Clueless

Hats off to the sensitive Urinal headlines writers who identified the rather disturbed work of a 15-year-old East Greenwich High School student as a "prank." All the lad did, after all, was falsify a Web site to make a teacher appear to be an unpopular homosexual who molested dogs and children. Reminds us of other old pranksters, such as Ken Starr and Senator Joseph McCarthy. As former Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan remarked upon being exonerated after a highly visible trial, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"

And plaudits to Terry Murray and his posse of corporate buccaneers who continue to pursue a tax break for all the wing-tipped and Talbot-suited fat cats making more than $200,000 a year (this time, though, without even the previous offer of a guarantee of new jobs). Of course, these white collar bandits have enough money to hire the prestigious PR firm of Duffy & Shanley to make their case to the public while they sneak up the back steps of Halitosis Hall to Paul "Slappy" Kelly and John "Pucky"Harwood's office with brown paper bags in hand (so we wonder why they need financial assistance). Fat Terry and Co. better hope there are a lot of legislators eager to "spend more time with families," if they hope for this to pass, as any legislator who buys into this patent bullshit is looking at a loss in 2000.

Lost lights

"We, the people of Tanganyika, would like to light a candle and put it on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro which would shine beyond our borders giving hope where there was despair, love where there was hate, and dignity where there was before only humiliation."

Those were the words of Julius Nyerere, the former Tanzanian president and father of his country, when he addressed the Tanganyika Legislative Assembly before his country's independence on October 22, 1959, in a speech that came to be known as "A Candle on Kilimanjaro." Nyerere was one of P&J's political heroes, despite the failed socialist programs of "ujamma" that served his country so poorly during his later years. Know as "Mwalimu," which means "teacher" in Swahili, the common language he championed for Tanzania, he was one of the shapers of modern Africa, and a man of limitless intellect, culture, honesty and principle.

We first became a fan of Nyerere's when we saw him on TV, scoffing at US political concerns about Cuba, saying in a teasing lilt, "Your leaders are afraid of Cuba? This tiny little island, and you are afraid of it? Please!" A respected journalist friend of P&J's in Tanzania, which is now in total mourning over the loss of their version of George Washington, writes that, "Mwalimu -- teacher, is every Tanzanian's hero. He will long remain in Tanzania's history and Africa as a selfless man who spent his entire life fighting for human dignity. Few leaders I have known who can match the qualities of Nyerere." Amen.

Another Casa Diablo light was lost with the death of Wilt Chamberlain, the Big Dipper who shined as brightly as the stars in the constellation he was nicknamed after. Wilt went to the same high school as Phillipe's father, Overbrook in Philadelphia, and so became a favorite son. As a child, Phillipe first encountered Chamberlain at a Philadelphia Warriors game at the Palestra, where players would walk through the crowd to get to the court. He spun around just as Wilt was leaving the locker room, was soon staring directly at the knee pads Wilt wore on his shins, and nearly toppled over while looking up at the 7'1" giant. Chamberlain was a phenomenal athlete, a man well-respected by his peers on and off the playing fields he made his home, and despite an ego that led to his boast that he slept with 20,000 women, an intelligent gentleman. Thanks for the memories.

And, as we've said about the 20,000 babes, we're not there yet, but we've got the 10,000 maniacs covered.

Chacun a son gout

If the "Sensation" art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art has riled the tight-asses in New York City, like Rudy "Worse Hair Than Steve Brown" Giuliani, perhaps they can catch a performance of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler at the Westside Theater on West 43rd Street. In a highly favorable New York Times review of the alternately serious/comedic one-woman show, writer Anita Gates notes a line during Ensler's take on get-to-know-your-anatomy workshops, which P&J's female friends have particularly gotten a kick out of: "I have lost my clitoris! I shouldn't have worn it swimming."

Purple train

While we're speaking of things we note in the Times, Enid Nemy's "Metropolitan Diary" of October 18 had a great little story about P&J's former daily subway stop in Soho: "Barbara Ackerman-Kravitz and her fellow subway riders on a downtown train recently got a kick out of the conductor who announced, `Ladies and gentlemen, the next stop is the station formerly known as Prince Street.' "

A matter of national security

From the Zimbabwe Herald of August 16, via Private Eye:

" `Let me make this abundantly clear,' Senior Assistant Commissioner Griffiths Mpofu told reporters in Harare. "Despite the rumours, no women have been forced by unscrupulous businessmen to breastfeed frogs for ritual purposes. Furthermore, no one has been reported killed or missing in any incident relating to a frog or any such animal.

"Assistant Commissioner Griffiths was speaking in an attempt to quell the panic which had been spreading throughout Zimbabwe in recent weeks. 'We have investigated this matter thoroughly, and can assure the public there is no reason to be afraid. Yes, we have received one report of a girl who was forced to breastfeed a large frog, after being offered a lift by a businessman driving a posh Mercedes-Benz. However, the details of the incident are unclear, so it is quite wrong to panic over unsubstantiated rumours of a man on the prowl with a briefcase and a frog. The nation should stay calm, and anyone spreading such rumours is causing undue alarm."

Guess they ran out of Budweiser.

Carothers update

Once again, all commentary concerning the ongoing Carothers Controversy is solely the work of Jorge, as Phillipe recuses himself on the grounds that he is a URI employee.

We're sure that you all saw the Sunday BeloJo's front page feature on the ongoing attempt to railroad URI President Robert Carothers. What you may have missed was Tuesday's Corrections column, in which a key statement that ran in the article was amended. The line from the initial article was, "a prominent professor said that URI had been managed into a `death spiral'." The clear implication was that this was President Carothers' doing.

Tuesday's correction noted that the paper received an email from the professor in question, the nationally renowned sociologist Richard Gelles. He informed the paper that the quote was out of context and that he believed then, and now, that the "management" that produced the "death spiral" was, and is, directly caused by the Board of Governors, as well as Governor Almond. This is a mere 180 degree difference.

Ridiculous stories of the week

Your superior correspondents just loved that 24-hour story courtesy of the immortal trickster, Muhammad Ali, where he claimed to be preparing a return to the ring. The Greatest apparently blurted this out to a Newsweek reporter who dutifully included it in a profile of the former champ. Anyone who took this story seriously (and most news outlets were sucked in, just like Newsweek) deserves to have their head examined. There's no way Parkinson's-ravaged Ali could have been serious. Plus, what sanctioning body on earth would ever let such a thing happen? Not only that, but is there a legitimate heavyweight boxer out there who would be so crazy as to take a poke at the legendary Ali? It was just the champ toying with the media again.

Coming a close second to Ali's hoax is the report that a new Internet website, www.newprayer.com has been established to send prayers over a specially built directional radio transmitter. The site managers claim the messages will go directly to God because they have "located the precise location where God lives." Although your superior correspondents have not been able to establish where that precise location is, we have it on good authority that it is nowhere near Fenway Park.

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