I thought I was going to have to tag a Barf Alert on this, but halfway through, he knocked the pins out from under me. Great needling job.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/article/0,1122,SAV-0006010141,00.html
DID ROSIE FLIP-FLOP ON GUNS? THAT'S A LOADED QUESTION
by John Kass
June 1, 2000
Those National Rifle Association meanies--led by Ben-Hur and those other Republican white males, dead and otherwise--are being awfully rude to Rosie O'Donnell.
You know Rosie, America's old-neighborhood sweetheart and one of our leading anti-gun activists.
In my Rosie O'Donnell fantasy, I'm walking through the old neighborhood and she's on the porch in front of a two-flat. I sit on the steps with her, and she hands me a cold Hamm's in a can, and we talk baseball for hours--she played a pro women's league ballplayer in a movie--and fills me in on what happened on the block.
And if we can get rid of her New York accent, it could work.
The unpretentious Rosie is also the host of a national TV talk show. And unlike other talk show hosts, she's hardly ever rude to her guests. Unless of course, the guest is actor Tom Selleck, a Republican and NRA supporter.
When she had Selleck on her show a while back, she criticized him for being involved in an NRA promotional campaign. She wasn't too kind, but Rosie has a strong point of view.
She's anti-gun and this is America and she's got her own talk show so she can say what she wants.
And since the NRA already has Selleck and Moses and since the NRA can leverage Congress, can't the NRA quit whining about a talk show host who disagrees with them?
To back up her anti-gun views, O'Donnell quit as the national spokeswoman for the national Kmart chain because the chain sold guns, and that cost her cash.
This means that she walked away from a hefty check because she didn't want to compromise on her anti-gun stance. How many of us are willing to pay for our opinions?
Rosie even declared that there should be a national ban on all firearms.
During an interview with gun-control advocate U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), McCarthy was saying she was pushing for gun safety, but did not want to dispute the constitutionally protected right of Americans to bear arms.
Then Rosie--already upset like the rest of us over the Columbine massacre--piped up.
"I would like to dispute that," she said. "I know it's in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I would like to say, I think there should be a law--and I know this is extreme--that no one can have a gun in the U.S. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns. It's ridiculous."
After expressing her desire to reshape the Constitution, she took another well-placed jab at the NRA and Selleck and offered my favorite idea.
"I'd like to start the NGA--the No Guns Association--and get celebrities to do ads for that," she said, with much wit and to much applause.
And if you visit the Rosie O'Donnell Show Web site, you can find information on guns and common-sense safety tips, such as how guns should be kept unloaded and locked away.
But with all this anti-gun talk from Rosie, I was shocked to my shins this week when I heard the latest:
O'Donnell's bodyguard has applied for a concealed weapon permit with the Greenwich (Conn.) Police Department.
That means that anti-gun Rosie will have a bodyguard carrying a gun, and not only a gun, but a concealed gun.
I haven't felt this strange since anti-gun Mayor Richard Daley went out of his way to give protection to top political workers who like to carry concealed pistols in the anti-handgun city.
But this concealed-carry permit involving Rosie is like finding out that Pete Rose bet on baseball. Say it ain't so, Rosie!
The O'Donnell family's armed bodyguard would, I presumed, be able to guard her young son, who will attend school next year in Greenwich.
"Her son's bodyguard is not going to be armed when he's with her son," O'Donnell spokeswoman Jennifer Glaisek told me on Wednesday. "He's employed by a security company that requires him to carry a weapon. So he applied for the permit."
If he's not going to be armed while protecting her son, what will he use, a paper straw and frozen peas?
Glaisek acknowledged that the NRA would enjoy this controversy. "She's not saying by any means that people can't have guns. What she is saying is that if you're going to have a gun, it needs to be licensed and registered, and there should be child safety locks, waiting periods, criminal background checks, in order to make them safer," Glaisek said.
But what happened to Rosie's "No Gun Association" and Rosie's plan to get rid of the 2nd Amendment so only police could have guns?
"That was a while ago," Glaisek said. "She's since amended that. She has no choice; she needs security for her children. She lives in a different world than us."
That's obvious.
Other people need security for their children too. Poor people, middle-class people and working people without clout.
Mothers who live in ghettos and who are trying to protect their children need security. Old people living alone, and women living alone and driving late, need security too.
Thanks to Rosie, we've finally got an answer to these nagging security issues:
Let them hire bodyguards.
-- 30 --
Kass lives at: jskass@tribune.com (for a moment, I thought "jsk" was "jak"
).
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/article/0,1122,SAV-0006010141,00.html
DID ROSIE FLIP-FLOP ON GUNS? THAT'S A LOADED QUESTION
by John Kass
June 1, 2000
Those National Rifle Association meanies--led by Ben-Hur and those other Republican white males, dead and otherwise--are being awfully rude to Rosie O'Donnell.
You know Rosie, America's old-neighborhood sweetheart and one of our leading anti-gun activists.
In my Rosie O'Donnell fantasy, I'm walking through the old neighborhood and she's on the porch in front of a two-flat. I sit on the steps with her, and she hands me a cold Hamm's in a can, and we talk baseball for hours--she played a pro women's league ballplayer in a movie--and fills me in on what happened on the block.
And if we can get rid of her New York accent, it could work.
The unpretentious Rosie is also the host of a national TV talk show. And unlike other talk show hosts, she's hardly ever rude to her guests. Unless of course, the guest is actor Tom Selleck, a Republican and NRA supporter.
When she had Selleck on her show a while back, she criticized him for being involved in an NRA promotional campaign. She wasn't too kind, but Rosie has a strong point of view.
She's anti-gun and this is America and she's got her own talk show so she can say what she wants.
And since the NRA already has Selleck and Moses and since the NRA can leverage Congress, can't the NRA quit whining about a talk show host who disagrees with them?
To back up her anti-gun views, O'Donnell quit as the national spokeswoman for the national Kmart chain because the chain sold guns, and that cost her cash.
This means that she walked away from a hefty check because she didn't want to compromise on her anti-gun stance. How many of us are willing to pay for our opinions?
Rosie even declared that there should be a national ban on all firearms.
During an interview with gun-control advocate U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), McCarthy was saying she was pushing for gun safety, but did not want to dispute the constitutionally protected right of Americans to bear arms.
Then Rosie--already upset like the rest of us over the Columbine massacre--piped up.
"I would like to dispute that," she said. "I know it's in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough! I would like to say, I think there should be a law--and I know this is extreme--that no one can have a gun in the U.S. If you have a gun, you go to jail. Only the police should have guns. It's ridiculous."
After expressing her desire to reshape the Constitution, she took another well-placed jab at the NRA and Selleck and offered my favorite idea.
"I'd like to start the NGA--the No Guns Association--and get celebrities to do ads for that," she said, with much wit and to much applause.
And if you visit the Rosie O'Donnell Show Web site, you can find information on guns and common-sense safety tips, such as how guns should be kept unloaded and locked away.
But with all this anti-gun talk from Rosie, I was shocked to my shins this week when I heard the latest:
O'Donnell's bodyguard has applied for a concealed weapon permit with the Greenwich (Conn.) Police Department.
That means that anti-gun Rosie will have a bodyguard carrying a gun, and not only a gun, but a concealed gun.
I haven't felt this strange since anti-gun Mayor Richard Daley went out of his way to give protection to top political workers who like to carry concealed pistols in the anti-handgun city.
But this concealed-carry permit involving Rosie is like finding out that Pete Rose bet on baseball. Say it ain't so, Rosie!
The O'Donnell family's armed bodyguard would, I presumed, be able to guard her young son, who will attend school next year in Greenwich.
"Her son's bodyguard is not going to be armed when he's with her son," O'Donnell spokeswoman Jennifer Glaisek told me on Wednesday. "He's employed by a security company that requires him to carry a weapon. So he applied for the permit."
If he's not going to be armed while protecting her son, what will he use, a paper straw and frozen peas?
Glaisek acknowledged that the NRA would enjoy this controversy. "She's not saying by any means that people can't have guns. What she is saying is that if you're going to have a gun, it needs to be licensed and registered, and there should be child safety locks, waiting periods, criminal background checks, in order to make them safer," Glaisek said.
But what happened to Rosie's "No Gun Association" and Rosie's plan to get rid of the 2nd Amendment so only police could have guns?
"That was a while ago," Glaisek said. "She's since amended that. She has no choice; she needs security for her children. She lives in a different world than us."
That's obvious.
Other people need security for their children too. Poor people, middle-class people and working people without clout.
Mothers who live in ghettos and who are trying to protect their children need security. Old people living alone, and women living alone and driving late, need security too.
Thanks to Rosie, we've finally got an answer to these nagging security issues:
Let them hire bodyguards.
-- 30 --
Kass lives at: jskass@tribune.com (for a moment, I thought "jsk" was "jak"
).