The First Follies of 1990

R.F. Kampfer

SOME FILM CRITICS have charged that Michael Moore was unfairly selective in his movie portrayal (“Roger And Me”) of General Motors chairman Roger Smith’s devastation of Flint This is like complaining that a World War II movie didn’t reveal Adolph Hitler’s fondness for his dog Blondi The whole job of a writer or director is to select what they will show us. Otherwise you wind up with James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Speaking of movies, the video “Heavy Petting” contains some hilarious excerpts from sex-education films of the 1950s. One segment suggests that teenage girls should try to deflect the attention of horny teen-age boys by talking about sports.

War Stories

WE ALWAYS KNEW that George Bush’s thousand points of light would turn out to be tracer-bullets.

Bush can’t pull the troops out of Panama until he installs a government that the Panamanians will respect As long as the troops remain, any Panamanian government will be seen as a U.S. puppet.

First Lady Barbara Bush has expressed the fear that women may not be able to throw hand grenades well enough to serve in combat units. Kampfer achieved a  certain notoriety by putting a fragment through the control tower at the Fort Ord grenade range in 1968. He did, however, score expert with the M-60 machinegun.

Cold War Memories

IN HIS EFFORTS to combat secession-1st tendencies in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev will probably be invoking Abraham Lincoln any day now: “Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? … You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy this government, while I have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

Nobody with any sense really fears that a reunited Germany would be any kind of military threat to conquer the world. That’s just an excuse: What they’re really afraid of Is that Germany may come Out with another product as good as the VW Beetle, and make enough money to buy the world.

Enough pieces of the True Cross have been found to rebuild the Coney Island boardwalk, no doubt enough pieces of the Berlin Wall will be sold to duplicate the Great Wall of China.

Musings While Hunting

AFTER THE RUSSIAN revolution, the Bolsheviks used to detect counter- revolutionaries by looking for people with uncalloused hands. In Michigan, we can just ask them what happens November 15. Those who answer that Beaujolais Nouveau goes on sale, rather than that deer-hunting season begins, can be sent to re-education camps.

The UAW bureaucracy’s political war chest is called the Flower Fund. This is because it serves the same function that flowers originally did at funerals: to cover up the stench of corruption.

If Manuel Noriega Is able to gain P.O.W. status, he wins some very specific rights under the Geneva Convention. For one thing, he is entitled to the same rations provided to an officer of his own rank (commander in chief) by the opposing belligerent power. So, after dinner every day, George Bush would have to send a doggy-bag down to Florida.

In 1985, Lee Iacocca said he would ‘move heaven and earth’ to keep Detroit’s Jefferson plant open. Last time we looked they were right where they always were.

Reading about famous artists, from Frida Kahlo to John Belushi, one gets the impression that they were very difficult people to live with—much more enjoyable at a distance than in your living room.

March-April 1990, ATC 25