STOP ME if you've heard this, but:
Whether Quebec stays or goes, Canada remains a nation without a point. Most Canadians I've met seem to think their country's greatest quality is that it isn't the United States. Quebec, by the way, is Argument No. 87 for making English the official language of this country.
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It's no mystery why people like to watch daytime trash-TV shows with themes like "Women Who Marry Their Rapists" and "She's 17 and Has Slept with 100 Men." People like to gawk at road accidents, too. The only mystery is what motivates these dregs of society to parade their white-trash loserhood on network television. How worthless does your life have to be before you find being looked down on by several million television viewers a thrill?
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No unsuccessful presidential nominee in decades has been blipped off the public's radar screen as completely as Michael Dukakis has. But at least Dukakis, now a college professor, is doing something useful. What's Gerald Ford doing?
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Fortune-tellers in this town have to be certified by the Boston Licensing Board. Talk about needless government regulation. Or has City Hall figured out a way to tell the qualified fortune-tellers from the fakes?
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The Central Artery/Tunnel people should do what Berlin did. When the ugly structure comes down, hack it up and sell pieces as souvenirs. (I'll take a hunk of the green girders from the Storrow Drive exit, please.) Then use the proceeds to defray some of the project's galactic costs.
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If Jesse Helms had said it about Democrats, it would have been on Page 1. But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry's scandalous comment about the Republican vote to slow the growth of Medicare spending -- "They'd like to see the program just die and go away. You know, that's probably what they'd like to see happen to seniors too" -- was relegated to Page 28 in The Globe and Page D21 in The New York Times. The Washington Post put it on Page 4 -- but below a headline proclaiming, Alice-in-Wonderland-like, "Democrats Pounce on GOP Medicare Comments." Odd how the outrageous gaffes of Republicans and conservatives are always so much more newsworthy than those of Democrats and liberals.
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Is there a cashier anywhere in America who knows how to count back change? Or who would know how much change to return if the amount weren't displayed on a computerized cash register?
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We constantly complain that public figures never own up to their misdeeds. So why was Hugh Grant mocked so unsparingly when he apologized for his misbehavior on Sunset Boulevard? He didn't say, "We all make mistakes" or "I'm the victim here." He said: I was wrong, I did a bad thing, I'm very sorry, and I hope I'll be forgiven. We could do with more of that.
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Just what is conveyed by the word "self" in the phrase "self-addressed, stamped envelope"?
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State Auditor Joseph DeNucci's justification for larding his payroll with friends and relatives must have violated about 28 state and federal equal-employment opportunity laws: "I hire people I know and trust," he told the Herald. "I am not going to hire Eskimos." What?! Where are the protesters? Where are the P.C. language police? (How gauche to say "Eskimos" instead of "Alaska Natives.") Above all, where is Ted Kennedy, who used to show his support for Alaska Natives -- this is true -- by lurching up and down an airplane aisle shouting, "Es-ki-mo Power!"
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I wonder how meter maids can live with themselves. They are like S&M dominatrixes, paid to inflict pain. (Though their uniforms aren't nearly as interesting.)
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Someone else who should gag when she sees herself in the mirror each morning: Rosemary Powers of the noxious group Save Our City. I'm waiting for her to extend her residency-rule jihad beyond government employees. After all, if people who don't live in Boston shouldn't be allowed to work in City Hall, then doctors who don't live in Boston shouldn't be allowed to treat patients at the Deaconess. Reporters who don't live in Boston shouldn't be allowed to cover stories for the Globe. And outfielders who don't live in Boston shouldn't be allowed to play ball at Fenway Park.
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My heart aches for anybody who has lost a loved one to gun violence, but gun buy-back programs are a trivial solution to a very serious problem. Paying $50 to people who voluntarily turn in guns they don't want isn't going to do a thing about the weapons owned by people who have every intention of using them. Yes, gun buy-backs may prevent some accidents. But those tens of thousands of dollars would be infinitely more effective if they were used to hire more cops, or to fund violence-prevention curriculums, or to help survivors of crime get their lives back together.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)