Brickbats

In Cebu City, Philippines, police killed Enrique Quinanola while attempting to prevent him from committing suicide.

My thanks to Gore Vidal and The Nation for revealing that heterosexuality "was invented as recently as 1930" by the New York Times. Finally, I can think of one good thing to say about the Times.

Gov. Michael Dukakis has signed a Massachusetts law allowing people who have overdue library books to be jailed. Well, I guess George Bush is going to have to take back all those things he said about the Duke being soft on crime.

Baltimore contractor Donald Keister wants some of the city contracts set aside for minorities. No, Keister isn't black or Hispanic; he's white. But at 640 pounds, Keister thinks he's part of another minority—the obese. That's what the civil rights movement has come to. It started with "I have a dream" and ends with "I'll have another cheeseburger."

City officials in Toccoa, Georgia, have decided that yoga isn't a form of devil worship after all. So they've reversed their earlier decision banning yoga classes in public schools. Local chiropractor Philip Lawrence led the fight against the classes. Yoga, he says, teaches people to clear their minds, and that just allows Lucifer to traipse in and wreak havoc.

While most Saudis appreciate America's efforts to prevent an invasion by Iraq, it seems they would prefer that we had left some of our troops back in the United States. Specifically, those of the female gender. "Not a single one approves of the women soldiers," one Saudi woman told the Wall Street Journal. "Everyone is sure they are here to provide sex for the servicemen, or worse, to steal our husbands." OK, when did Phyllis Schlafly move to Saudi Arabia?

No one would ever accuse the DEA and the FBI of trying to fix an election. But it did seem rather strange that the agencies funded an Anchorage seminar on the "health effects" of marijuana less than two months before Alaskans voted on an initiative to make pot illegal again. Believe it or not, the seminarians said that pot does all sorts of nasty stuff to one's body. When asked why they didn't present the other side, FBI Special Agent Billy Andrews said, "There is no other side." How can these guys expect to find drug dealers when they can't even find opponents of the drug war?

When farm-policy expert Willie Nelson found out that he had lost several million dollars in bad tax shelters, he knew just what to do. He filed a racketeering suit against his accountants, Price Waterhouse. In addition to his lost money, Nelson wants to recover for the "ridicule and scorn" he suffered because of his losses. In the twilight glow I see him, blue eyes cryin' in the rain.

Two months and at least $70,000 ago the mayors of Santa Monica and Los Angeles formed the Business/Government Council to End Homelessness. So far, the council has hired two public relations firms. And the program has been quite successful. There are no homeless flacks in either L.A. or Santa Monica.

In Hamburg and Berlin, the sex shops and adult theaters are now packed with East Germans. Whole families take an early bus across the border to stroll through the shops, gawk at hookers working the streets, and pick up sexual toys. "We counted 220 buses in one day, and sometimes they fill the store till no one can move," crowed one sex-shop manager. And skin magazine publishers say their sales have shot through the roof. Forget Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman and even Adam Smith. It seems the person who brought communism to its knees was Marilyn Chambers.