July 1, 1992
Dear Everyone:
Busy week for CNN (and it's only Wednesday!)
I turned the TV on Sunday morning to hear there
been another earthquake. "What?" I asked myself.
"We had a seven-point-four and I
slept through it?"
But, no, it turned out that the 7.4 was in Southern
California (they have all the fun). Then,
while reporting on the first quake, the CNN reporter in the Los Angeles
bureau was treated ("LIVE") to a second, separate quake.
The cameraman had sense enough to
pull back from the usual close-up to show the desk clearly wobbling and
people in the background hanging onto the furniture.
Needless to say, CNN gleefully showed the tape over
and over all day; and, no doubt, offered "complementary copies" to the
less fortunate networks. The news
anchorman, safely in his headquarters in Atlanta, congratulated the
reporter for "not collapsing into a wordless glob of protoplasm".
Wait until the
New
Madrid fault cuts loose and we’ll see how confident he sounds then.
(The last time the
New Madrid
fault slipped, it was felt all the way to the East Coast--the fault
is in the Midwest--and cracked sidewalks in New York and Chicago.)
That was Sunday. By
Monday, the earthquakes had taken a poor second to the
Supreme Court, which ruled (as near as I can make out) both for and
against a Pennsylvania abortion law. CNN
dropped everything to carry the situation "live".
I only know this because I had
Monday as a vacation day and was home to turn the TV on.
Lots of angry spokespersons from both sides
claiming victory while simultaneously castigating (great word, how?) the
Justices for failing to go further in one direction or another.
Some people are never satisfied.
I noticed one particular
"Pro-Life" advocate, male, of course, who seemed very bitter that the
Reagan-Bush appointees had slipped the chain and not voted the way their
masters expected. For this, he
blamed Bush,
claiming that "Bush needs to do his homework a little better" in
selecting nominees to the Court who will do his bidding.
I had a sudden, mental flash of a new political
thriller: A radical, "Pro-Life"
splinter group decides to assassinate one of the more liberal (liberal?
are there any of those left?--no pun intended) Supreme Court Justices in
order to make room on the bench for their more politically-correct
choice.
Someone called
Tom Clancy.
Find out if
Harrison Ford
is available.
As for the newest Justice,
Clarence Thomas,
I've been reading Capital Games the book about Thomas,
Anita Hill and the
nomination process. One of the
disadvantages of exercising during warmed over
Tonight Shows is that I see all the books that are being
plugged. Then, when I'm in the
bookstore, I see the book and go, "A, I've heard about this one."
And then, of course, I buy it.
My temporary resolution to this
problem is to just stay the hell out of bookstores.
Anyway, I'm currently plowing my way through the
career of one, Clarence Thomas, and I think I've got a handle on why
he's so anti-abortion. His mother
was an illegitimate black teenager who gave birth to him on the dirt
floor of the shack belonging to a more fortunate relative (more
fortunate in that she, at least, had a shack) in rural Georgia.
His father ran off when he was a
baby, having gotten another woman pregnant.
Now, stop and think about it:
If, at the right time, abortion
(or, for that matter, decent birth control) had been readily available,
would Clarence Thomas ever have been born?
Then there was the guy in “Livermore”, yesterday,
who told me that, yeah, some of these guys should be taking more
responsibility for their actions; but, really, most of these girls get
themselves into these messes and then abortion is just an easy way out
for them.
Really? And
where did you learn this, at the
Rehnquist-Scalia
School of Biology?
In other news…
“Jeannie” treated a group of her court-reporting
colleagues, plus law, to a chauffeur-driven limousine trip to the
Wine
Country on Sunday. She’d won
the limo as a door prize. The
driver was “Quinn”, very tall, cuter than a bug's ear, and much too
young for any of us. He is, of
course, and actor, who only drives the limo in the real world, when he's
"between engagements".
While we tasted wines at one place, “Quinn” stood
in the corner (he couldn't drink, of course), where an astonishing
number of people came up to say hi to him.
“Quinn” seems to know about
three-fifths of the people in the Bay Area.
Later, we had lunch at the Chandon Winery, where
“Quinn” schmoozed the hostess into giving us a complimentary bottle of
wine to go with dessert. Then we
went to a shopping "village", where “Quinn” recommended certain shops
and restaurants. “Quinn” really
gets around.
Then home again, with “Quinn” handing each of us
out of the limo for all the neighbors to see.
Watch for “Quinn” in the movies and on TV.
Tall, cute as a bug's ear, dark
hair, slightly frayed chauffeur’s uniform.
Love, as always,
Pete
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