
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994                   TAG: 9411220081
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE GOP HAS AUNT ZELDA UPTIGHT

Most Republicans, all commentators and some newspaper analysts may have left the impression that you would wake up one morning days after the election and find that Herbert Hoover was in the White House.

This didn't fool me. I'm a trained observer, and I didn't think for a minute that the Republicans were going to do away with Social Security before Christmas. There are good Republican merchants out there who depend on Christmas sales to make their year. Old people buy stuff, you know.

The Republicans said they were going to do away with a lot of things. But I didn't panic. I'll admit I thought about asking the children if they would take us in if worse came to worse.

I did no such thing. I bagged some leaves and kept repeating: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Social Security is safe for now. Maybe they'll abolish it on the 12th Day of Christmas, 2001. These things take time.

But an elderly person like your Aunt Zelda is likely to panic and believe she will lose her Social Security as punishment for voting Republican when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for a fourth term.

Not to mention voting for Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Don't be surprised the next time you go to Aunt Zelda's and she's so preoccupied she forgets to give you a six-pack of her home-made root beer. You might smell a little ammonia Coke on her breath. Or maybe even cooking sherry.

She'll never tell you, of course, but she has been to the bank, cashed in all of her certificates of deposit and sewn the greenbacks into the mattress in the guest room.

Instead of sticking with "As the World Turns," Aunt Zelda has unfortunately been tuned into Newt Gingrich. It's not surprising. Old Newt was on every channel on the cable for days - with the exception of HBO. I understand he'll be on HBO eventually - as a special guest on "Real Sex 11."

I like Newt all right. He has a classy haircut, and you can bet it wasn't done by appointment with a stylist named Gabrielle. I think he goes to a barber shop run by a conservative Republican named Clarence.

But some of the things he's been saying have scared the hell of your Aunt Zelda.

Chances are she's rehung the 1936 portrait of FDR in the guest room, after taking it down in 1944.

No, I don't think there are any portraits of Newt available. Yet.

How about a nice Gerald Ford print? Or an Alf Landon button?

by CNB