The Thinker: Rich Galen
The definition of the word mull.
Mullings by Rich Galen
A Political Cyber-Column By Rich Galen
Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Oh, Good. Christmas Music Has Started.
Monday, November 29, 1999

  • I expect to get angry e-mails from all camps about this, but if anyone wants to get a primer on how to answer questions from reporters they should watch the tape of Tony Snow's Fox News Sunday program from yesterday. James Hoffa, Newt Gingrich and Jesse Jackson were all on, and time after time, no matter what question was asked, their answers always dealt with the three points they wanted to make.

  • A tape of that program will be required watching for anyone planning to run for public office.

  • With the Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham semi-announcement for U.S. Senate having been so carefully choreographed last week, why did her handlers choose to have her hair look like she'd had a comb-out with a Weed Eater?

  • I spent a week visiting with my mother in Southern Florida which means I was around more New Yorkers than Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham who was busy cutting back on her First Lady duties at that famous playground of work-a-day New Yorkers: Camp David, Maryland.

  • Also visiting her mom was a woman I have known all my life: a 25-year veteran of the Nassau County, New York school system; now a senior administrator who was my next door neighbor when we were growing up in New Hyde Park. A professional, highly educated, middle-aged, suburban woman.

  • Her take on Hillary? "She's a carpetbagger. She should run in Illinois or Arkansas. Why does she think she can come to New York without knowing anything about us?" While I understand this is a data point of one, it is not just a noxious omen for Hillary's campaign, it is potentially poisonous.

  • The Kodak moment on Meet the Press had to be when Pat Buchanan, speaking against the trade deal with China, said that for countries with developing economies (like China), easy trade with the US is "the big Megillah." Ironically, he used a Yiddish phrase. Not surprisingly, he used it incorrectly. The correct phrase is "the WHOLE Megillah." The phrase Buchanan was reaching for was "the big enchilada."

  • Movie Reviews: I saw "Toy Story 2" and the new James Bond movie (although that idiom is ALWAYS "James Bond flick") over the weekend. The plot of "Toy Story" was more believable than that of "The World is Not Enough." More interestingly, Buzz Lightyear is a better actor than Denise Richards. But then, so is Barney Rubble.

  • More evidence that Darwin was wrong: That VISA ad which has the pregnant woman at the paint store looking for the perfect color - which we are led to believe is for the baby's room - only to have her using the color to paint her face and cheer wildly at a football game carries the warning: "Do not paint your face with house paint" at the bottom of the screen.

  • This is why he won a Pulitzer Prize: Jimmy Breslin, in his New York Newsday column writing about Al Gore's claiming to be an "investigative journalist:" "Gore sure was part of the media. The word 'media' is the plural of mediocre."

  • That very same media was in full-throated roar about the "busiest travel week of the year" last week. I made five trips to the Fort Lauderdale airport and the only time there was any traffic problem occurred when the television trucks were disrupting traffic flow to report on the heavy traffic - providing yet another proof of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

    -- END --

Home | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?

Copyright �1999 Richard A. Galen | Site design by Campaign Solutions.