FRY
ICE (07.15.99)
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BY
PETER KURTH
Capote
and Gross -- can you guess which is which?
Suffering
Saint Monica -- what a lot of flack! I write one column regretting the trivialization of American actresses on
the silver screen and what do I get? A flippin’ Renee Zellweger vigilante
committee!
A
reader in
There
are several things my
Second,
if my editors threw anything at my head, I’d get them on assault charges. This
is why they keep publishing my "panegyrics." They know what a terror
I am in the courtroom.
Third,
Terry Gross broadcasts her show a lot more often than I write "Crank
Call." She also has producers and a staff. All sorts of people help Terry
find interesting topics, whereas I’m here alone, a still, small voice crying in
a town where cultural criticism begins and ends with the standing ovation. Criticize anything and they’ll send you to
treatment.
Fry
ice,
Wait,
it gets worse. Somebody recently spat on my sister-in-law’s windshield when she
failed to knuckle under to the newest thing in lawlessness – the left turn into
traffic. You know how this works: You’re stopped at a red light, first in line.
When the signal turns green, you wait for the two or three cars that inevitably
ignore it to get safely out of your path. But before you can move, the driver
across from you at the intersection – usually in a 4 x 4 – cuts out in front
turning left, at the same time fixing you with a look that says, "Get out
of my way, you pointless, pallid panegyric!"
I
could write about the
File
this under: "Dull-witted Catholic-bashing."
I
could write about the U. S. Senate, which on Thursday, thanks to all but two of
its Republican members, sold the nation lock, stock and barrel to the HMOs. It
was a defeat – no, a rout – for the Patients’ Bill of Rights, which would have
allowed the millions of Americans who’ve been shafted by these immoral,
number-crunching flacks to appeal to a higher authority in matters of life and
death.
"Congress
should not imperil the continuing transformation of American medicine,"
says Sen. Trent Lott. "It's not our job to dictate or control that
transformation." The AMA is unionizing, for God’s sake, and this puffed-up
prick is yakking about "medicine."
File
this under: "Ad hominem attacks."
As
to "the film industry," John and I have lately fallen in love with
Bruce Willis. I never thought this would happen, but it has. I report it here
in the interest of full disclosure and to show that I'm not merely a
nattering nabob of negativism, but in step with the mood of the nation. One
thing you can count on in a Willis picture is the comforting sound of gunfire.
"BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!" Suddenly, it’s music to our ears.
"No
people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election
on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument
[of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can
depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything
traditionally American. And nobody will ever say `Heil' to him, nor will they
call him `Führer' or `Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big,
universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of `O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna,
Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'" -- Dorothy Thompson, 1935