From: peri@cco.caltech.edu (Michal Leah Peri)
Subject: Re: Fonts of Wisdom
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 04:10:17 GMT

egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:

>FONTS OF WISDOM

>by Barry Tarshis

>copied w/o permission from the NY Times, Monday 8/31/92, p.A15

>Imagine that a network morning show has assembled six political
>heavyweights for a call-in show.  A teacher phones to report that during
>a recent class tour of the White House, a student wanted a drink of
>water, only to discover that the fountain was out of order.  The teacher
>asks the panel what message a broken fountain at the White House sends
>to the young people of America.  Let's listen to the answers.

>Ross Perot: The question here is simple: how do we fix it.  I say, let's
>bring together the finest plumbing talent in America -- from outside the
>system.  Let them look at the fountain.  Turn it on.  Turn it off.
>Measure the flow in it.  That sort of thing.  And you can be sure, the
>next time you take a White House tour, you're going to drink from a
>world-class fountain.

>Jesse Jackson: Let us not talk about this broken water fountain.  Let us
>talk about the thousands of broken water fountains across America.  For
>they, too, are broken, like the broken dreams of America's forgotten
>children.  And whether you are black, white, brown or yellow, you cannot
>use them.  Why?  Because the Republican Party is more interested in
>_Perrier_ water and _Pellegrino_ water than it is in _public_ water.

>Al Gore: I love my country.  And I love water.  And I love the children
>who drink from the water fountains in the country I love, and that my
>father loves.  And I believe in my heart that the time has come, now
>more than ever, for all of us to be inspired by the young people of
>America whose dreams for the future depend on our ability as a nation to
>provide them with the water that is the essence of their survival.

>Dan Quayle: I am very, very sympathetic to the disappointment young
>people in America feel when they go to a water fountain in the single
>most important building in America and cannot drink from it.  Because I,
>too, would be very, very disappointed if I were to go to get a drink
>from a water fountain and discover that, because of the Democrats, the
>water does not come up.  Water is a terrible thing to waste, when there
>is thirst but no water, that is a terrible thing.

>Bill Clinton: I grew up in a home where public water fountains were very
>important to me and to my family.  And I have put forward a plan similar
>to the plan I introduced to Arkansas.  This plan is good for America. It
>takes the $4.25 million savings we ralize when we eliminate the 10
>percent reduction on the capital gains that exceed $30,000 in any given
>one-year period for Americans under the age of 31 who graduated before
>1984, and it allocates 18.5 percent of that sum to paying for 80 percent
>of the new fountain construction.

>George Bush: O.K.  Sure.  Fine.  There's something wrong with a water
>fountain in the White House?  Not denying it.  Have to be a fool to deny
>it.  But make no mistake about it.  There is a lot that is _right_ with
>it, too.  And that's one thing I want to focus on, you see, not what's
>bad about the water fountains in America by what's _good_ about them.
>And with the help of the American people and a Republican Congress I can
>work with, I can make the water flow again in the water fountains of
>America.

>[anyone want to do, say, Buchanan, Pat Robertson or Mr. Marrou? :-)]




>--
>Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song
>Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
>			-- T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"