The Candid and the Canned
            

            Massa Honey:

            So was Rockefeller really the vice president and I
missed it? As for Puff Daddy, isn't he the one who dates the girl with the much
discussed big behind? As you may have gleaned, this is not my kinda' music ...
making him, I guess, not my kinda' guy. And whatever happened, anyway, to names
like "Mel Torme," and "Tony Bennett"?

            But back to politics, where they have names like Bauer
and McCain and Bush. A kind reader let me know the kind of doll I was thinking
Bauer looked like: a kewpie. Well ... Liddy Dole is
out of the race ... maybe he could make it work for him.

            As for McCain, who I admit to liking enormously, Howie
Kurtz this morning tells me why. It's because the guy's mouth is on a
trolley--just like mine! Kurtz says, "The Arizona senator rambles on about
politics, the military, taxes ... his wife's ex-boyfriend ..." And this is my
fave: "He blabs and banters and jokingly called an Associated Press reporter a
'jerk.' " You know, Massa Honey, honesty is hard to come by these days, and it
is refreshing beyond belief. Too bad for the AP guy, though.

            Kurtz goes on to say that "aides sometimes cringe at
McCain's flights of candor." Well, yes, but the rest of us are enthralled. OK,
some of the rest of us. Any candidate who says, "I hate the French" and calls
the Vietnamese "gooks" and basically gets away with it--with the press corps,
at least--has really good karma and should not be dismissed out of hand.

            Speaking of things genuine, it seems the handlers of
the Texas governor are having second thoughts about letting him get out there
in the debates and just "be himself." Himself is looking dumb and programmed,
or is it stiff and smug? Some former supporters, according to the
Boston Globe , are deciding he is coming across as,
er, "unqualified" to be president. And while they're considering a makeover,
perhaps they'll deep-six the phrase "compassionate conservative." That really
is a little like a pregnant virgin. And of course this is the wrong season to
be making such an analogy. (Now do you see why I feel kinship with McCain?) In
any case, I do not think my fellow Americans are up for someone who says what
he's actually thinking, so it's probably ta-ta, J. McC. Tant pis . Which proves, obviously, that I don't hate the French. So au revoir ,
Massa Honey. It's a great day in Harvard Square, and I'm a goin' on out there
to read my Esther Williams book--having loaned my copy of the Dean Acheson book
to Dubya.

            xxM.