Pinky's pen name

P&J have a scoop! Reading through last Sunday's New York Times, we came across a review of a book titled Madeleine's World; A Child's Journey from Birth to Age Three. It was ostensibly written by Brian Hall, but your superior correspondents suspect that the true author is none other than the Urinal's Mark Patinkin.

To prove our case that The Big Pink One is once again in the book market, Phillipe and Jorge rely upon the comments made by reviewer Randy Cohen and excerpted parts of Madeline's World.

Cohen writes, "Brian Hall has written the life of a 3-year-old. His own 3-year-old. This is not a sly literary satire of biographical excess, this is parental doting."As an example, Cohen cites the following excerpt.

"We had sometimes called her the Bun when she was in the womb, as in `the bun's in Pam's [his wife's] oven,' and at birth the moniker had lengthened naturally into Honeybun, or Hon-bun, which later exfoliated into Hon-Bun Humbledy Bum, at which point it was futile trying to keep out the Bumble Bee tuna jingle of my childhood, and I went the whole nine yards: `Ho-bun Humbledy Bum Bum Hon-bun Bum,' and so on."

Cohen adds, "And so on. And on and on. For 262 pages. That we find our own children utterly endearing is nature's way of assuring that we don't cook, kill, or eat them."

Well, if this isn't exactly the type of parental drivel churned out by Pinky, we don't know what is. As Cohen remarks, "One can surmise a great deal about a book if the word `journey` appears on the cover but no train has appeared by page 10." Phillipe and Jorge know just what you mean, Randy.

Where are you when we need you, Jonathan Swift?

Please talk down to us

Is there anything that gives you more of a warm and fuzzy feeling and makes you feel proud of yourself than someone who speaks to you in the most condescending manner possible? Evidently, members of the Clinton administration don't think so. Their attitude toward the American public seems to have reached new levels of disdain for the intelligence of the great unwashed.

P&J aren't referring to the outright, boldfaced lying that has marked the behavior of President Billary's gang over the last six years. That's simply laughable, as when boxes of Hillary's record miraculously appeared in the White House or when Justice Department officials said they weren't notified of the existence of Billary's coffee-club videotapes because it was a Jewish holiday.

We are even more appalled by the aberrant behavior of Al "Two-by-Four" Gore, who often attends press conferences with a plank lodged firmly up his freckle and who lectures the media and public about "no controlling legal authority" in tones you wouldn't use to talk to a blind, deaf, and brain-damaged cocker spaniel.

You see, we just don't understand these highfalutin legal intricacies as well as Gore does, although we are crystal-clear on how he falsely claimed to have been using a Democratic National Committee credit card to make illegal campaign contributions.

The worst came this week, courtesy of the White House's professional liar, Mike McCurry. Responding to criticism over the blatant hypocrisy of Billary calling for campaign reforms while working high-priced banquet spreads for favor-buying dollars, McCurry said that if we average citizens had a problem with it, we should write out congressional representatives and demand campaign reform.

And if we are still upset that Clinton continues to go for the dough with a total lack of shame or conscience, we should simply "get used to it."

Sorry, but that's the kind of disrespect for individuals we'd suspect to find in a Latin American despot regime. But, hey, as long as those favorable ratings for President Sellout continue, maybe we should just "get used to" this kind of treatment.

Cataclysm

For those in the news business, the challenge to find stories to keep consumers entertained can be formidable. Thank God for septuplets and fashion makeovers of formerly frowzy-looking British au pairs recently sprung from the pokey.

Then there's the return of the dead Scientologist story. (The trial's about to begin.) Apparently, a young Texas woman, Lisa McPherson, died while being kept in seclusion under the care of other church members. If you haven't seen this one yet, you will due to such exciting bonus features as the episode leading off a recent New York Times account.

In the article, the Times describes how an anguished Ms. McPherson strips off all her clothes after a minor traffic accident in Clearwater, Florida. Of course, Ms. McPherson was a "babe." Now, if the media could only connect Tom Cruise and John Travolta to this . . . .

Phillipe & Jorge are surprised, though, that one of the biggest fun-house stories ever to hit the UK has not been heavily covered here in the US. It's a story combining a mysterious disappearance, intrigue at the highest levels of government, and a cute little gray-and-white cat -- Humphrey, the Permanent Downing Street Cat.

It seems that some time in 1989, a stray cat wandered into the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, which, at the time, was occupied by pinch-faced female impersonator Margaret Thatcher. The cat was dubbed "Humphrey," and he continued to hang out at Downing throughout the tenure of John Major as well. The recent arrival of the Blairs, however, changed all that.

PM Tony's wife, Cherie, has openly admitted that she does not like cats. Then, last week it was reported that Humphrey had disappeared. With no septuplet births happening anywhere north of Calais and no jet-set princesses left to hound, the jickey press swung into action and demanded to know what had become of Humphrey.

The Blair Administration claimed that the cat was ill and resting in a quieter place. They even released a photograph of Humphrey at rest. But the Times of London disputed this, suggesting that the Humphrey in the official photo was a stunt kitty double.

The Daily Star clamored for DNA tests, while the Tory opposition were poised to sponsor an investigation by Amnesty International. "Unless I hear from him or he makes a public appearance, I suspect he has been shot," Conservative M.P. Alan Clark thundered on the floor of Parliament. Just like a Thatcherite to sit around and wait for a phone call from a cat.

Maybe Muriel Sargent, the 70-year-old woman who is being rousted from her Public Housing Authority apartment in New Bedford for owning too many cats, could send one of her 10 charges to London if it turns out that Humphrey has indeed met with an untimely end.

Dick and O.J.

These days, when your superior correspondents just want to kick back and have a few laughs, we pick up the newly published Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, edited by Stanley Kutler. We thought it might be a nice idea to share with our readers a compendium of Big Nick's anti-Semitic slurs (Nixon to Haldeman, September 14, 1971: "What about the rich Jews? . . . You see, IRS is full of Jews, Bob . . . I think that's the reason they're after [Billy] Graham, is the rich Jews"), but, frankly, we don't have the column space.

However, we did notice an interesting reference in an October 16, 1972 discussion (once again) between Nixon and Haldeman. In this dialogue, described by Professor Kutler as one of those conversations clearly "contrived and staged for taping to reiterate what they did or did not know," Nixon "goes to elaborate lengths to disassociate himself from recently revealed campaign dirty tricks."

Nixon posits the idea that the connection the press was making between dirty-tricks operative Donald Segretti and White House aide Dwight Chapin was merely "guilt by association.

"They went to the same college, right, and [unintelligible], University of Southern California. I just wanted to remind you that she [Pat Nixon] is also a graduate of the University of Southern California and so is O.J. Simpson."

Jockular

During the overkill of football games over the holidays, Phillipe and Jorge were ambushed by a gem of a line amidst the unrelenting jock babble. In a NESN feature on the traditional inter-island football rivalry between Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard high schools, Leigh Carroll, a player on the first-ever Martha's Vineyard team in the 1950s, described his introduction to the sport, which many of his fledgling teammates had never played before or, for that matter, had even seen as an organized activity.

As Carroll told the story, at the first practice Jack Kelley, the coach of the brand-new team, walked over to him with a football and said, "Son, do you think you can pass this?" The naive Carroll replied, "Gee, I'm not even sure I can swallow it."

Ba-boom!

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