Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992 TAG: 9202150235
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BUSH MAY TRY AGAIN TO CHECK OUT THE EXPRESS LANE
I understand that all of the thinkers in the White House are looking for ways to gloss over President Bush's famous checkout lane boner.We have seen how the leader of this republic went to a meeting of the National Grocers Association and thought those screens that checkout persons use to add up purchases were a startling innovation in the food business.
Even those of us who try to stay out of supermarkets know this is not an awfully new development in the grocery sciences.
It still makes us nervous, but it is not new.
This unfamiliarity with the grainier facts of life probably would make the president a handy victim for people who abuse express lanes.
It's worse than that, though. Critics immediately began saying that a president who doesn't know about what is going in the checkout lanes of this country is out of touch with reality and the people.
They said that in the case of the Bushes, servants went to the grocery store. They called him a preppy and suggested he wouldn't know the dairy section if he fell into the low-fat milk display.
You can understand how anxious the White House people are to turn this around before some Democratic candidate claims he works part-time as a bagger at Food Lion.
One source says that a commercial will be made showing Barbara Bush at an A&P - checking the computer screen out with her own calculator and arguing with a guilty-looking woman in the express lane.
Another thought is that the president should do a commercial in which he is shown in a huge Kroger store.
He faces the camera grimly. In the same tone he used to announce Operation Desert Storm, he says:
"Barbara and I won't tolerate people who take too many items into express checkout lanes. I urge other Americans to help stamp out this national disgrace. I can assure you, you will not be fighting with one arm tied behind your backs."
Another proposal would be a commercial in which Barbara drives a 4-year-old Volvo station wagon with Millie and some grandchildren in back. She pumps her own gas, checks her own oil and ruins her plain Republican coat trying to squeegee the windshield.
Both of them would be shown operating a banking machine, using a personal computer and punching buttons on a microwave oven.
I don't think any of the above will work. Once you flunk out in America's checkout lane, it's all over, pal.
But I would have to say this: George may be an elitist, but you have to envy a man who doesn't have to fool around with express lanes.