Up to his boots in it

Sorry, but Phillipe and Jorge are already so sick of the phoniness of Al "Two-by-Four" Gore we can barely stand the sight of him. As if milking his sister's death from lung cancer while still taking money from tobacco companies, delusionally claiming he invented the Internet and that he and Tipper were the models for Erich Segal's Love Story, and then shaking down Buddhist nuns for money while lying about it wasn't bad enough, his current reinvention of himself is even more preposterous.

We are of course referring to the highly publicized move of his campaign headquarters from a fancy office building inside the Beltway to Nashville, or "from K Street to Kmart," as his staff members boasted. Forget the fact that the former Senator from Tennessee was raised in a swank hotel suite in D.C. and probably needs a map to find his way around Nashville, "Two-by-Four" is now ostentatiously wearing cowboy boots to show he's just one of the good ol' boys. The man born with the board in his buttocks wearing the symbol of the rough-and-ready westerner is about as ludicrous a match as Stephen Hawking sporting Air Jordans.

It is equally far from reassuring that when you go looking for the truth about Gore, you discover the fact that his campaign is being run by swindler Tony Coelho. And he's just hired gutter denizen Donna Brazile, who was fired from Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign for accusing George Bush of philandering. Real high-minded types working for the faux-righteous vice president. And remember, it was Gore in the Democratic primaries that year that raised the Willie Horton images against Dukakis that the GOP eventually successfully exploited in the presidential campaign.

Dollar Bill in RI

Since we're discussing Mr. Two-by-Four, equally galling and absurd is his new ploy of calling Bill Bradley a "quitter," and invoking a sports analogy in which Bradley is the type of player who gives up in a game, while wooden Indian Al leaves his heart on the court. The idea of this pantywaist preppie, whose idea of an athletic endeavor is logging on to his computer, trying to denigrate Bradley's legendary sporting feats, which are models for young athletes, makes your superior correspondents want to bitch-slap the Veep like the waterboy he's always been.

Bradley is gaining strength across the country and here in the Biggest Little, where his wife, author and professor Ernestine Schlant, will appear at an October 22 fund-raiser in La Prov. The fact that state Democratic Party Treasurer Jack McConnell is hosting the breakfast fund-raiser at his home, and, our spies tell us, party chairman Bill Lynch may soon be publicly endorsing Dollar Bill in the primary is a huge kick in Gore's butt within the Democratic machine hereabouts.

And we hope John Sweeney and the other crooks who lead the AFL-CIO -- now that they are about to endorse Gore -- will remember that the rank-and-file members are more likely to be pulling the Bradley lever in the booth, as they know the difference between a guy who is all boots and no cowboy, and one with legitimate achievements in the "guy" world. But we suspect that the AFL-CIO honchos simply want a person in the White House who jumps when they tell him to, rather than one who is more concerned with the AFL-CIO membership than with the fat cats who feed his coffers with whatever union money they haven't already stolen for themselves.

Brocking in the free world

It looks like former state representative and, most recently, unsuccessful Cranston mayoral candidate Brock Bierman is about to make a decision about pursuing the 2nd U.S. Congressional District being vacated by Bob "Dorian" Weygand. Last Saturday, the former Republican legislator held a picnic for supporters out on his spread in western Cranston. Good thing Brock rented a bunch of tents as it was pouring rain most of the afternoon. There was a surprisingly good turnout despite the lousy weather, including Charlie Arlinghaus, a New England regional director for the Republican National Committee.

Charlie is checking out Brock and, from what he told P&J, he likes what he sees. Although not exactly a household name, Bierman is young, energetic, attractive and not the typical all-fours scampering troglodyte the GOP frequently comes up with (Dr. John Elliott!!) when a higher profile candidate is unavailable.

For Bierman's part, he doesn't want to take the dive unless he's assured of some support (read: $$$$) from the National Party. P&J assume that Bierman is fully aware that the term "GOP state organization" is an oxymoron in Vo Dilun. So right now it looks like, if Brock can show the national crowd that he's a viable candidate (in other words, raise an agreed upon six figure amount of money by December), the RNC will furnish further backing.

No-compete is no fair: the crux of the Carolyn Fox case

Note: Jorge (Rudy Cheeks), who wrote this item, is Carolyn Fox's on-air radio partner, has been working in the radio industry for more than 15 years and in no way claims any objectivity on this subject.

erhaps you've caught the stories in the Other Paper, have seen something on the television news or have otherwise heard about the battle going on between the two broadcasting titans, Citadel and Clear Channel over the services of radio personality Carolyn Fox. Citadel, which owns WPRO-AM where Fox was fired a few weeks ago, is claiming that, by going to work for WWRX-FM (owned by Clear Channel), she is in violation of the no-compete clause in her contract. The case is in the courts and will eventually be worked out. As Fox's on-air partner, I, of course, have a stake in how and when this whole thing plays out. However, it is not about the particulars of this case that I care to write. Of greater importance is the whole reason that the case is in court in the first place: the fact that broadcasting companies are allowed, in the state of Rhode Island, to insert "no compete" clauses in their contracts.

For those unfamiliar with the term, here's how it works: when a TV news reporter, disc jockey, radio talk host or other on-air personality signs a contract with a broadcasting company in Vo Dilun, a no-compete clause is a standard element. It restricts the right of the employee to work for any other employer in a specified geographic area (generally, that ratings market) for a specified period of time (usually six months or a year) if the contract either expires or is terminated by either mutual agreement or termination by either the employer or the employee. This basically puts the employee in a sort of serf-to-feudal-lord-relationship with the broadcasting company.

No-compete clauses may make sense in certain industries, where trade secrets or specific formulas are vital to the competitive edge of a certain company. However, broadcasting is not one of those industries, especially now, when most of the radio and television entities are owned by a few gigantic corporations. The ability to deny a television or radio performer or journalist the opportunity to work gives a huge advantage to the oligarchy and has no place in a truly free market economy. A number of states have passed legislation (including Massachusetts, last year) to make this un-American and anti-competitive practice illegal and unenforceable. We should do the same here in the Biggest Little. That way, we wouldn't be witnessing a stupid corporate hose down contest, the courts wouldn't be tied up with petty non-issues like this, and Carolyn Fox would be allowed to work in order to support her two children.

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