ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SONNY BONO'S views on foreign policy are hardly worth notice, no matter how outrageous they might be. Could anyone take seriously the ill-informed, ill-considered ad-libs of a lightweight pop star turned lightweight political personality? Certainly not his host, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who invited Bono to Roanoke for a fund-raiser, but lost no time distancing himself from his guest's bizarre theories about President Clinton using CIA hit squads in Haiti and his rash portrayal of the president as "a criminal."
Who cares what Bono thinks?
Still, his spokesman's effort to explain away the California congressman's remarks as a straight-shooter's inability to speak in terms that are "politically correct" deserves rebuttal. It's nice Bono has apologized. But his comments were not "politically incorrect." They were incorrect.
ANOTHER CASE where celebrity threatens to overwhelm categories of right and wrong: the story of the scamp who stole the baseball (and possibly a game) while it was still in play during Thursday's opener of the American League championship series between the Yankees and the Orioles.
A bad call by the right field umpire, who should have called interference, helped the Yanks to a win. Now the kid with the larcenous glove is being hailed by some New York fans as a hero.
He is 12. Age alone makes his action excusable. But admirable? The fact that some are lionizing the kid may help explain why the nation doesn't seem to have real heroes anymore. Honor? Courage? Nobility of purpose? Forget it. Just get the win, and you come home a hero.
CANDIDATES can get in trouble these days for the sleaze of their win-at-any-price consultants, who are becoming minor celebrities in their own right (or wrongs). Like Bill Clinton, who hustled Dick Morris out of a job, Sen. John Warner did well to move with dispatch in dispatching his consultants. They had doctored a TV ad with a bogus photograph of his opponent.
As with the Morris affair, though in a smaller scale, amorality and stupidity are equally apparent in the consultants' disgrace. But give John Warner credit for, unlike Clinton, publicly assuming responsibility and acknowledging a "serious, terrible mistake."
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB