. . . and reporters don't drink

For those Vo Dilanduhs who don't get the Metro edition of the daily BeloJo and have been thwarted in their attempts to follow the ongoing case of Providence firefighter Julia O'Rourke, we include here the exciting high point of Monday's session.

Noting the built-in potential for astounding testimony from Providence officials, Phillipe & Jorge, of course, have been breathlessly following the case of Ms. O'Rourke, who is suing the city in US District Court for allegedly violating her civil rights by allowing a pervasive atmosphere of sexual harassment in the Fire Department.

Among the specifics of Ms. O'Rourke's case are assertions that she often came across sexually suggestive (or downright lewd) photographs of naked women while she was on active duty at various fire stations in the early 1990s.

Upon reading this, Phillipe & Jorge reeled backward in utter shock. Next they'll tell us that some of the people smoking medical marijuana in California are not really sick or that there's a city worker somewhere in Our Little Towne who forgot to contribute to the mayor's reelection campaign.

On Monday, former fire chief Alfred F. Bertoncini took the stand. Bertoncini, who served with the Providence Fire Department for more than 35 years, claimed that he remembered seeing a sexually explicit photograph in a fire station only once, sometime "in the 1960s." Hey, Phillipe and Jorge remember that we once heard this thing called "rock 'n' roll." We think that was sometime in the 1960s as well.

Bertoncini apparently suppressed any desire he might have had to describe how all the guys at the fire station spent their time sitting around reading Bible stories to each other or discussing the relative merits of reading Proust in the original French. Although Phillipe & Jorge are not exactly gamblin' men, we'd be willing to wager that if there's more testimony like the former chief's, O'Rourke will win her case hands down.

Chill, Patrick

Phillipe and Jorge might as well hop on the bandwagon of folks requesting that our close personal friend Congressman Patrick Kennedy cool it with the campaign rhetoric. After all, his much-predicted run for a Senate seat in the Biggest Little against Senator John Chafee is two years away. It's simply not becoming, Patrick.

In addition to running around Newport getting carded at bars, where he goes unrecognized, young Patrick has been hanging out with such auspicious local leaders as Pucky Harwood and George of the Jungle Caruolo. Of course, this can't be designed to win him any votes.

Both Harwood and Caruolo ran virtually unopposed, Patrick -- hardly an indicator of long coattails in Pawtucket and East Providence, where less than discriminating tastes obviously prevail. Kennedy has now drawn fire even across the border in Massachusetts, where Channel 56's political analyst Jon Keller, in a July 24 op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, skewered Kennedy's explanation for supporting the Narragansett Indians' proposed high-stakes bingo palace in Charlestown. Kennedy had said he was concerned "about restoring the dignity of a people who have endured more pain and loss of identity than we will ever know."

P&J must agree with Mr. Keller that hosing old ladies at bingo games is hardly the way to restore one's "dignity," however sorely treated someone has been in the past. Perhaps Patrick would care to point out how many Native Americans versus corporate white boys actually benefit from gambling on tribal territory. Seems to us the pale faces are doing darn well using Indians as a beard in the casino racket, a fact that Patrick undoubtedly is aware of, despite his duplicitous chin wag.

Not that the Kennedys would avoid stooping to any level to gain votes. We certainly were impressed with Teddy's selfless call for the approval of Bill Weld to the Mexican ambassadorship, despite Weld's GOP affiliations.

Yes, Teddy Bare and presidential wannabe and society gigolo John Kerry are certainly above partisan politics, as long as Weld's departure -- self-inflicted as it turned out to be -- opens the door for the unspeakable Joe Kennedy's run for governor against anybody but Weld, whom Joe would have no chance of beating.

ABC = All But Comatose

Television fans in the Biggest Little still remember former WPRI-TV executive Bob Finke's infamous comment during a journalism seminar moderated by Phillipe and Jorge a few years back, when Finke said he regarded his viewers as "dumb as shit."

Well, Phillipe and Jorge wonder how Finke would regard the front genii at ABC, who just spent $40 million to come up with a new logo featuring the colors black and yellow. Yep, it cost about the GNP of a developing nation to have TBWA Chiat/Day, a California-based (gee, there's a big surprise) ad agency, convince these great minds that the two colors go well together.

Not that the agency's chairman, Lee Clow, didn't have a compelling logic for ABC's bigwigs: "What do we call this yellow -- we call this yellow color `yellow.' " P&J are willing to bet the house that Mr. Clow is the type of person who refers to himself in the third person when he speaks.

If this weren't enough to make you want to park the tiger (yet another yellow-and-black fan favorite), ABC is combining this excess in artistic stupidity with an ad campaign whose theme is "TV Is Good." Pardon? Not on any of America's three major networks it isn't.

We suspect this is another of those sales pitches that 10 overpaid egotists sitting in an ad agency meeting room without enough oxygen came up with. It's not unlike Channel 10's new campaign, which solemnly intones variations on "Channel 10 is RESPONSIBLE," leaving your superior correspondents with images of Dougie White, Ginger Casey, Gary Ley and the rest of the JAR-heads bumping around the newsroom like zombies from Night of the Living Dead and chanting "Channel 10 is responsible," "Channel 10 is trustworthy" as soon as the lights go out after the 11 o'clock news.

One of ABC's cutesy "TV Is Good" spots (no, not the one that says, "It's a beautiful day. What are you doing outside?") assures viewers, "Don't worry, you've got billions of brain cells." In regard to ABC executives, we definitely beg to differ.

Pot Pol-itics

No, we're not alluding to the vicious genocidal madman presently in custody in Cambodia after two decades in hiding (although the video shot at his "show trial" that aired on Nightline this Monday night was certainly astonishing). We're talking about the situation surrounding the former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, who stepped down on Monday to pursue his nomination by the Billary Administration as ambassador to Mexico.

Senator Jesse Helms, head ramrod of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claims that Weld's position on the medical marijuana issue makes him unfit to serve as ambassador. As a result, Helms won't even open up the confirmation process.

Hey, maybe it's true that Weld ain't the right guy (although we disagree). And maybe his support for the legal medical use of marijuana is completely wrongheaded (once again, we disagree). Maybe his nomination also has more to do with getting him out of the state to help Boy Joe Kennedy in the Bay State gubernatorial race next year. (Now we're getting warm.)

No matter what the deal is, though, who the hell does Jesse Helms think he is to decide not to hold hearings? It's the gutless act of a petty and vindictive man with a powerful streak of the totalitarian in him.

We would hope that even those on the same wavelength with Helms politically (those who did not die, that is, during the Black Plague that swept through Europe), would realize that his silence on the issue and his refusal to schedule hearings is essentially an act of cowardice. But what do you expect from an out-and-out bigot, a butt boy for Big Tobacco, and a homophobe extraordinaire?

R.I.P.

. . . Art Turgeon, longtime Other Paper reporter. Well-respected by his fellow staffers as a consistent and unshakable pro, Art passed away in a tragic automobile accident on the New York State Thruway on July 24. He was only 54 years old.

. . . retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. A true hero to anyone who ever cared about the Constitution. One man who truly lived up to the title "Justice."

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