short for me to see this.

  Here’s what life is too short for, Tony: the same stupid Oscar column again. What else you got?

  Wait! I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Loved it. An hour later I wanted to see it again. I loved Traffic even more.

  Then do us a favor: Go play in it. Move on.

  How’s this?

  News Item: “John Phillips, founder and creative force behind the spectacularly successful 1960s rock vocal group the Mamas and the Papas, died in Los Angeles. The Mamas and the Papas were best known for haunting, four-part harmony work on such songs as ‘California Dreamin’,’ ‘Monday Monday,’ ‘I Saw Her Again,’ and the autobiographical ‘Creeque Alley,’ which told the story of the founding of the group.”

  Everybody who was anybody in the mid-’60s L.A. folk rock scene was in “Creeque Alley”: John Phillips and his ethereally gorgeous Ca
lifornia waif wife, Michelle; the other Mamas and Papas, Denny Doherty and tubby Cass Elliot; Roger McGuinn of the Byrds; John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin’ Spoonful; Barry McGuire, who wrote and, um, “sang” the quintessentially hideous “Eve of Destruction,” which contained the line “My blood’s so mad, feels like coagulating.” (Cole Porter, eat your heart out.)

  You recall “Creeque Alley,” that autobiographical song the Mamas and the Papas released with the refrain “And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass”?

  Most everyone listed is in his sixties now, except the lucky ones, who are dead. (You think I’m joking? Have you taken a close look at Bob Dylan and Keith Richards recently? Those guys look like they not only felt like coagulating—they did it.)

  John Phillips was sixty-five when he died. Sixty-five! If he wrote “Creeque Alley” now, it’d be “Creak Alley.”

  John and Michy were getting kind of itchy

  To leave assisted living behind.

  Zal and Denny couldn’t count to tenny

  Took ginkgo pills to jump-start their minds

  In a body cast Sebastian sat

  He’d broken both his legs, slipping on the bath mat.

  McGuinn and McGuire had long ago retired

  To Lauderdale, you know where that’s at

  Everybody’s at the early bird, except Mama Cass.

  Why stop there? “California Dreamin’ ” could be just as valid an anthem for geezers as it was for restless youth:

  All my hair is gone, or it’s turned to gray

  I slipped out for a walk, much to my nurse’s dismay

  Authorities were sum-moned

  In fear I’d wandered away

  Found me in the bushes, on such a winter’s day.

  (You know I really shouldn’t do this, but I started thinking of how the Rolling Stones are probably going to keep touring no matter how old they get. I dread the day they come out and sing, “I can’t get no satisfaction. I can’t get no wheelchair traction. I might flip, I might slip, cut my lip, break my hip. I can’t get no …”)

  I mentioned Bob Dylan before, and how he’s a little weathered lately. He looks like a shrunken head inside a great leather coat. It won’t be long now until he starts singing, “How does it feel to be fed oatmeal, to have your fruit all peeled, to lose your sense of feel, to use a safety seal?”

  Once upon a time, I felt so fine

  Wrote a real good rhyme in my prime, didn’t I?

  People call, say I’m bound to fall, end up in a crawl, in the nursing

  home hall, my oh my.

  I used to be so amused, at Crosby, Stills, and Nash and the acid that they used.

  I got osteoporosis now, my bones are fused.

  Every five minutes I need a snooze.

  I’m on Prozac now, I’ve got hostility to conceal.

  Dylan’s still a genius. He’s up for an Oscar himself: Best Original Song for something he wrote for Wonder Boys. What if he wins, and someone asks him … “How does it feel?”

  And he tells us! “How does it feel? To have your joints creak, to have a sagging physique, to wake up at three, and have to take a leak? Thank God Johnny’s in the basement, mixing up my medicine.”

  Out with the Old, in with the Old

  Longtime readers of this space will recognize this as the annual New Year’s joke column in which I faithfully re-create a bunch of hilarious jokes culled from thousands of submissions.

  Okay, hundreds.

  Okay, dozens.

  Okay, one day this week I asked my friend Nancy if she had any jokes that weren’t filthy.

  Everybody loves the joke column.

  Readers love it because they can get big laughs by telling my jokes to people who haven’t heard them yet—groups of Japanese tourists, perhaps.

  I love it because the entire column takes twenty minutes to write. And I can duck out of work and go to the movies.

  Sadly, jokes aren’t what they used to be in Henny Youngman’s day.

  A man says to a psychiatrist, “You gotta help me, Doc. I think I’m a dog.”

  The psychiatrist replies, “Certainly, but until we’re sure, stay off the couch.”

  Actually, jokes are what they were in Henny Youngman’s day. Only now you don’t have to wait until Sunday night when Henny goes on Ed Sullivan to hear them. You can get the entire Henny Youngman catalog by hitting a key on your computer.

  Now, everybody knows every joke—because they’re immediately circulated on the Internet.

  Blond jokes. Totally Hair Barbie jokes. Klaus “Totally Herr” Barbie jokes!

  There are more Web sites devoted just to spreading jokes than there are Web sites devoted to spreading something really important, like Cheez Whiz.

  I have two jokes here. But I have no idea how many millions of people already know them.

  Ray Saunders sent this: Little Timmy was working in the garden, filling a hole with dirt, when his neighbor peered over the fence and asked, “What are you up to there, Timmy?”

  “My goldfish died,” Timmy replied tearfully, without looking up. “I’ve just buried him.”

  The neighbor was concerned. “That’s an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”

  Timmy patted down the last heap of earth and said, “That’s because he’s inside your damn cat!”

  Bada-bing!

  A seaman meets a pirate in a bar, and their conversation turns to their adventures at sea. The seaman notes that the pirate has a peg leg, a hook, and an eye patch.

  “How’d you get the peg leg?”

  “We were in a storm, and I was swept overboard into a school of sharks,” the pirate said. “A shark bit my leg off.”

  “Wow. And the hook?”

  “We were boarding an enemy ship, and their sailors had swords,” the pirate said. “They cut my hand off.”

  “Oooh. And the eye patch?”

  “A sea gull dropping fell into my eye,” the pirate said.

  “You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?” the seaman asked incredulously.

  “Well … it was my first day with the hook.”

  Bada-boom!

  Okay, no more. All the jokes I’ve got are either old or awful—or in these cases, both.

  I’m scrapping the New Year’s joke column. It’s a new century, and I’m going to start a new annual tradition: a poetry column!

  True story: Back in July, I got a letter from the famous conductor Leonard Slatkin asking me to take part in the National Symphony Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concert. On the program was Camille Saint-Saens’s Carnival of the Animals, which is frequently interspersed with Ogden Nash poems about a variety of animals: lions, elephants, etc. One of the animal groups included is “fossils.”

  Slatkin asked if I would write a poem on “fossils.”

  I said yes, I’d be happy to. (I say yes to everything. I have no intention of actually doing it. I’m just being nice. I mean, really, Leonard Slatkin? Like I care. The guy plays a tuba, right?)

  Last week Slatkin’s assistant called and asked where my poem was.

  “What poem?” I said. Who do I look like, Angie Dickinson?

  (That’s Emily Dickinson, you idiot.)

  “The poem about fossils,” she said.

  “Oh, that,” I said. “Yes, I have it right here. Whoops, I must have left it at home.

  “About fossils. Do me a favor: Refresh my memory. What about fossils?”

  “How about using fossils as a metaphor for people in Washington?” she said.

  Maestro, if you will:

  If it’s fossils you want, then it’s fossils you’ll get.

  Stodgy. Decrepit. Embalmed.

  They pad around Washington’s Capitol Hill.

  Carolinians, Jesse and Strom.

  But Jesse and Strom are just two of so many,

  Whose fossildom spreads far and wide.

  There’s Kennedy, Warner, Leahy, and Dodd.

  Not to mention old coot Henry Hyde.

&
nbsp; They win an election and squat here for life.

  They think it’s their God-given right.

  Take a look at Joe Biden. After all his presidin’

  Now even his hair plugs turned white!

  Lautenberg, Lieberman, McGovern, Bill Roth,

  Charles Rangel, John Dingell, Chuck Robb.

  They’re part of the landscape, like potholes and traffic.

  Don’t forget both Doles, Liddy and Bob.

  I’ve been living in Washington twenty years now.

  I am fossilized as a resultant.

  My column’s not funny. I’m stealing the money.

  So just like everyone else in town … I guess I’ll become a consultant.

  Faces Made for Radio

  Since the Starr Report came out I have been carefully monitoring the situation by watching all the talk shows, and as further proof of America’s inevitable decline as a superpower I have noticed a horrifying trend on TV.

  Print journalists.

  I am talking about my colleagues from The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal. Every night they are on CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC, baying like the Hounds of Hell. Come on, fellas, do I have to mention names? These print guys are even more unsightly than the Beavis and Butt-Head of Impeachment—mousy, rumpled Lanny Davis and Joe diGenova, whose dapper little mustache and hair, which appears to be dyed the color of Rust-Oleum, make him look like a maître d’ at the Olive Garden.

  There’s a reason print journalists work in print. It’s because they look like bridge trolls.

  They have bags under their eyes the size of hero sandwiches. They wear lounge-lizard suits and shiny ties spotted with marinara stains. They have eight-dollar haircuts, and foam flecks form at the corners of their mouths as they stare creepily into the camera. Their pallor suggests they’ve just climbed out of a sarcophagus. And these are the women! The men are unspeakable.

  These people think Clinton should be ashamed of what he’s done? Do they never look in the mirror?