THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607210041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: 58 lines
All Bob Dole needs about now is a photo opportunity at an orphanage so he can yell at some children.
It would complete the mean-ol'-man image he seems to be honing.
In just a matter of weeks, he's lit into Katie Couric, TV's perkiest of hosts. (Sam Donaldson would have been a better target.) And insulted the entire NAACP membership by skipping their national convention, then accusing the group's president, Kweisi Mfume, of setting him up.
I don't know much about politics - international tariffs and flat taxes confuse me - but it seems to me that the reason Clinton is double digits ahead of Dole is because Clinton seems nicer, he ``feels your pain.''
Even if President Clinton is caught up in all kinds of nefarious things - Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate - he has that neighborly, hey-how-ya-doin' kind of look compared with Dole's dour, don't-come-any-closer demeanor.
Dole's aides say he has a quick wit and a dry humor, but it comes across as mean-spirited. Hasn't anyone told him that nice is ``in'' right now? Doesn't he read Newsweek? It was on last week's cover.
Sally Jessy is out, Rosie O'Donnell is in. Cal Ripken, in; Newt Gingrich, out. Helen Hunt, big in; Roseanne, way out.
Even Geraldo Rivera, best known for having his nose broken on the air, says he's cleaning up his act, along with the guests on his daytime talk show.
Now, he's going to be . . . nice!
We in the news business are famous for declaring trends where there aren't any. And this latest can easily be dismantled when you consider evidence to the contrary: Church burnings. Child beatings. Hate crimes. Not to mention that guy who cut me off on the interstate the other day. (You know who you are.)
Still, a niceness trend wouldn't be a bad thing.
The '80s were sort of an in-your-face, I'll-get-mine decade, what with Leona Helmsley earning her Queen of Mean title, and Donald Trump defining the ``Whoever dies with the most toys wins'' lifestyle.
Now companies are downsizing. The stock market's erratic. People are feeling anxious. If the ship's sinking, we might as well be nice to one another on the way down.
That means letting someone get ahead of you in line. Not honking when someone goes too slowly in the passing lane. Counting the items in your basket before getting in the 10-items-or-fewer aisle at the grocery store. A smile and a hello, instead of a flip of a finger.
We've had these flings with niceness before. The flower-power, peace-and-love craze in the '60s, which seems a little vapid now. Then, those yellow smiley faces and ``Have a nice day'' greetings that eventually drove everyone crazy. I've had the words hurled at me on more than one occasion. And who can forget the ``random acts of kindness'' that were so popular a few years ago.
Whatever happened to those, anyway?
Too bad civility has to be a fad, instead of a general standard of behavior. The danger of declaring ``nice'' a trend is that it eventually becomes passe.
By next week, the media will be declaring niceness too fluffy. And a ``get tough'' attitude will slide back over into the ``what's in'' column.
If so, maybe Dole has a fighting chance after all. by CNB