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The start of a new year is a good time to clean your files and start over. My files had some notes which never got developed into full-fledged columns. I'm too much of a pack rat to just throw them out without using them, so:
· Former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez is the nation's new drug czar. He replaces William Bennett, who was going to make an example of Washington, D.C.
During Bennett's tenure, Washington had the highest crack and murder rates in the observable universe. Miami came in second. The worst Drug & Crime Fighter in America has been replaced by the second-worst Drug & Crime Fighter.
In the Bush administration, this is considered progress.
· Bennett had been scheduled to become the chairman of the Republican National Committee. On one hand, it would have been frightening if he ran political campaigns the way he ran the drug war -- a huge network of laboratories to conduct random tests for bleeding hearts, rather than impure blood, with instant unemployment for anyone testing positive on a liberal sympathy analysis.
But on the other hand, given Bennett's record in fighting drugs, the Democrats would have won every election from dog catcher to the White House if Bennett had been in charge of Republican campaigns.
Alas, Bennett backed out of the Republican leadership job, so we'll never get to find out.
·Last November, 36-year-old Randy Darrell Bowles of Tulsa, Okla., was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
His heinous crime was pinching two women on the buttocks. Had he committed this atrocious deed in 1989, it would have been a misdemeanor. But in the advanced state of Oklahoma in the enlightened year of 1990, his roaming hands performed sexual battery, which is a felony worth five years for each offense.
No one this side of Rome would argue that men have a right to goose women as they pass by. But 10 years for causing a momentary aggravation? Wouldn't 30 days or a $500 fine been enough?
And do you remember those Revlon ads for Charlie
perfume? The ones with the dapper dressed-for-success
businesswoman goosing a male colleague as the headline
announced She's very Charlie
?
I don't know any men who enjoy getting pinched on the rump, any more than I know any women who do. (And if you do happen to find pleasure from surprise pinches on the posterior, I have an old office chair I'd be glad to sell you. Every hour or so, just when you feel comfortable, it finds a new way to get you.)
So why weren't the Defenders of Personal Body Integrity
complaining about the sordid message of the Revlon ads?
We'll have to revise a cherished saying: What's sauce
for the goose is a felony for the gander.
And thus does
the cause of sexual equality advance.
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