Bottom Lines Staff Writer Jim Kershner’s Look At The News

Who ever thought it would go this far?

I listened to Newt Gingrich on the radio the other day and found myself agreeing with most of what he said. Good God, what kind of monster have I become?

We’re a pathologically fickle people

I’m sure this feeling won’t last through the year. Lately, we Americans admire our leaders only up to the point at which they actually have to start leading.

Three full terms of baiting and hounding

It’s a good thing we weren’t so fickle about FDR, for instance. We would have made his last 12 years in office a living hell.

The GOP had better succeed, or else

Let’s face it, most Americans are hoping that Newt and the Republicans won’t go down in flames. For one thing, failure will only harm the country. For another thing, failure means that in 1996 we’ll end up with: Ross Perot.

We’ll be trading Bob Edwards for whom?

That Gingrich interview was broadcast on, ironically, National Public Radio. Many conservatives want to gut NPR’s funding and let the market dictate who survives in radio. Don’t they realize they’ll end up with Howard Stern?

Republicans will be begging for Cokie Roberts

I can just see Stern interviewing Gingrich in ‘96. His most probing question will be, “Newt, are you wearing any underwear?”

Has anybody noticed that the audience is Republican?

Some conservatives also want to do away with the National Endowment for the Arts. This is an agency that mostly funds things like symphony orchestras, which cater to a flaming liberal audience of bankers and their wives.

Orchestras can switch to rap, for revenue purposes

Actually, symphony orchestras cater to a small and dangerous cultural elite in America: People with good taste. Let’s stamp them out, once and for all.

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