ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 18, 1996 TAG: 9611190054
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
Now that we have at least 15 minutes to ourselves before there's another election, I need your help in my campaign to make the world a better place to live.
Right off, I call on you as Americans interested in a gentler time to refrain from laughing or making cute remarks about any hat Hillary Clinton may wear on Inauguration Day.
It would be a great help to our cause if she didn't wear a hat of any kind, but that's up to her.
It also would be nice if her husband would leave the saxophone alone just this once.
And further, during this lull in the noise and nonsense representative government makes, I think all of us should start doing our level best to like Newt Gingrich.
Sure. I know his last name suggests he'd love to spoil Christmas and other holidays for burned-out old geezers like yours truly, but what we need desperately right now is a lack of malice.
He might turn out to be a nicer person if he thought anybody liked him. Even kind of liked him. Listen: A guy with a first name like that is bound to have something likeable in him.
I know this isn't going to be easy. To tell you the truth, I said Hillary's last inaugural hat looked like a sombrero that had mutated. I've said some pretty cruel things about Newt's physique and hairdo.
Come on. It's not like I'm asking you to be nice to people with Yankee accents who call you up and yell BENJAMIN!!! in your ear while trying to sell you securities or something. Or nice girls with Southern accents who are trying to entice you into buying new windows.
I just want all you guys to stop saying you have to call 911 because you're having chest pains when your spouse says: "Chester. It's time we started talking about Christmas."
And make sure you run all of the gasoline out of the lawn mower and the string trimmer and the leaf blower before you put them away for the winter. Their little carburetors, or whatever, will get all gooped up if you don't and they won't start next spring.
And when they start, it makes for a better - and far less profane - world.
I want you to know that I will not waver in our effort. I'm fully prepared to start thinking well of Martha Stewart, Richard Simmons, Roseanne, Suzanne Somers, Terry Bradshaw, Bette Midler and Frank Gifford's wife.
Liking Newt will be easy once I get through those people.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB