Bottom Lines Columnist Jim Kershner’s Take On The News

Come visit the Smelterland USA Theme Park!

Here’s the most startling news item of the week: Some people in Kellogg and Smelterville want the Bunker Hill smokestacks preserved as “tourist attractions.” Hello? Has anybody asked any tourists about this?

A family vacation to remember

C’mon kids! We’re going to Smelterville to stare up at some big ugly smokestacks! It’ll be fun!

Dine in the fabulous Emissions Room

These smokestack preservationists are thinking maybe they could put a restaurant on top of one. Sure. These things were engineered with the idea that somebody might want to stick a Denny’s up there someday.

Yes, exactly like that big D.C. stack

Advocates have compared the smokestacks to another popular tourist attraction, the Washington Monument. The smokestacks even have their own Reflecting Pool. It’s called a “tailing pond.”

I’ll be in the front row for this

Here’s your tourist attraction: Sell tickets to watch these things blown to bits.

Silly question No. 854 to O’Grady

At Capt. Scott O’Grady’s news conference here, a reporter asked him if he “thought about Spokane” while dug face first into the ground in enemy territory eating leaf mold. He didn’t even laugh, which, to me, makes him a true hero.

What else is a guy to think about?

Of course, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he spent hours and hours fantasizing about Dick’s Drive-In.

It’ll just be another Sunday think-piece

I think the New York Times should print the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto. It can’t be any more boring than A.M. Rosenthal’s column.

Naked anarchists in love

I also think Penthouse should print it, along with a photo spread called “Hot Naked Babes Of The Anti-Technological Anarchist Movement.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Jim Kershner’s Bottom Lines appears Mondays on the Opinion page.