Random Shots: Springtime in Michigan

R.F. Kampfer

It was so cold in Michigan this past winter that Governor John Engler had his hands in his own pockets.

To support the auto industry, Engler plans to salt the roads all year round, so that cars will rust out faster and need to be replaced.

Chrysler is offering cars without ashtrays this year, but probably won’t sell many. Non-smokers use them for parking meter change.

International Politics and Religion

Why not let the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Afrikaner Peoples Party share a homeland of their own? They obviously deserve each other.

If peace comes to Ireland it will be hard to have faith in the permanence of anything.

Jews, Christians and Muslims are bound by Ten Commandments, Marxists by only one: Think For Yourself.

Life Style Notes

According to the New Work theory, we will all become prosperous by doing each others’ laundry.

People pretend to like lettuce, but it’s just an excuse to eat salad dressing.

Why order steak or lobster at a restaurant when it’s so easy, and so much cheaper, to make at home?

Animal-rights activists who sympathize with the tribulations of ranch-bred mink have never seen what the little vermin can do in a henhouse.

Phone sex may be alienating, degrading and expensive. It is, however, safe.

Television really does promote teenage sex: The programs are so dull that the kids have to find something else to do.

Guest Commentaries

Christopher Phelps from Rochester, NY writes:

“Tuli Kupferberg’s cartoon about the irony of Patrick Henry’s declaration for `liberty or death’ (`Great Moments in American History, no.4,’ Random Shots, ATC 49), brought to my mind a powerful passage from My Bondage and My Freedom(1855), the second autobiography of Frederick Douglass, who became a well-known abolitionist editor and agitator after his 1838 escape from slavery.

“’No man can tell the intense agony which is felt by the slave, when wavering on the point of making his escape,’ wrote Douglass. `All that he has is at stake; and even that which he has not, is at stake also. The life which he has, may be lost, and the liberty which he seeks, may not be gained. Patrick Henry, to a listening Senate thrilled by his magic eloquence, and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights, could say GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH, and this saying was a sublime one, even for a freeman; but incomparably more sublime is the same sentiment, when practically asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain — men whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their bondage. With us it was a doubtful liberty, at best that we sought; and a certain, lingering death in the rice swamps and sugar fields, if we failed.’”

And the following contribution from Milton Fisk in Bloomington, IN: According to Barry Hartman, George Bush’s head of the Justice Department’s Natural Resources Division, “Environmental crimes are not like organized crime or drugs. There you have bad people doing bad things. With environmental crimes, you have decent people doing bad things.”…When our side does “bad” things in a “good” cause, it’s called terrorism.

ATC 50, May-June 1994