Brickbats

Last fall, Madonna took part in a colorful get-out-the-vote campaign by MTV. Wearing a red bikini, black leather boots, and an American flag, she rapped, "Dr. King, Malcolm X. Freedom of speech is as good as sex." But when Fox network news did a story on the campaign, reporters found that Madonna wasn't registered to vote in any of the likely places. In fact, they reported, no one could confirm that she was registered anywhere. Maybe they got suspicious when, at the end of the commercial, Madonna said that people who didn't vote should be spanked.

J&B Scotch polled 1,000 Americans and found that more of them would like to have dinner with cartoon brat Bart Simpson than with cartoon president George Bush.

Apparently some people really don't want to have dinner with Bush. Before sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with the president, U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia had their weapons unloaded and the bolts removed from their rifles.

Pundits ask where the Churchills, Lincolns, Washingtons, and Disraelis of tomorrow will come from. Consider this: Former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura is now mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Ventura received 60 percent of the vote in the state's sixth-largest city.

And Palm Springs, California, Mayor Sonny Bono has announced that he will run for Alan Cranston's Senate seat in 1992. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. I think his marriage to Cher has prepared him for that.

In San Diego, a mother has filed suit against Arista Records on behalf of her young son. The suit charges that the revelation that Milli Vanilli didn't sing on their album has left the boy disillusioned. Just think what voting will do to him.

A judge in San Jose, California, rejected Sherman Hill's argument that his dog Queenie should count in a car-pool lane because the animal watched for cars and warned his master, whose eyesight is failing. Hill argued that he was training the dog as a "seeing-eye driver." So the diamond lanes are still safe.

Magician Doug Henning and Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have announced plans for Vedaland—a new $1-billion theme park near Orlando, Florida, that will combine the best of magic and meditation. Veda is an Eastern term for knowledge. And it is an apt name for the park, considering that Yogi is smarter than the average guru.

And in St. Petersburg, Florida, would-be bartender Mike Albrego has won an EEOC sex-discrimination complaint against the Hooters restaurant chain, which refused to hire him. The EEOC was unmoved by the chain's arguments that the hirsute Albrego would look silly in the required "Hooters' girl" uniform—orange shorts and a cut-off T-shirt.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., George Washington Law School professor John Banzhaf has filed a complaint with the Office of Human Rights against 15 area bars. Banzhaf claims that the bars violate district antidiscrimination ordinances by giving women free or reduced-price drinks on "ladies' nights." It seems that Banzhaf has discovered a new right: the right to more-expensive liquor.

For some reason, the European Community Office of Press Affairs sent me a press release announcing that Eastern Europe's newly won press freedoms are in danger. Why, you ask? Press barons such as Rupert Murdoch are buying Eastern European papers. And the area's nascent free-market economies are in danger of collapsing. Why? Western nations aren't giving them enough money. If this goes on, Eastern Europe will soon be more capitalist than Western Europe.