I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  The reason I don’t go on these shows is because I have looked in the mirror recently. (I almost went on Hardball with Chris Matthews one night, but backed out when CNBC would not let me wear a bag over my head.)

  My feeling has always been that if someone is going to tell me very bad news on television, I would prefer it were someone beautiful. My idea of a solid news anchor is Michelle Pfeiffer in a cocktail dress draped over a baby grand piano, sighing, “The Dow Jones Industrials fell 678 points today. Gosh, that’s awful. [Pause.] How do you like my hair?”

  The last thing I want to see on television is a horse-faced blond federal prosecutor or a hunchbacked homunculus of a newspaper scribe. You can’t lightly apply makeup to these folks, you have to spackle them.

  My fellow print journalists, I have one word for you: radio.

  It’s amazing the specimens Larry King has as guests. They make Larry look like Brad Pitt. Where does he find them? I saw this one congressman from the House Judiciary Committee whose eyebrows were the size of badgers. Far be it from me to criticize somebody else’s hairdo, but this guy had a hair transplant that looked like it had been done by a backhoe. I tell you, this guy even looks ugly in Braille.

  Just in this past week on TV I saw people I hadn’t seen in years—and in many cases people I’d hoped never to see again—crawling out of the dustbin of history to comment on President Clinton.

  It was like watching Meet the Press morphing into The Hollywood Squares.

  Imagine this: Along the top row you have the Watergate Crawlbacks: John Dean, Chuck Colson, and Robert Bork, all of whom are currently on the cable circuit. After twenty-five years Dean looks as pale and skeletal as the Grim Reaper, but Bork still has that babe-magnet beard. On the bottom corners you have publicity hound lawyers. There’s Alan Dershowitz, who debated Jerry Falwell on CNBC a few days ago about what the American people really want now, when what the American people want is for both these windbags to sail over a cliff in a Hyundai. There’s Roy Black, whose hair suddenly went gray in the year since he defended Marv Albert, as if Marv was the Amityville Horror. In the middle of the row sits perennial frat boy Dan Quayle, eagerly slamming Clinton’s character, but praying that nobody asks him to spell “Altoid.”

  And in the secret square: Michael Dukakis!

  Yes, Dukakis was on Larry King last week—surprising some of us who thought he was dead. It was eerie to see him because he’s now the spitting image of Rod Serling.

  And talk about The Twilight Zone, amid all the Sturm und Drang about whether Clinton should be impeached, tried in a civil court for perjury, or simply stretched on a rack until his organs pop out, the man is making a huge comeback. Even prominent women are speaking in Clinton’s behalf, and apparently not simply paying him, um, lip service.

  After Clinton’s grand jury testimony was aired, you could feel the momentum shifting toward him. More and more women looked at Clinton closely, and as they watched him bite his lip and put on his glasses to read that statement where he admitted he was a garden slug, they were overwhelmed with hormonal feelings:

  “He’s hounded. He’s wounded. And he’s really kinda cute. I could maybe date him.”

  Clinton got a standing ovation at the United Nations the other day. Which may be because so many of the world’s leaders are alpha men who think this dalliance with Monica Lewinsky is overblown—considering in their own countries they do it with llamas.

  It’s beginning to look more and more like Clinton’s going to skate for this, that he’ll be able to parlay an admission of lying into a censure and then … a victory cigar.

  If you’ve got ’em, smoke ’em—or whatever.

  Someone Save My Life Tonight

  Forgive me. I’ve got sex on my mind. I know this isn’t the season for sex. Around Christmas we’re all supposed to be concentrating on more spiritual matters. But this is the season of miracles—and for most men, finding somebody willing to have sex with you is a miracle.

  Sex is on my mind because of a new medical study in Wales suggesting that frequent hoo-hah can save lives. Welsh men who, in the local vernacular, “shag” at least twice a week have a 50 percent lower risk of dying than men who don’t. (And those who do die are often grinning.)

  This report is bound to put a strain on women, since it encourages them to have sex with men in order to save lives. (Would Florence Nightingale have gone into nursing if she knew this? Florence Henderson, maybe.) Women are already in a frenzy during the holidays, baking stuff, making sure the cards and packages are sent out on time, getting their kids’ hair cut, and buying them fancy clothes. The last thing they want to do is have sex with some guy sitting on the couch in his underpants watching bowl games.

  True story: The male reporter who brought me the news of this study said he encountered a group of female reporters who said to him plaintively, “We’re not going to run this story, are we?”

  Conversely, this report is great news for men, as we now have the moral, ethical, and perhaps legal high ground in every airport bar and aerobics class worldwide. Me, personally, I’m thinking of filing a criminal negligence suit against Heather Locklear and Courteney Cox for conspiring to commit murder by failing to have sex with me.

  For a decade, researchers studied nearly a thousand Welshmen in a town called Caerphilly (pronounced as in “Oooh—carefully, luv”). The men, ages forty-five to forty-nine, were separated into three categories:

  1. Those who rutted with the frequency of barn animals.

  2. Those who said they had sex less than once a month.

  3. Members of the clergy, shepherds, and all the schmoes in between.

  Now let’s understand one fact: All men exaggerate about how much sack time they’re getting. If a researcher walks up to a man and asks him, “When was the last time you had sex?” the man will say, “You mean the last time today?”

  I’m between forty-five and forty-nine and the truth is that men my age, especially the married ones, can’t even remember the last time they had sex. We’d have a better chance pinpointing the last time we took a chain saw and cut off the legs of the dining room table.

  My guess is that all those Welshmen who claimed to have sex at least twice a week—referred to in the study as “high orgasmic frequency”—were lying like Pinocchio. It’s a bit fuzzy, based on what I’ve read, whether orgasmic frequency refers to sex with a partner or sex with one’s own bad self. Either way, the Big O is good for what ails ya. (As for the Welshmen who volunteered they were having sex less than once a month, I’m surprised they lived long enough to fill out the survey.)

  Former No. 1 song lyric in Wales: “What’s new, pussycat? Whoa-oh-whoa.”

  Current No. 1 song lyric in Wales: “Uh-uh-uh-uh, stayin’ alive.”

  I’m convinced men devised this study from top to, uh, bottom, because it offers no conclusion whatsoever whether boinking is good for women, too. This is such a guy thing. It’s like the old joke: Two men are walking together, and one asks incredulously, “Do you know how many orgasms women can have?” And the other says, “Who cares?”

  Another reason I’m so obsessed with sex today is because I’ve been reading about the new catch-22 hair-growing drug, Propecia. Taking one pill a day might give me enough moss to snag babes. But in some men it causes impotence. When you stop taking the pill, your sex drive will return—but whatever new hair you’ve grown will begin to fall out. So timing is of the essence.

  The worst news about this drug is that you can’t load up on it. Taking more than one pill a day won’t work. I’d hoped to take a whole bottle at once and start sprouting hair like a werewolf—then run to Hooters and try to persuade someone named Tiffany to save my life. I tried that with Rogaine. You’re supposed to squeeze an eyedropperful on your scalp each morning and night. I poured it on like I was basting a turkey. Sadly, I’d have more luck growing mangoes on the polar ice cap.

  To this day, though, I keep smearing on Rogaine, hoping for a miracle.

  Whi
ch brings us back to Christmas, doesn’t it? And toys. (No, not sex toys—unless you happen to live in Caerphilly.)

  This year’s big toy was supposed to be Sing & Snore Ernie—in the tradition of Tickle Me Elmo and, a few years back, Bite Me Saddam. I’m happy to report that Sing & Snore Ernie is a colossal failure. Speculators bought them up, hoping for a huge score. Now you can find dozens of ads in this newspaper trying to unload Ernie for “$200 or best offer” or “$150 or best offer” or “Wedge of Gouda cheese or best offer.” Pay attention to the words “best offer.” They’re slang for: “I’m taking the gas pipe with this dead lox of a doll. SAVE MY LIFE!”

  Hey, pal, there’s a better way to do that.

  A Pill with Potential

  For all you people learning to speak English, it is critical that you know the difference between important and impotent.

  They may sound alike. But believe me, they are not.

  One suggests you are a big man. And the other … ah, the other does not.

  I bring this up because of the arrival of Viagra, the ten-dollar pill that treats impotence.

  You heard right: only ten dollars and you can perform well enough to earn a spot in the Clarence Thomas Video Collection.

  On a personal level, I’m thrilled about this medical breakthrough. Not that I’ve ever had a problem like that. Me? Oh no. Never. I don’t care what you heard about New Year’s Eve. I had four glasses of wine. I was tired. It was the wine. Honest.

  Isn’t science wonderful? Last year they came out with a pill, Propecia, that grows hair. The drawback: It can take away your sex drive. But now I can pop a bald pill, then take the impotence pill. I just have to be very careful to take the pills in the right sequence.

  I wouldn’t want to reach for my comb and find an oar in my pocket instead.

  As you might imagine, the demand for Viagra has been overwhelming. At a Georgetown University clinic the phone system had to be adjusted to handle a flood of inquiries. Callers were instructed to “Press 3 for Viagra.”

  Wow, if you get potency on 3, whaddya get if you press 1 or 2?

  “This is Heidi Fleiss. And how may I help you?”

  Impotence is an embarrassing circumstance, a heartbreaking failure. People who make jokes about it are cruel and insensitive; impotence isn’t funny. It affects 30 million men—most of whom have heard lines like, “Really, it’s okay, honey, I understand. I didn’t even notice. Oh, and how’s little Johnny Spaghetti today?”

  Scientists say the pill works by relaxing certain tissues, allowing blood to flow in. This creates a condition that medical professionals refer to as Lorena’s Wild Ride.

  You must be forewarned, though, that Viagra has a limited window of opportunity. It works within an hour of taking it. Once that hour is up—you’re not. The clock is ticking. You can’t afford to have a spat with your squeeze. Boy, has she got you over a barrel. What if you’ve only got ten minutes left and she says the magic words, “Tiffany and Co.”?

  It occurs to me that the rising potency tide should float all boats, if you know what I mean. If this pill helps impotent men, think of the jump-start it can give the rest of us virile and studly hunks. I envision a horde of men pogo-sticking their way across this great land—and women everywhere locking themselves in storm cellars, waiting for the Viagra Hour to pass.

  Of course, the pill carries the proviso that it won’t work if a man isn’t sexually aroused.

  Hahaha.

  Like it’s difficult to sexually arouse most men. Anything in bare legs walking by—even Prince Charles in a kilt—would work. Betty Rubble would work.

  Here’s a great practical joke: Slip President Clinton a potency pill.

  But, you ask, what if he isn’t feeling frisky within the hour?

  I’ll wait for the laughter to die down.

  (Along this line, my friend Rich’s father-in-law suggests that the Democratic candidate’s campaign slogan in 2000 should be: “Win One for the Groper.”)

  Last week men were flocking to the Internet to obtain Viagra prescriptions. One Web site was actually called www.penispill.com. Presumably you could access it with most software.

  The pill’s reported side effects include indigestion and headaches, though the phrase “Not tonight, dear, I’ve got a headache” has yet to be uttered by any Viagra users. Curiously, some patients have noticed a temporary blue tinge to their vision.

  It had to be blue, didn’t it? (It had to be blue. I wandered around, and finally found somebody who would make me see blue.) Viagra gives new meaning to the song “Blue Moon” and to the phrase “Ol’ Blue Eyes is back.”

  Sadly, there is already a fight over who will pay for Viagra prescriptions, the patient or the insurance carrier. Insurance companies do not want to be scammed by nonimpotent men who are just being greedy. So users face the horrifying prospect of being asked to show documentation of impotence in order to purchase Viagra. What are you supposed to do, whip out a card that says “Certified Flaccid” or “Help, I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up”?

  Gentlemen, we can agree that this is a great pill. Although, I must admit, perhaps not quite as great as a pill that would make a woman desire you with the overwhelming passion they’d lavish on Yanni all day, every day.

  Men would pay way more than ten dollars for that pill.

  Some would go as high as twelve-fifty.

  Unsafe Way?

  As a Safeway shopper, I noticed recently that the clerks were behaving very seductively. They’d make deliberate eye contact with me, hold my gaze, then smile and ask if there was anything they could do to make my shopping experience more satisfying—anything. “Oh, Mr. Kornheiser,” somebody would purr near the vegetable bin, “could I help you select a particularly succulent portobello mushroom, worthy of your strong hands, your sensitive soul, your musky scent?”

  I was stunned—considering I just went in there to get Beano.

  Having heard of the legendary “Social Safeway” in Georgetown, where the well-heeled troll for pickups, I thought maybe I had wandered into the “Porno Safeway,” and any moment now the checkout clerk might rip off her smock and ravish me right on the conveyor belt. As everyone knows, supermarkets are hotbeds of repressed sexual activity, with all those folks stroking zucchini and sniffing melons.

  So imagine my chagrin at finding out the Safeway babes didn’t actually consider me drop-dead studly—they were just following company policy. According to a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Safeway’s “superior customer service” policy includes instructions for employees to make eye contact with shoppers for at least three seconds.

  My writer friend Tracy was astonished at this. “Three seconds of eye contact with each customer?” she said. “I can’t even look a lover in the eye for three seconds without starting to laugh.”

  Personally, I can’t wait for Giant to take “superior customer service” a step further—interns in every aisle!

  After learning of the Safeway policy, I was thinking of asking Bill Clinton to come shopping with me, since the clerks there might be the only women left in the country who would still smile at him. They could put him to work. He’d show them superior customer service. I could see him in a little apron, standing over one of those skillets they use to cook free samples, asking, “Ma’am, would you like to try this sausage?” (And now that he’s begun apologizing like a windup toy, think of the catharsis he could have in a supermarket, issuing mea culpas to customers because the store ran out of sale Depends.)

  The Chronicle story involved a complaint from some Safeway clerks who said the customer-friendly policy resulted in unwanted advances by patrons who’d misread the intent of the smiles and greetings, and started propositioning the workers. A produce clerk said she was sexually harassed by a doctor, a minister’s son, and several elderly customers who’d never behaved offensively before the policy was introduced. (Another new Safeway task for Clinton: Imagine the irony of him standing in the aisle advising solemnly, like Mr. W
hipple, “Please don’t squeeze the help.”)

  Of course, sometimes this attention isn’t completely unwanted. A married mother of three told me she once worked at a Florida supermarket where employees had to wear pins that said “TIE,” for Total Involvement Everyone: she felt it stood for Total Idiots Everywhere. She said teenage girls sought checkout jobs strictly to meet cute guys. I asked her if she had ever been hit on by a minister’s son.

  “No,” she said. “But I wish I had.”

  While Safeway officials deny there is any such “three-second” rule, they admit they tell employees to smile and greet customers, and maybe chat them up a little.

  How are you? How do you like this weather?

  (Is your divorce final yet? You like me in this tube top?)

  That’s nice, I guess. But if I’m running in for milk and bread, I don’t feel the need to share my life story with some guy with a Mr. Natural tattoo scaling salmon. The last thing I want is somebody looking up from a bucket of sliced beets and saying to me, “That thing on your face, maybe you ought to get that looked at.”

  What am I going to see next, a guy doing stand-up in the produce section?

  “And I wanna tell you, we’ve got eggplants so fresh, I had to wash their mouths out with soap.… Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just happy to be in Safeway?… Hey, I’ll be here all day!”

  I think you can carry touchy-feely too far. The last thing you want in a supermarket is a poetry reading by lustful Montgomery County State’s Attorney Robert “Rod McKuen” Dean. (“I am empty. Come again,” he wrote, referring perhaps to the run on potato salad at the deli counter.)

  Where I grew up, in New York, nobody ever spoke to you in a supermarket. Except maybe to say, “Hey, what are you looking at?”

  The first time I shopped in a Washington supermarket the guy doing the checkout asked me, pleasantly, “How are you today?”

  I responded in typical New York fashion, “What’s it to ya? You writing a book?”