Horror
BY PHILLIPE & JORGE
You don't need Phillipe & Jorge to tell you that no words, written or
spoken, can ameliorate the horror and overwhelming sense of sadness that hang
over our entire state. If anything ever underscored the sense that Rhode Island
is family, the tragedy in West Warwick has shown how intertwined we all are
and, indeed, how the usual six degrees of separation are fewer here. Anyone who
has spent any time living in our beautiful state knows this.
And anyone who has lived here for any amount of time knows of the authentic
generosity of spirit shared by Rhode Islanders. This inconceivable tragedy has
certainly borne out the way in which, more than most geographic entities, Rhode
Island perceives of itself as a tight-knit collective. So we grieve, we all
grieve.
No one is left untouched. Jorge worked in radio for many years, so it should
come as no surprise that Michael Gonsalves, "The Doctor," "Doctor Metal,"
"Gonzo," (or as Jorge affectionately called him, "Dr. Mental") was a friend and
colleague. As he was starting out in commercial radio at WHJY, Michael was an
intern, and then a producer, for Jorge. There was no one more ebullient or
joyful who embraced life in the way that The Doctor did. We were always happy
to see him, and more to the point, he had the natural ability to generate
enthusiasm and a positive, life-affirming joy in anybody who crossed his
path.
And thankfully for us, Dr. Metal touched tens of thousands of lives over the
years. He was a source of good in Jorge's life and the lives of so many of his
listeners. In purely human terms, this is an inestimable loss. There is no
doubt that many, many of the others who perished were sources of similar
inspiration for their friends and family. Know this, though: for those who
worked with him, followed him for years on the radio, and especially for his
close friends and family, Michael "The Doctor" Gonsalves was a very special
person. For those of us who were fortunate enough to have known him, our grief
is monumental.
It is also a classic "Rhode Island thing" that one of the owners of the
Station was Jeff Derderian, who worked in radio alongside Dr. Metal and Jorge
(Rudy Cheeks, for the uninitiated). Believe us when we say that there is
nothing feigned about Jeff's inconsolable pain and suffering. He is going
through hell, too. We do not know if Jeff and his brother, Michael, will be
found culpable of neglect, but we fear so and our hearts go out to them as
well.
At this writing, not all the names of those who perished or were grievously
injured are publicly known. We are certain that others we personally know will
be among them. Your superior correspondents suspect this will be true of so
many who are reading this. Our hearts go out to everyone. In your superior
correspondents more than 100 years of combined life (meaning we're both over
50, folks), we've never known a worse week.
Love and hate
We presume that no one is exactly surprised to see the latest Brown University
polling results, released on Monday by Darrell West at Brown's Taubman Center
for Public Policy, showing both Governor Don "The Don" L. Carcieri and
Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline with strong performance marks. P&J tend
to think there's a strange and unusual reason for this: both executives are
performing well and the public is noticing. We know -- stuff like that is
unheard of in the Biggest Little, but there is more than enough evidence to
suggest that The Don and David richly deserve their respective 69 percent and
76 percent approval ratings.
One thing that no human deserves is the incredible piece of hate trash we
picked up on the Web. It came from a homophobic moron group in Topeka, Kansas,
which has made a name for itself in recent years, proving that there is
apparently no bottom to human decency. No one can take them seriously, of
course, but just the idea that idiots like this roam the earth on their hind
legs is pretty amazing. We won't publish such obscene crap here, but you can
check it out at
www.godhatesfags.com/fliers/feb2003/RI_Nightclub_Fire_2-21-2003.pdf and behold
this breathtaking hate and stupidity.
More Rum tales
When last we wrote about our testosterone-engorged secretary of defense, Rummy
Rumsfeld, it was to point out that this aging chicken hawk had in essence been
Saddam Hussein's butt-boy back in the 1980s, when Rummy was special Mideast
envoy. At the time, Mr. Rumsfeld played the Three Wise Monkeys when it came to
acknowledging that Saddam was busy gassing his Iranian foes in a Mideast
conflict, a little trick he would repeat a few years later on his own people,
the Kurds. That, of course, now provides our rhetorical ammunition for calling
Saddam a murdering madman, an appellation that Rummy didn't see fit to apply
when Saddam was on our side, and it was the Iranians who were the heathen sons
of the desert.
Now, through the reporting of check it out at
www.swissinfo.org, we are told, "Donald
Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was on the board of technology giant ABB
when it won a deal [in early 2000] to supply North Korea with two nuclear power
plants. Weapons experts say waste material from the two reactors could be used
for so-called `dirty bombs.' "
A spokesman for ABB said Ragin' Rummy attended "nearly all the board meetings"
during his 1990-2001 tenure at the company, but surprise, surprise, wouldn't
reveal whether or not he knew about the deal. (Right. Rummy never gets into
micromanaging, does he?) The ABB deal, which was to have supplied the reactors
in exchange for those pesky North Koreans stopping their nuclear weapons
program is embarrassing. This is because it catches Rumsfeld being totally
two-faced again as long as a corporate profit is involved, and it's now being
used by Dubya and his chicken hawks to criticize the Clinton administration,
since North Korea went ahead with the nukes anyway.
Funny how the very nations Rummy is itching to obliterate just happen to know
all too well where he has already buried his bodies.
How low can you go?
It is bad enough that virtually every magazine has taken the lead of Sports
Illustrated and begun to run an annual -- if not quarterly -- swimsuit
issue. Just more high school laddies who will soon need glasses, we suspect.
But Phillipe and Jorge's jaws dropped the other day while walking down the
aisle at our local drug store and saw yet another mag joining the parade of
pulchritude. This wasn't just any old rag -- it was National Geographic,
which announced "100 Years of Swimsuits" over a glossy photo of a pretty young
thing.
Now, this is a real gutter crawl for the esteemed journal, but it also brings
back National Geo's legendary use of topless photos of predominantly
African women in its pages, prior to their getting on the Donna Karan bandwagon
out in the bush. Baby boomers will recall how titillating this seemed
(ba-boom), while not quite being able to see the inherent insult this
represented to blacks everywhere. Needless to say, photos of topless farm women
in Iowa were far fewer between National Geo's covers.
Big-time politics
Wonder what happened to that lawsuit against veep Big Time Cheney, for refusing
to disclose the members of his energy task force? Www.thehill.com reported in a
February 19 story on how the General Accounting Office abandoned the suit after
overt budget-cutting threats by Senator Appropriations Committee chair Ted
Stevens, the GOP Neanderthal from Alaska, to the head of GAO. This had quite a
bit to do with GAO backing off.
The GAO is intended to be an independent investigative arm of Congress. But
like so much more of the "civilian's rights" window-dressing we get -- even as
John Ashcroft is wrapping Justice Department's statues' naked breasts in cloth
(they'd never do that at National Geo, Johnny!) -- it looks like yet
another one bites the dust in DC while the GOP holds the majority. Sleep tight,
Mr. and Mrs. America.
Faced again
P&J find it laughable that Paul H. Cressy, the president and CEO of the
"Distilled Spirits Council" (actually, that's a pretty good name for somebody's
Thursday night poker club), is fuming. Seems that a recent study by the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University,
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says that
teenagers consume 20 percent of the alcohol in the US and another 30 percent of
the booze is downed by adults who are drinking to excess. This means that half
of all alcohol consumption is, as NCASA study leader Susan E. Foster puts it,
"a product of misuse and abuse."
While Cressy accuses the researchers of "playing fast and loose with the
data," P&J say, let's face reality, folks. We assume that most of you
grown-ups out there were unable to skip your teenage years and therefore know
the truth about underage drinking (it is rampant and has been for years). And
anyone who's logged time in a tavern or lounge knows that a fairly high
percentage of those imbibing spirits are not just having two glasses of dry
sherry spaced out over three hours.
Of course, our ideas about how to best deal with social issues like, say,
drunk driving, have been totally rejected because they're so European and
socialistic. These would be vastly improving mass transit (something that would
also have a hugely positive environmental effect, while also making a positive
contribution to the social polity, perhaps, by introducing people to their
neighbors). But we know that this kind of thinking doesn't stand a chance in
this "Eat Me, I'm a Yahoo Capitalist" world. We don't have the time or the
money anyway, because we've got to start concentrating on killing people in
Iraq.
Send clear thoughts and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com.
Issue Date: February 28 - March 6, 2003
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