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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

He Has A Solid Successor On The Great Ship Of State

Compiled By Staff Writer Rick Bo

Loose talk

Sen. Jesse Helms, on receiving a pig valve during quadruple heart bypass surgery (in Roll Call magazine): “Every time I pass a plate of barbecue, I cry. It might be one of my relatives.”

Sonny Bono is doing just fine in Washington, D.C., says someone who should know - former Congressman Fred “Gopher” Grandy.

The onetime “Love Boat” star tells TV Guide that Bono has “maintained the same good humor and naive, laid-back composure we used to see on ‘Hollywood Squares.’

“He and I both know what a brutal and dehumanizing business politics is,” Grandy adds. “There is no other trade that can adequately prepare you for the indignities of running for office, no other profession as unforgiving - except maybe one: show business.”

If the trend continues, “One day a wise and respected former Rep. Sonny Bono will sit down and pen a few words of advice to his successor - Congresswoman Heather Locklear.”

Nobody ever gets him the right stuff anyway

Wally Schirra turns 72 today.

He’s just trying to fill Tom Foley’s drawers

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, dishing it out to House Speaker Newt Gingrich in The New York Times Magazine: “You hear Gingrich’s staff has these five file cabinets - four big ones and this little tiny one. No. 1 is ‘Newt’s ideas.’ No. 2, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ No. 3, No. 4, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ The little one is ‘Newt’s Good Ideas.”’

Elephants? Clowns? They would fit right in

According to the Washington Post, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus officials are trying to get permission to bring 18 elephants, 18 clowns and assorted other big-top types to the Capitol grounds next month for “a salute to Congress.”

Her carriage, however, turned into a pumpkin

Hillary Rodham Clinton donated her inaugural ball gown to the Smithsonian last week, adding to a Clinton collection including Chelsea’s ballet slippers, a “Health Care That’s Always There” bumper sticker and a T-shirt depicting the Clinton-Gore campaign bus.

After that, the bloom was definitely off

A new book, “Rose: The Life and Times of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy” reveals that the no-nonsense matriarch once sent Jackie Kennedy Onassis to her room for appearing late for a family dinner.

It’s about time we elected a couch potatoe

Garrison Keillor is wondering whether he sold Dan Quayle short. As he told Time magazine: “Anyone who chooses to spend 1995 at home in Indiana enjoying family life rather than preening, fawning, blithering, truckling and marketing flannel-mouthed pieties while living in motel rooms with burnt-orange carpeting is a man with the good taste and common sense we want in a president.”

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino