Random Shots: Daimler and Dubya Chronicles

R.F. Kampfer

DAIMLER-CHRYSLER CEO Juergen Schrempp has pledged not to sell off the Chrysler division. Not that anyone was lining up to buy it. All the same to us on the line: If you’re not the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

Consumer Alert: In an effort to reduce costs at Chrysler, the assemblers have been told to skip 20% of the bolts.

German industrialists have never been considered lovable, but we did think they were efficient.

Linda Chavez didn’t actually hire an undocumented immigrant to do housework. It was more like keeping her as a serf.

Ronald Reagan’s broken hip was entirely too convenient for keeping the senile babbler away from the inauguration. I say he was pushed.

George Sr. had one piece of advice for Dubya: Watch out for the sushi.

Memorable Scenes

ONE MEMORY THAT “Thirteen Days” brought back is that everybody used to smoke, anywhere they wanted to. If not for that soothing nicotine, we might have had a nuclear war.

Kampfer was at the anti-blockade demo shown in that same movie, in the Philadelphia Young Peoples Socialist League contingent. If memory serves, we had about 200 people, which was a respectable turnout back then.

The couples on Temptation Island needn’t get so stressed out: Twelve “temptations” are less dangerous to a relationship than one.

Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon weren’t really “A small step for a man — a giant step for mankind.” He really said: “It’s something soft. I can move it with my foot.”

Looney Toons is coming out with an updated Bugs Bunny cartoon titled “Hey Doc, Wasssup?”

The contestants on “Survivor 2” had to know that the first thing they had to do would be make a fire without matches. You would think at least one of them would have learned how in advance.

How about combining “Survivor” with “Lord of the Flies”? Each week the tribe votes on who gets eaten.

Stranger than Kampfer

TAX MONEY FOR faith-based agencies? A government grant to the Jerry Falwell Home for Wayward Girls? (So help me. The day after making this up, I learned there really IS a Jerry Falwell home for wayward girls.)

The ease with which a live three-ton elephant was smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border tells us all we need to know about the effectiveness of the Star-Wars anti-missile shield.

The Israeli government says that Palestinian demands for a right of return make a peace treaty impossible<197>and that they can’t imagine where they ever got the idea.

ATC 91, March-April 2001