One Hand Jerking (22 page)

Who could possibly have predicted that Monica Lewinsky—who had merely been performing oral sex on Bill Clinton while Yassir Arafat was waiting in the Rose Garden for their appointment—that years later she would be considered as ultimately responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the unrelated invasion of Iraq? Not me, babe.

Ronald Reagan's funeral was a week-long series of photo-ops, a most appropriate postscript to a presidency that was an eight-year celebration of government by public relations. There was that photo of Ronnie and Nancy posing with Michael Jackson. Then there was Nancy, sitting on Mr. T's lap—he was dressed in a Santa Claus costume and she was kissing him on the cheek. And there was Ronnie and the pope—the Great Communicator meets the Great Excommunicator.

When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, a network TV correspondent presented a hard-hitting report about the White House ducking issues for the sake of a “feel good” campaign. Yet a Reagan aide phoned and said, “Great piece, we loved it,” explaining to the confused correspondent, “We're in the middle of a campaign, and you give us 4-1/2 minutes of great pictures of Ronald Reagan. And that's all the American people see.”

Reagan used to wear only one contact lens when he appeared before crowds. Whenever his speech-writer Ken Khachigian tried to shorten his stump speech by eliminating a line, Reagan replied, “Have you seen the way people respond when I say that?” The eye with the contact lens would read the speech, and the other eye would study faces in the audience for their reaction.

When he testified before the committee investigating the Iran/
contra
scandal, he was unable to recall whether he had approved trading weapons for hostages, testifying 130 times that “I don't remember.” During his 1980 campaign, there had been rumblings of senility, and Reagan publicly offered to take a senility test if the proper authorities concluded that he had become senile, but nobody ever took him up on it. Perhaps his convenient losses of memory were actually early tremors of the Alzheimer's disease that plagued him for the last ten years of his life.

Nowadays, of course, there are other excuses. A reader wrote to the column “People's Pharmacy” by Joe and Teresa Graedon in the
Los Angeles Times
:

“I took Lipitor for more than a year, and I thought I was doing great. My cholesterol levels dropped significantly with no side effects. Then I began having problems remembering names. Sometimes it took me till noon to gather my scattered thoughts enough to work. I couldn't put a complete sentence together, and I began avoiding situations that required meeting with people. I'm in the advertising and marketing business, but I avoided clients and preferred to work
by e-mail. After reading one of your articles that linked Lipitor to memory problems, I immediately contacted my doctor, and he agreed to a holiday from Lipitor. It took a few months, but my memory has returned. Memory problems should be listed as a side effect of Lipitor.”

And the answer: “Amnesia is listed as an infrequent side effect of Lipitor, and memory loss is noted as a potential side effect of other cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Lescol, Mevacor, Pravachol and Zocor.” (Pravachol promises to prevent your first heart attack
and
to prevent your second heart attack, so that when you do have your first heart attack you'll think that it's really your third.) “Although this seems to be rare, we have heard from readers who have had difficulty with names, numbers and concentration while taking one of these. Some have even reported episodes in which they could not remember their address, spouse or occupation.”

But how to account for the current epidemic of memory loss among Bush administration officials testifying before investigating committees?

The May 24, 2004 issue of
Newsweek
stated that a memo written by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales after the September 11th attacks may have established the legal foundation that allowed for the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Newsweek
reported that in January 2002, Gonzales wrote to President Bush that, in his judgment, the post 9/11 security environment “renders obsolete [the Geneva Convention's] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

According to
Newsweek
, Secretary of State Colin Powell “hit the roof ” when he read the memo, and he fired off his own note to Bush, warning that the new rules “will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice” and have “a high cost in terms of negative international reaction.” But then, on
Meet the Press
, he claimed that he did not recall the Gonzales memo. Huh?

There is an explanation, though. In November 2003, Powell was interviewed by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, an American correspondent for a London-based Saudi newspaper. Referring to Powell's description of his international killer schedule, Al-Rashad asked, “So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?”

“Yes,” Powell replied. “Well, I wouldn't call them that. They're a wonderful medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien.”

So I decided to check out the side effects of Ambien: “Sleep medicines may cause the special type of memory loss known as amnesia. When this occurs, a person
may not remember what has happened for several hours after taking the medicine. This is usually not a problem, since most people fall asleep after taking the medicine. Memory loss can be a problem, however, when sleep medicines are taken while traveling, such as during an airplane flight, and the person wakes up before the effect of the medicine is gone. This has been called ‘traveler's amnesia. ' Memory problems are not common while taking Ambien. In most instances memory problems can be avoided if you take Ambien only when you are able to get a full night's sleep (7 to 8 hours) before you need to be active again. Be sure to talk to your doctor if you think you are having memory problems.”

If you remember to talk to your doctor, that is.

A study in the May 27, 2004 issue of
Neuron
confirms previous models of memory recall that found sensory-specific components of a memory are preserved in sensory-related areas of the brain. The hippocampus can draw on this stored sensory information to create vivid recall. Which is why, even after you've returned from a vacation, you may still fully recall the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of some of its particularly memorable moments. For their study, the researchers mapped brain activity in human volunteers who sampled different odors and viewed pictures of various objects. As for short-term memory loss, Wes Nisker writes in
The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation
:

“Recent research in molecular biology has given us a clue to the connection between THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and the actual experience of getting high. It turns out that our body produces its own version of THC and that the human brain and nervous system have a whole network of receptors for this cannabinoid-like substance. That means you've got a stash inside of you right now, and nobody can even bust you for it. Our body's natural THC was discovered by Israeli neuro-scientists, who named it anandamide, from the Sanskrit word for ‘inner bliss.' The scientists believe that our system produces this THC equivalent to aid in pain relief, for mild sedation, and also to help us forget. It is very important that we forget, because if we remembered everything that registers in our senses from moment to moment, we would be flooded with memory and could not function. So anandamide helps us edit the input of the world by blocking or weakening our synaptic pathways, our memory lanes.”

So, the next time somebody reminds you, “Don't bogart that joint,” at least you'll have a scientific explanation, if you can only remember what it is.

I think maybe I should start selling “I Told You So” T-shirts.

In the '90s, I published this item in
The Realist
: “Here's a story about the arrogance of power even the tabloids won't publish. At a dinner party, Arnold Schwarzenegger told a young woman he would give her $1,000 if she would stick her finger up her ass and then let him smell it. She refused. Later, he followed her into the bathroom and forcibly stuck his own finger up her ass. He did not pay her. She is an actress and has not brought a lawsuit because she fears it would hurt her career in Hollywood.”

But now Arnold has replaced Bill Clinton as America's generic sex-joke reference. The morning after California's recall election, on
The View
, Meredith Viera demonstrated to Joy Behar the governor-elect's special handshake. Viera simply placed her right hand on Behar's left breast. Amidst laughter and applause, Behar asked, “Can I please have my nipple back now?” It was a perfect example of television's ever-expanding sense of permissiveness.

Even if you didn't happen to catch the open mouth kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears during the MTV Music Video Awards—“It wasn't a publicity stunt,” explained Britney, “we just did what felt right”—you certainly must have seen a photo of that smooch, which appeared on the front page of newspapers around the country.

This incident evoked the most public discussion since Michael Jackson kissed Lisa Marie Presley on the MTV Awards to prove that their marriage wasn't a public relations gesture, and Al Gore kissed Tipper at the Democratic convention to prove that he wasn't like that wife-cheating Bill Clinton. Indeed, the
Atlanta Journal Constitution
was deluged with complaints from readers about the Madonna-Brittany photo, and their managing editor apologized, saying that it should not have been published on the front page, but rather on the inside.

On a weekly media discussion program,
News Watch
, on the Fox network, moderator Eric Burns criticized the TV news and entertainment programs for
showing clips of the kiss “over and over again,” though I counted a total of ten lingering displays of the kiss on
News Watch
itself.

“What's next,” wondered conservative columnist Cal Thomas, “full frontal nudity?” Or, worse yet, presidential candidates “Joe Lieberman kissing Howard Dean?” Thomas was particularly concerned about newspapers arriving on the front doorstep and children bringing them into their homes.

The controversy was brought into focus by former
Saturday Night Live
cast member Jon Lovitz when he was a guest on
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
. He complained that the televised kiss wasn't long enough, because by the time he pulled his pants down to his ankles, it was already over.

But Lovitz could easily have gone on to pleasure himself simply for the sake of his own future health. The British magazine
New Scientist
had reported on a study in Australia which concluded that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer. Apparently, ejaculation prevents carcinogens from building up in the gland. As if men need such encouragement to jerk off.

The
New Scientist
article was reported on in England, India, South Africa and New Zealand, as well as wire service coverage in the United States, not to mention providing fodder for morning radio shock jocks and late night talk show monologues.

On a recent Sunday, Garry Trudeau's comic strip
Doonesbury
depicted Reverend Scot Sloan reading a newspaper at breakfast: “Incredible. . . . There's a new study that suggests that regular masturbation prevents prostate cancer.”

Boopsie responds, “Hey! . . . Enough of that!”

“Enough of what? It's in the paper.”

“I don't care! Talk like that makes me uncomfortable! People shouldn't sit around talking about sex like it's the weather! It's just not appropriate!”

“You're dating yourself, Boopsie.”

Zonker enters: “Hey, did you guys hear self-dating prevents cancer?”

Doonesbury
has previously caused controversy. Trudeau pulled a 1985 series about abortion, and a 2001 strip poking fun at President Bush a few days after 9/11 (drawn before the terrorist attacks). In 1998, some papers refused to run a strip about accusations that President Clinton had sex with a White House intern and, just before the 2000 election, a strip that accused Bush of cocaine abuse. But this was the first time Trudeau allowed his syndicate to offer a substitute strip—one that was a year old, but with the current date.

Trudeau said the strip, which was censored by 400 out of 1400 papers, “isn't really about masturbation or cancer, but about the shifting nature of taboos and the inabiity of two adults to have a certain kind of serious conversation. It's a
South Park
world now, and younger readers are unlikely to be shocked or confused by anything they find in
Doonesbury
. Besides, our general experience is that most children don't understand
Doonesbury
in any event, and thus sensibly avoid it.”

However, any children who were innocently trying to log on to a Web site—such as Disneyland, Bob the Builder, Teletubbies, Anna Kurnikova or Backstreet Boys, among many others—but who misspelled a name, would have been automatically misdirected to hard-core porn sites that they could not avoid, courtesy of “typo squatter” John Zuccarini. He was arrested for registering several thousands of Internet addresses and earning $1 million a year from porn Web site operators who paid him between 10 and 25 cents for each hit he sent their way.

This is the first prosecution under a new clause in the Amber Alert law, making it a crime to use “misleading” domain names to lure children to porn. But the Amber Alert legislation was originally intended only to combat
physical abduction
by sending out immediate information to aid in the safe recovery of a child. It was intended only for time-critical child abduction cases, where the victim is in imminent danger of bodily harm or death.