Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Tonya Harding/Paula Jones match on "Celebrity Boxing" ... I have no idea how to finish that sentence. OK, it's a concept. Maybe it's camp. Or haute tacky. Sure, we could shoot whoever thought of it, but don't you get the creepy feeling it says something awful about the culture? I just can't figure out what. It's a "What is the world coming to?" moment.

The New York Times critic says this "is not a postmodern joke about Warholian fame," she thinks it's a cruelty joke. I suppose people have always paid to see freak shows. But I suspect even P.T. Barnum would have been taken aback by this. Once you start thinking about it, though, it has a perverse fascination. How about "Fantasy Celebrity Boxing" with Medea versus Lizzie Borden?

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thinking about nuclear weapons is sort of like looking directly at the sun: If you do it for more than a split second, you go blind. Or insane.

Our government is now contemplating such a ne plus ultra of idiocy that it's enough to make one yearn for the dear, departed days of MAD (mutual assured destruction). MAD was such a sane policy. Dr. Strangelove, report for duty immediately, the Bush administration needs YOU!

We are about to get a new nuclear weapons policy -- cute nukes. Teeny-tiny nukes. I was betting the Pentagon would name them "precision nukes," but I have once again underestimated our military's ability to obfuscate with mind-numbing language. The cute nukes are "offensive strike systems."

AUSTIN, Texas -- We're having a splendid political primary season here in Texas, featuring several loopier-than-usual players and one total gooney bird named John Worldpeace.

On the Democratic side for U.S. Senate, the two heavy-hitting, well-financed contenders are Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas and Rep. Ken Bentsen of Houston. So, of course, a high-school civics teacher who's never been elected to anything named Victor Morales is in the lead in that race.

AUSTIN, Texas -- "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." -- Theodore Roosevelt.

It's hard to think how this could be any clearer: The headlines are "Bush Proposing Policy Changes on Toxic Sites: Taxpayers Would Bear Most Cleanup Costs." "Bush to Shift Toxic Cleanups to Taxpayers."

Katherine Seelye of The New York Times reports the Superfund was founded in 1980 under the slogan, "The polluter pays." Industry was to clean up its own messes, and special corporate taxes were used to fund clean-ups at "orphan sites, where the responsible party could not be identified or could not pay. The taxes were reauthorized under President Ronald Reagan and again under Mr. Bush's father. They expired in 1995, and while President Bill Clinton sought to have them reinstated, the House of Representatives, by then under Republican control, refused."

The Office of Strategic Influence went from obscurity to infamy to oblivion during a spin cycle that lasted just seven days in late February. Coming to terms with a week of negative coverage after news broke that the Pentagon office might purposely deceive foreign media, a somber defense secretary announced: "It is being closed down." But for Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues along the Potomac, the inky cloud of bad publicity has a big silver lining.

Orders to shut the controversial office came a day after President Bush proclaimed zero tolerance for lies from U.S. officials. "We'll tell the American people the truth," he vowed.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Another bad idea. What are they, cheaper by the dozen? The Bush administration has decided to dump all the high-level nuclear waste in America into some yet-to-be excavated tunnels at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

Insomuch as you ever think about nuclear waste (a topic I prefer to avoid on the grounds that it's depressing and scary -- denial seems like a good tactic), you probably thought: "Good, Nevada. They'll like it there, and at least it won't be here."

Wrong on both counts. Not only are Nevadans predictably unhappy -- and also seriously irate, because Bush promised during the campaign he would make the decision based on "the best science" --- but this also brings nuclear garbage right to your front door. Or at least to the closest interstate highway.

Thomas Friedman has achieved another media triumph with the debut of "Tom's Journal" on the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." The feature will be a "one-on-one debriefing of Friedman by Lehrer or one of the program's senior correspondents," says a news release from the influential PBS program. Friedman will appear perhaps a dozen times per year -- whenever he comes back from a major trip abroad.

Specializing in foreign affairs, Friedman reaches millions of readers with his syndicated New York Times column. And he's often on television -- especially these days. "In the post-9/11 environment, the talk shows can't get enough of Friedman," a Washington Post profile noted. He appears as a guest on "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation," "Washington Week in Review" and plenty of other TV venues. He even went over big on David Letterman's show.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In response to President George W. Bush's call to all Americans to give service to our country, some are enlisting in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Senior Corps or the armed services. Others have begun putting in their suggested 4,000 hours at a variety of charitable endeavors, through everything from the volunteer fire department to mentoring programs. And still other Americans are moving their companies to Bermuda and the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes. Isn't that special?

AUSTIN, Texas -- One rarely sees a thoroughly bad idea advanced by government. Lots of stuff from silly to smelly gets done, but somebody usually benefits, even if it's not the American people. But can anyone see an upside to having an office of government propaganda with an official license to lie?

They say if you fight someone long enough, you become like your enemy, but this Soviet notion is such a bummer it was useless even to them back in the day. But the Bush administration is apparently determined to bring us not one but two bureaus of propaganda. The "Office of Strategic Influence" -- isn't that a beauty? -- at the Pentagon will use "the media, the Internet and a range of covert operations to try to influence public opinion and government policy abroad, including in friendly nations," according to The New York Times. "Strategic Information" will include both information and disinformation. Disinformation, in case you haven't figured it out, is made of lies.

When a large company is getting clobbered by news stories and pundits, the damage-control response often includes packing full-page newspaper ads with solemn reassurances. That's what the Arthur Andersen accounting firm has been doing lately to wash some of the mud off its name as the outfit that assisted with Enron's phony bookkeeping.

Andersen is "committed to making fundamental changes in its business as a result of the issues raised by the Enron matter," says one of the big-type advertisements -- headlined "An Open Letter from Joe Berardino, Managing Partner and CEO, Andersen." The ad explains that changes "already taking place ... are major steps toward reforming our U.S. audit practice and transforming our firm."