Category: Uncategorized

#404, April 9, 2006

WESTON, West Va.: I read in the local daily, the Exponent-Telegram from Clarksburg, about a 4-H Club working to clean up the grounds at Veteran Memorial Park as a service project, and that’s a mighty important service.

Then I saw on network television where high school students plan to march on Washington in support of illegal immigrants, and they want it to count as community service. See, in that particular school district they are required to contribute so many hours to the community. I don’t know about you, but if a person has some proposed activity, and he feels the need to ask if it’s a community service, then it ain’t.

On the Immigration bill, Congress is deadlocked and can’t act. I think we could help this thing along if 11 million Americans would buy a one-way ticket to Mexico, leave their credit cards and bank account at home, go to work and live off the land. Any excess cash they make they could send home to relatives in the states. Why, it wouldn’t be a month before their president would call Washington offering kind of an Immigrant Exchange. Don’t be surprised if President Bush says, “Vincente, I think we’ll just keep the ones we’ve got. And good luck to you, teaching those 11 million to speak Spanish.” Of course it ain’t gonna happen. Nobody wants to move from here to Mexico. But if certain ones did, we would gladly count it as community service.

Congress grabbed onto another hot potato: leaking top secret classified information. It’s hot in Washington, but beyond the Beltway, as they say, nobody much cares. See, the argument isn’t over whether to leak secret information. The argument is over who gets to do the leaking. Congress says they should have the honor, but the Administration says, No, they’re our secrets, and if anybody gets to spill the beans, it should be us.

Well, onto things that are important across the country; the weather didn’t wait till Hurricane season to wreak havoc on us. Just this week we’ve had tornados in Tennessee, floods in California and North Dakota, wildfires in Texas. There’s deep snow in Oregon, but not in Montana where the glaciers are melting. Florida is taking advantage of bad weather elsewhere, “Visit Florida. We provide the sunshine, but if you want insurance, bring your own because there’s none left here.”

Phil Mickelson won the Masters again. He and Tiger Woods are kinda passing the Green Jacket back and forth among themselves.

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

“This is income tax paying day. No two can agree on what is deductible. When it’s made out you don’t know if you are crook or martyr. It’s made more liars out of the American people than golf.” DT #822, March 15, 1929

April 1, 2006

COLUMBUS: All I know is what I read in the newspaper, and 11,000,000 illegal immigrants have knocked every other story off the front page. They are mostly Mexicans, and curiously, President went to Cancun, Mexico, this week to meet with President Vincente Fox. Mr. Bush came home smiling, because the entire meeting was in Spanish and he didn’t know any more when he left than he did before he got there. Tonight they rounded up an interpreter who not only understands Spanish but also diplomacy. It seems that what Mr. Fox promised was to keep sending 3 or 4 million Mexicans a year across our border, just as long as they keep sending back home at least $20 Billion a year. It may not be a good plan, but at least they will work. We sure won’t get any immigrants from France looking for work. Those young French students want a job, a guaranteed job, but not if there is any work attached to it.

I know it is April 1, but the following story is the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth.

Once upon a time, a nation prospered in peace and affluence for many years. But trouble lay just across the border. The neighboring land was filled to the bursting point and the people eyed the vast inviting lands with envy. For a few years a small number of “intruders” would sneak across the boundary, and the government forcibly evicted them. But many managed to stay, legally or otherwise, and more would inevitably follow.

Before long the intruders were swarming into the nation. Some were there legitimately as employees, but others came surreptitiously and each claimed a piece of the foreign land as their own. They didn’t pay for it, just squatted on it. A significant number of the intruders were wanted criminals who crossed the border to escape arrest.

Finally, an irritated prominent local citizen wrote a letter to his national leader. “Are we powerless to enforce our own laws? Are we to submit to such great wrongs by these men who are not citizens? Our laws are not enforced. Men are hauling away our cattle in open violation of the law and the sheriff knows it. Timber is being cut and taken away while the sheriff watches. How in the world can we hold up as a nation when our officers don’t respect the law and the oath they have taken to uphold the law.”

About two years later a small portion of the nation relented and sold, for a pittance, a significant section of land, which was turned over to the intruders. Instead of appeasing the intruder population it only created more pressure on the nation to open its borders.

The biggest business in the nation lobbied relentlessly to allow even more intruders. They saw an expanding intruder population as essential to economic growth in the nation.

Ok, any idea yet where this “nation” is? Here comes a hint. Seeing the looming conflict in this particular nation, the U. S. Congress jumped into the fray, led by a Senator from Massachusetts. After much rhetoric and debate Congress made a decision: they came down firmly on the side of the Intruders.

How could this be? Even the Senator from Massachusetts admitted that the nation was prosperous, “Although a tiny number of individuals control about one-seventh of the nation’s wealth (land) there is not a family in the entire nation without a home. There is not a pauper in the nation, and the nation does not owe a single dollar.” Now who could ask for more than that? But somehow this was not good enough to keep this nation intact and protected from Intruders. Congress created a Commission to negotiate with a delegation of representatives from the nation. One of those representatives was the “prominent local citizen” quoted above. He became exasperated at the delegation’s inability to reach a consensus on what their position should be. Five years after the U.S. government got involved, and all the negotiating was over with, Congress passed the Curtis Act, abolishing the laws of this “nation” and mandating that all land be divided up equally among its citizens.

The end of a nation as we knew it occurred in 1898. The Senator from Massachusetts was Henry Dawes, head of the Dawes Commission. The Intruders were mainly from Kansas and Arkansas. The big business encouraging the Intruders was the Missouri Pacific Railroad, which built a line through the nation in 1889. The “nation” was the Cherokee Nation, part of Indian Territory which in 1907 became the state of Oklahoma. The “prominent local citizen” (who also helped write the state constitution for Oklahoma), was Clem Rogers, father of Will Rogers.

To quote another Oklahoman, Paul Harvey: And now you know the rest of the story.

Let’s hope the story does not repeat itself. I prefer reading my newspaper in English.

(My source for the story is Ben Yagoda’s biography of Will Rogers, a wonderful, detailed book published in 1993.)

# 402, March 26, 2006

COLUMBUS: The college basketball tournament took a peculiar bounce. Anybody that put money on George Mason for the Final Four, I want to hear from you. They’re in there with Louisiana State and Florida and a team that used to consider this annual championship their birthright, UCLA.

Two weeks ago I facetiously picked Duke to win it all. None of the other No.1 seeds got in either. Coach K has invited the other three (Memphis, Connecticut, and Villanova) to a little round-robin of their own next weekend in Durham. There’s no trophy, but he promised the coach of the winning team a new Chevy.

We’ve got 11 Million illegal immigrants living here, and about 10 Million of ’em were out marching this weekend. A lot of ’em were in California carrying Mexican flags, but did you notice, not a one of them was marching south. They may wave the flag, but they know which side of the border they want to be on when they do the waving.

They say America should welcome them with open arms (and open wallets) because in this country “Everybody is an immigrant”. Well, everybody marching may be an immigrant, but let me remind you of something I uttered a few years ago, “My ancestors never came over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.” “Now I hope my Cherokee blood is not making me prejudiced. I want to be broad-minded, but I am sure that it was only the extreme generosity of the Indians that allowed the Pilgrims to land. Suppose we reversed the case. Do you reckon the Pilgrims would have ever let the Indians land? Yeah, what a chance! What a chance! The Pilgrims wouldn’t even allow the Indians to live after the Indians went to the trouble of letting ’em land.” (Radio, 1935)

I know they mean well, most of ’em, and we need a bunch of good workers to immigrate every year to make up for the lack of good workers among the ones already here. But let us figure out how many we need and let ’em in legal. Not just how many, but what skills they need. Bill Gates says he needs to bring in 10,000 computer engineers from China and pay ’em $100,000 a year. The only way to get them here now is to fly them to Mexico City and sneak ’em across the river at El Paso.

If a rancher plants the best grass seed and spreads generous amounts of fertilizer so his cattle have the best pastures in the county, it don’t mean the neighbors can rightly cut his fences and put their cattle in where they can graze along side the owner’s.

If you happened to be in a different part of Los Angeles on Saturday, away from the marching, you might have noticed the Will Rogers State Park up at Pacific Palisades got a face lift. Kinda like Phylis Diller, the old home place has been restored to look like it did in 1935. And it probably cost about the same. There’s a lot of the 180 acres still in need of some work (as any farmer can tell you, the work is never done), but I hope you stop in for a visit the next time you’re in California.

The Los Angeles Times wrote a wonderful story and you can read it at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-will21mar21,0,5374019,full.story?coll=la-home-local

Also here is another story, about son Jim’s barn at the ranch: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24149

Yours,

“Will”

# 401, March 21, 2006

COLUMBUS: All I know is what I read in the newspaper, and this week everybody is writing about the war in Iraq, except when that pretty blond teacher avoided jail. Columnists are giving their opinions, and the journalists are giving theirs. With all these opinions it makes you wonder who’s reporting the facts.

Some of these writers dug up what they had written three years ago at the start of the war, and admitted they didn’t understand Iraq any better than the President.

I decided to go back myself and dust off the old computer files. Here are a few of my comments from March 2003.

(March 6, 2003) I have sworn off predicting the start of wars. I’m 0 for 2 on this one. From here on, I’ll leave it up to Mr. Bush. He’s one man that don’t have to predict, he can just announce.

(March 25) Gasoline prices are coming down. Last week $1.70, today $1.42. Forget what Mr. Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks are telling you. The best gauge of how the war is going is gas prices. Gas prices and Wall Street… In Washington, the Senate cut the President’s tax cut in half. They will only let us have $350 Billion of our money back. Mr. Bush says we need the entire $700 Billion tax cut for the country to recover… The Senate said they need the $350 Billion to pay for the war. Mr. Rumsfeld figures he needs no more than $100 Billion. So don’t be surprised if the final budget bill includes $100 Billion for Rumsfeld and $250 Billion for our various Congressional Districts, mainly to build armor plated pork barrels….I just heard we knocked Iraqi television off the air without blowing up the station. Now there’s some technology that can come in handy the next time one of those Survivor shows comes on.

(March 31) For a while last week the war was going pretty smooth; gasoline dropped to $1.30. But tonight it was back up to $1.60, so perhaps our optimism was a bit too high. We watch this war too much like a basketball game, where our whole disposition changes in an instant depending on who has the ball and who scored last. These folks saying the war should have been over in a week are the same ones that yelled at their microwave because it took more than two minutes to cook supper. Give the Generals a chance to make a few mistakes, on both sides, and just wait and see who adjusts the best. The diplomats had this war all to themselves for 12 years, and you see what a mess they made of it. You can’t expect the Marines to clean it up in 12 days.

That was 2003. Let’s hope we’re arguing over a different topic in 2009.

       Yours,
“Will”

Historic quotes:

“You can have all the advanced war methods you want, but, after all, nobody has ever invented a war that you dident have to have somebody in the guise of Soldiers to stop the bullets.” Saturday Evening Post, May 12, 1928

“You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.” DT #1063, Dec. 22, 1929

“People have just got to get more used to debt. Let’s all let the fellow we owe do the worrying and the U. S. will be the happiest land on earth.” DT #2421, May 7, 1934

# 400, March 13, 2006

COLUMBUS: There’s tornadoes in Missouri and Illinois, fires in Texas and New Mexico, snow in Arizona, and nukes in Iran. But they all got bumped off the front page Monday by “who’s going to the Final Four”. These big lotteries have nothing on college basketball brackets and office pools. So pay your dollar, pick your winner (odds are 1 in 65), and prepare for your payoff.

Dubai pulled out of the port deal. They want to turn ’em over to an American outfit, if they can find one. I said a few weeks ago the Longshoremen were running ’em, and I got corrected. They are being run by the Longshoremen, but in cahoots with the Mafia. So really our port security is in the hands of Tony Soprano.

I suggest we let Wal-Mart manage the ports, and put the Mafia in charge of wiping out the terrorists in Iraq.

Republicans met this weekend in Memphis. They took a straw poll for 2008 and Tennessee Senator Bill Frist won. You know, that says something for you. When a fellow can get the home folks to support him for President, it means they either like him, or they want to get shut of him for four years, and preferably eight. Just because one medical doctor got derailed in a previous race, it don’t mean you shouldn’t give another one a chance.

Meeting in Tennessee, those contenders from Arizona or New York didn’t have a chance. No one could’ve knocked off Bill Frist except maybe Davy Crockett or Dolly Parton.

My pick? Duke by three over Dubai.

             Yours,
“Will”

Historic quotes:

“America can carry herself and get along in pretty fair shape, but when she stops and picks up the whole world and puts it on her shoulders she just can’t get it done.” DT #2063, March 15,

“There is certain things nature can do to you, whether its an earthquake in California, a flood in Mississippi, a tornado in Ohio, or a drought in Arkansas. When nature enters into it, don’t criticize.” DT #2081, April 5, 1933

# 399, March 5, 2006

COLUMBUS: As I write this, the Academy Awards are on television. It’s been on more than two hours and nobody anyone outside of Hollywood has heard of has won an award, except for George Clooney. Folks watching at home had wondered what happened to the boy since he left ER on television.

Not many are watching the show tonight. Not many watched the five nominated pictures either, or any other picture shows except the one about Johnny Cash. If Jaoquin Phoenix wins an award it will be for his acting, not his singing. Men have been trying to sing like Johnny Cash for forty years, and no way an actor will be the first one to do it.

I bet more folks watched reruns of the Andy Griffith Show this weekend than went out to see a movie. When you see Don Knotts as Barney Fife, now that’s real acting. Most folks going out to a cowboy movie want to see one with Gene or Roy or John Wayne.

In news from Oklahoma, a headline in the Claremore Daily Progress (online) says “Rainy Day Fund Overflowing”. Well, of course it’s overflowing. For the past year Oklahoma’s had more oil flowing than rain. According to the newspaper, Legislator Tad Jones says he wants to use $125,000,000 of it to build and repair bridges. Since most of these bridges are over streambeds that are currently dry, you can see he’s optimistic that rain eventually will show up. It will be a race to see if bridge building can drain the Rainy Day fund before the rainy days do.

[Postscript: Reese Witherspoon won an Oacar for playing June Carter Cash. The movie, “Crash”, was a surprise winner. But it should not be a surprise when you realize that half the potential voters were actually IN the movie. They were just voting for themselves.]

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

Will was the Master of Ceremonies for the Awards dinner, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, March 18, 1934. Here are selected quotes from his notes:

“I was always a little leery of this organization. The name, Arts and Sciences, I think that name has bluffed out more people than it has attracted. This is the highest sounding named organization I ever attended. If I didn’t know so many of the people who belong to it personally I would have taken that name serious.

This is rather an unusual dinner this year. In looking over the possible winners, this is not a Metro-Golden-Mayer dinner. Heretofore, if you worked for Metro, when you signed your contract, you could, if you insisted, have a clause inserted in there where you was to receive an Academy statue.

The statues are lovely things. They were originally designed for prizes at a nudist’s colony bazaar but they didn’t take ’em. It must be terribly artistic, for nobody has any idea what it is. It represents the triumph of nothingness over the stupendousness of zero.

It takes great restraint to stand here and hand out tokens of merit to inferior actors.

There is great acting in this room tonight, greater than you will see on the screen. We all cheer when somebody gets a prize that everyone of us in the house knows should be ours. Yet we smile and take it. Boy that’s acting.

I have never seen any of these pictures. They don’t look at mine and why should I go see theirs?”

[The 7^th Academy Awards, 1934, were dominated by the film “It Happened One Night” (Columbia Pictures): Best picture, best actor (Clark Gable), best actress (Claudette Colbert), best director (Frank Capra), best adaptation (Robert Riskin).]

# 398, February 24, 2006

ADA, Ohio:  Once again the farmers descended on this little college town to learn about conservation farming and newfangled technology. They return every year at this time, kinda like the swallows to Capistrano or the buzzards to Hinkley, except there’s more of ’em with each succeeding year.

These farmers came here from Indiana and Michigan and other states and the total flock added up to around 700. Nitrogen and diesel fuel have got so expensive they are figuring out how to get by with less of it. Use no-till, plant cover crops, spread manure, grow corn and soybeans then make ethanol and biodiesel out of it. If that don’t work, they’ll come back next year for new and better ideas.

This town Ada is in the same county as Kenton, and this whole region is known as Kenton Country. It’s quiet, no big airports or interstate highways to keep you awake at night. It’s quiet, but connected. Johnny Appleseed passed through here, planting trees. Gene Autry dropped in for a spell. The county is flat, good for farming. No mountains, but there’s been so little snow this winter, a mountain would be pretty much worthless.

The Winter Olympics are almost over. Nobody knows for sure just when they end, but NBC will keep ’em going till Sunday night. There’s been some wonderful surprises, like Julia Mancuso, Joey Cheek and Shani Davis. But some disappointments: our hockey team won one game out of six, which was hardly worth the trip to Italy. Bode Miller forgot how to ski, and you may find him waiting tables at Snowshoe or driving a Zamboni.

Is it just me, or do the Torino gold medals look like a CD?

This argument over who gets to run our big ports knocked any other news in the creek. A lot of folks don’t want any foreigners butting in. They say, “We don’t need any Arabs telling us how and when to dock our ships.” Of course they aren’t our ships any more either. No matter how it turns out, the ports will be run by the same ones that’s been running them: the Longshoremen.

Historic quote from Will Rogers: (more on Presidents Day)

“George Washington was quite a farmer. Instead of putting a golf course on his land, he put in Indian corn that he had captured from the Indians. His nineteenth hole was in his own house. Washington was the most versatile President we ever had. He was a farmer, Civil Engineer and gentlemen. He made enough at Civil engineering to indulge in both the other luxuries. And Jefferson sitting up there on his hill believed in equality for all. But he dident divide up the hill with any poor deserving Democrats.” WA #313, December 23, 1928

# 397, February 14, 2006

LOUISVILLE, Ky: I just heard that the lawyer Vice-President Cheney shot down in Texas had a heart attack. For Lord’s sake, let’s hope the old fellow don’t die. Really it’s for Republican’s sake. If he dies, and the same folks get invited to the funeral that spoke at the one for Mrs. King, can you imagine the barbs that’ll get flung at ’em.

The local newspaper got the story first, and the Washington reporters appear to be more upset about the whole thing than Mr. Whittington. Kinda makes you wonder if they would have been happier if the shooting had been the other way around.

Texas sent Mr. Cheney a bill for $7. Seems he had a hunting license, but they charge another $7 to shoot quail. No charge to shoot lawyers, even out of season.

Here in Louisville, The Courier-Journal says Governor Fletcher had a gallstone removed Monday. You won’t hear any jokes from me on that. “I” remember 1927 all too clear: “I am in California Hospital, where they are going to relieve me of surplus gall, much to the politicians’ delight. I am thrilled to death. Never had an operation, so let the stones fall where they may.” (DT #282, June 16, 1927)

Afterwards I wrote a little book about it called “Ether and Me”, and I’m going to mail a copy to Gov. Fletcher. In this book I pondered over what causes gall stones. “Well, there are various reasons. Republicans staying in power too long will increase the epidemic; seeing the same ending to Moving Pictures is a prime cause; a wife driving from the rear seat will cause Gastric juices to form an acid, and that slowly jells into a stone as she keeps hollering. Of course I will always believe that mine was caused by no sanitary drinking cups in the old Indian Territory where I was born. We used a gourd raised from a gourd vine. Not only did we all drink out of the same gourd but the one gourd lasted for years, till Prohibition weaned some of them away from water.” (Ether and Me, 1927)

With all this commotion on shooting and surgery, we practically forgot about Lincoln’s Birthday and Valentine’s Day. Our retailers will notify us about Presidents Day coming up Monday even if our news folks are preoccupied searching for clues on that Texas ranch.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“Today the Governor of Kentucky made me aide on his staff with the rank of colonel. I thought I would get out of Kentucky without being made a colonel. But luck was against me. So it’s Colonel Rogers, suh. Put a sprig more mint in that julep.” DT #524, April 1, 1928.

“The last few days I have read various addresses made on Lincoln’s Birthday. Every politician always talks about him, but none of them ever imitate him.” WA #115, Feb. 22, 1925

# 396, February 4, 2006

COLUMBUS: President Bush gave his State of the Union address Tuesday. It was more of a “this is the State I wish the Union was in” speech. He said we are addicted to gasoline, and that we should make ethanol from wood chips, switchgrass and various waste products. Well, it’s not gasoline we’re hooked on, it’s cheap gasoline. Replacing gas with ethanol at $5 a gallon is easy. But we want ethanol at $1 a gallon, and that’s tough to do even if you make it out of weeds and sawdust.

It’s been a big week for these “State” addresses. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri both gave a “State of Al-Qaeda” televised address. Once you cut through the politics, about all they said was, “Hey, we’re still alive.” The terrorist running Iran gave his response to President Bush, “You say you want more nuclear power plants… well, so do we.” We haven’t heard anything from North Korea yet. It takes quite a while for news to get in and out of there by donkey.

The Virginia governor followed President Bush with the Democratic angle on the country. Since he was in Virginia, and he was recently elected, he figured the state of the Democratic Party was looking mighty good, at least in his home state.

Republican Congressmen elected a new leader, John Boehner. He told his fellow Republicans, “Elect me, and you won’t need to rely on Lobbyists for campaign funds. I’ll just carry you myself.” See, John comes from a huge family in Ohio, and they all live in his district so he’s got enough votes right there without spending a dime. So he figures he can share the wealth with enough of his fellow Congressmen to get them all re-elected.

A few days ago I was called on the address the farm machinery dealers of Ohio and Michigan. They had Elvis Presley perform for ’em the night before and he was so terrific they were still all shook up when I got there. I told ’em that in “my” days in Vaudeville I had followed a fair number of acts that kinda died right there on stage. But this was the first time I followed one that had been dead for years.

I kidded those folks about their modern equipment. “Haven’t seen a tractor working all day. The country has gone sane and got back to horses. Farmers all look worse, but they feel better.” (DT # 2112, May 11, 1933) Then I reminded them, “Horses raise what the farmer eats and eats what the farmer raises. You can’t plow the ground and get gasoline.” (DT #1967, Nov. 23, 1932) Well, they got me on that one; said today you can plant corn and get ethanol. And you don’t even have to plow to do it.

Today I read where a bunch of scientists in London predict that in fifty years England will get rid of all the cars and buses and airplanes, and give everyone a horse. They say this is the only way for ’em to satisfy that international Kyoto agreement on air quality. Well, I’m all for clean air and I sure like horses. But you put a million of ’em in downtown London and the aroma of their air will be a big shock, even if every horse comes with its own shovel. The plan would, however, solve any potential shortage of fertilizer.

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

“California had a bill to investigate lobbying, and the lobbyists bought off all the votes and they can’t even find the bill now. Putting a lobbyist out of business is like a hired man trying to fire his boss.” DT #2704, April 5, 1935

# 395, January 25, 2006

STILLWATER, Okla.: Big news in Oklahoma is the new Miss America, from over at Tulsa. The Will Rogers Follies has been performing two weeks in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and I think they just picked out one of those Follies girls at random, and sent her out to Las Vegas to compete. Not really, but they could have. This Miss America is going to be a teacher, and her talent is ballet, which is a kind of dance that’s foreign to the Follies.

Monday I stopped at the Museum in Claremore, and they were getting all cleaned and polished; Larry Gatlin and the rest of the cast of the Follies was dropping in on their night off. Saw “my” three grandchildren who were there to kinda host the festivities, but I couldn’t stay.

Yesterday the Oklahoma Extension Service held their annual convention here and invited me to kinda kick things off. Met the university president, the new dean of agriculture and the provost, all fine folks. This Oklahoma State University is growing, and for the moment this school is flush. Boone Pickens gave $165 Million to the athletic program, and that’s after they already named the football stadium for him. Governor Henry got so excited at the news he promised to donate $250 Million (courtesy of the taxpayers) to cover the various parts of Oklahoma education from grade school through college that Boone doesn’t touch on. I suggested the president ask Boone if he was in 4-H as a boy, and therefore he might want to kick in another $10 or 20 Million in loose change to help out Extension.

Some of you may remember that back in November I told how warm and lovely, and dry, it was in Oklahoma. Well it still is. The drought and all the grass fires you see on television is sure hurting the farmers. All this warm weather may be good for tourists, but Oklahoma would gladly trade a month’s worth of sunshine for a solid week of good steady rain.

I got to visit one of their fine grade schools in Stillwater, Will Rogers Elementary. They are a wonderful bunch of students, full of questions and curiosity.

Have you been hearing about this writer James Frey. Seems he can’t decide whether he is a fiction or non-fiction author. They’ve been arguing for weeks about his Million Little Pieces, but they keep buying ’em by the millions. Oprah finally weighed in on it, declared he is a liar, and now the big argument is over who gets to tell us what books to buy, Oprah or Osama bin Laden.

Frey never learned that non-fiction authors are not expected to embellish the truth. Someone who embellishes the truth is called a humorist, but only if he’s funny. If it’s not funny then you call him a politician.

“Memoirs… means when you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do.” (Saturday Evening Post, March 12, 1932)

“I never saw it fail; when a man starts selling his memoirs he is about through.” (Life Magazine, November 23, 1922)

I watched a little of the American Idol last week and I heard later it was the #1 show on television, even beating out football. The show reminded me of something “I” wrote about Vaudeville, “With all the different grades and classes of Vaudeville they have nowadays, its almost impossible to have an act so poor that somebody hasent got a Circuit that will fit you.” (How To Be Funny, Sept, 1929).

Ford is laying off 30,000 workers. They came up with a perfectly logical way of deciding who stays: the ones that don’t drive Ford cars will be let go. Today you’ve got some Ford workers scouring used car lots looking for any old clunker they can find that says Ford on the nameplate. Even Edsels are being towed away at a record pace.

(I added this on Jan. 26…) That terrorist group Hamas won the elections for Parliament in Palestine. This will be the first time in world history the majority of a legislative body shows up for work wearing masks. The way things are going in Washington perhaps some of our Congressmen should try it.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“(We’re) at the Oklahoma A. and M. at Stillwater, (the best A and M College in America). I had never been there and always wanted to go, because I had a Nephew [Maurice Rogers McSpadden] graduate from there and he has turned out mighty good, and it’s a great school. They win more prizes for Cattle than any other Agricultural School in the U.S. There is an animal Man there named [Warren] Blizzard. He showed us all their fine cattle.” WA #426, Feb. 22, 1931.

Note: Oklahoma A&M is now Oklahoma State University. And, who knows, some day it may become Oklahoma Pickens U.