# 332, August 25, 2004

MORGANTOWN, West Va.: The Olympic Games are wrapping up. Just in time, too. Our women have been so great in Athens, the men are ready for football. Our USA women are winning in basketball, softball, soccer, beach volleyball and gymnastics to name a few. Meanwhile the men lost to Puerto Rico and Lithuania in basketball, and in soccer and baseball they fared even worse. So here’s to our women, the new rulers of American sports.

You know, it’s not surprising. I read where a survey of ten-year olds found that the girls liked playing sports just as much as the boys. So fellows, if you don’t put down the Nintendo and pick up a bat or ball instead, we’ll soon be overrun, if not already.

The Republicans are ready to swarm into New York for the Bush Follies. Senator Kerry was there yesterday, kind of in the role of a warm up act. The only crowd he drew was the gathering protesters, and they started booing just out of habit till they were reminded that Bush is the candidate they are called on to hiss and holler at, not Kerry. Kerry was last month in Boston.

I read where some organization of American women (I can’t remember which one) says President Bush doesn’t understand women, and neither does Senator Kerry. Well, up to about eighty years ago our Presidential candidates didn’t even recognize women, let alone understand them. My suggestion for this organization (whatever it is), is to come up with a candidate with a perfect understanding of women. It would be a feat unsurpassed in American politics, and the person would be a shoo-in for President. World issues would fade away, defeated by superior intellect and intuition. Why, Osama bin Laden would crawl out of his cave, give up, and tell the new President to pocket the $50 million bounty. This splendid individual with such a remarkable grasp of complex affairs could not only be President, but simultaneously serve as Pope, baseball commissioner, and, every four years, judge the Olympic gymnastic competitions.

So we’re all pulling for those women to name their candidate. Only problem will be getting them to agree on just one.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“… it’s a great game, this Convention game is. I don’t suppose there is a show in the World with as much sameness in it as it has got. You know exactly what each speaker is going to say before he says it…. You know before you go who will be nominated. You know the platform will always be the same: promise everything, deliver nothing. I really don’t think any such proceedings could be carried on in any other civilized country in the World except ours. You cuss yourself for sitting day in and day out and looking at such nonsense. But the next four years find you back there again.” WA #289, July 8, 1928

[The 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles was the first to include women’s competition]
“Well with us right in the middle of the Olympics, we are just bogged down in swimmers, up to our ears in pole vaulters. It’s been great fun, and a wonderful sight to see… About ten days ago before it started why one day out at our studio they brought all the girl athletes out there for lunch and to see the studio… You musent miss meeting this Texas wildcat “Tex” Didrickson [Mildred “Babe” Didrickson Zaharias], she just believes that she can do anything, and the funny part about it is she can. There is none of the sports that she can’t do and do well. She is an athletic marvel…. Then I met that day Helen Madison, our great swimmer, then Georgie Coleman, oh and dozens of others.

A big pretty blonde girl from Germany spoke good English, said she was a javelin thrower. Javelin? Why that’s a little light thing like a spear. Why this girl could have heaved a horse, much less a javelin.

Two girls from Mexico, one was a fencer, one was a javelin thrower. The Canadian girls I believe as a whole were about the prettiest of any of our foreign visitors. The Japanese had a great bunch, and funny thing there was only one girl from France, just one here. I guess France is kinder slow having women taking up boxing, and wrestling, and running and jumping. Still they don’t mind ’em doing a lot of work in the fields. I have see ’em pitching hay and hauling manure to the fields.

Course I don’t know how this women thing doing all these games is. I mean I can’t just get my mind made up about it. But I guess it’s all right. They just as well be doing that as in some other devilment. It sure does make ’em take care of their health. Course some say that it will be bad for ’em in the long run, but I doubt it. You know women always could endure more than men. They are superior to the so-called male.

So I reckon that it’s only a matter of time that they will not only be doing the same games as the men…” WA #502, August 7, 1932