(Posted Monday, Sept. 23)

Bob Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp, faced serious scrutiny, this week, as reporters followed up wide-spread rumors that "question the former quarterback's sexual preference." (New York Times). To put the matter to rest, Kemp came forward with a strong statement, saying "If you're asking me if I've ever had sex with another man, I'll tell you that I tried it once... but I didn't get fully erect... and I didn't like it... and I never tried it again." Bob Dole was quick to support his VP choice, saying that the Republican Party was "spread-out and wide-open enough for all members to come under its umbrella." The Washington Post applauded Dole's open-mindedness and Kemp's honesty. The New York Times said Kemp's statement was, "clearly an act of courage." The New Republic referred to Kemp as "a real mensch." The Weekly Standard ran an article about day care centers.

With the presidential race all but over, and Republican loss of the House all but certain, Speaker Newt Gingrich informed reporters that he would now begin the surgical phase of a 2-step process, similar to a sex-change operation, that would turn him completely, and irreversibly into Teddy Kennedy. "I think I've had just about all the fun I'm gonna have as a right-wing, conservative," the Speaker stated, "And now I want some real action. The kind only a drunken, drug-crazed, over-sexed, radical liberal socialist can have." The Washington Post saw this as simply "an opportunistic backup position, for when the radical socialists take back control of the House," while, in a similar vein, The New York Times questioned if this was really a "heartfelt commitment."
The Stock market rose briefly this week on reports of a near-term selloff in the corn futures market sparked by the lackluster performance of corporate earnings and a disappointing across-the-board decline in commodities prices. Long term bonds, nonetheless, advanced solidly on rumors that the Fed would be reconsidering interest rates at its fall meeting. Reports in the Washington Post that the consumer price index would be down next month also sparked a near-term selloff by holders of heavy utility stocks and corporate bonds. The S&P 500 rose on reports of another solid quarter by the gold futures market where, earlier this month, rumors had begun to spread that a near-term selloff in the cattle futures market might have a ripple effect, sparking a long-term selloff in the platinum futures market. But, at the close of the week, the New York Times reported that everything was "Right back where it started from, so all you individual investors at the mercy of big, dumb men, conspiring in dark back rooms to screw you more and exalt their own questionable genetics, can rest easy for at least another few days."
Susie Monday's new book, The Beauty of Power, published by CollinsHarper and marketed as an answer to critics of heartless megalomania, was given generally incoherent reviews. In Time, Wendy Wasserstein observed: "I didn't read the book, but I'm sure it's a heartless attack on the very foundations of race and gender and diversity in this culture and in the world. Rather than empowering people to tell their stories, I'm sure it bitterly and cynically, ummm, uhhh, well, ya know...." In the New York Times Book Review, Clarissa McFauntleroy called it "genitalia looking for an excuse to happen." The most noted passage of the book was Monday's revelation that she and her husband, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Bryllcreme, are really space aliens from Mars who have killed over 100 men and cut off and preserved their penises in jars of formaldehyde buried in the basement. "You'd be amazed at the world leaders and celebrity superstars who come to our parties just to see these hacked-off members in jars," Monday joked. -- Uhhh, no we wouldn't.
Transcripts of last month's Filegate hearings released this week, revealed that top Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey (rumored to be the son of former "Paul Revere and the Raiders" lead singer Mark Lindsay) told a shocked jury that he was, in fact, a space alien from Mars, and had befriended Bill Clinton as a boy, and secretly hypnotized him into wanting to be President in the first place. Lindsey also admitted that he and Clinton had been main-lining heroin since the 4th grade and that Hillary was really a leftover coldwar KGB undercover cyborg, run amok. The Washington Times immediately accused Lindsey of outright lying in order to protect the President, adding that the revelations were mere crumbs and that Lindsey was still holding back the real truth. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alphonse D'Amato claimed that Lindsey was "lying through his teeth about being from Mars -- since everybody knows Paul Revere and the Raiders are from Venus! I mean this is egregious. Simply the most egregious transgression against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta, and the Sermon on the Mount and Hamlet's soliloquy, that I've ever seen!!"

Previous Nothing Happened/But Let's Pretend (It Did) columns.