[PEN-L:1306] on the lighter side

["Frank Durgin" <fdurgin1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From The St. Peterburg Times(www.times.spb.ru)   #393, Tuesday, August 25,
1998 Global Eye section

Iron Curtain Call

One woman who, it is safe to say, has probably not committed hanky-panky
with Bill Clinton was also putting herself on display last week, flashing a
bit of flesh for big money in the cornfields of Iowa.

It was not, perhaps, where you'd expect to find Margaret Thatcher, but
there she was, strutting her stuff at a steak-and-wine rally for the Iowa
Republican Party, Reuters reports. The carnivorous conservatives paid $250
each to hear Thatcher make her usual modest speech about how she and Ronald
Reagan saved an ungrateful world from the commie hordes. Delegates who
lusted for more contact with the Iron Vixen coughed up $1,000 more to have
their picture taken with the baroness.

Thatcher made the money-grubbing appearance at the invitation of
billionaire Steve Forbes, the addle-pated heir-head who is making his
second acquisition attempt at the White House after his first merger bid
was turned down by voters in 1996.

Forbes, whose 1996 campaign was hampered somewhat by his apparent inability
to string consecutive sentences together or write his name in the ground
with a stick, has also undergone a Jonesian makeover. Voice coaches, speech
massagers, wardrobe managers and other animal trainers have transformed his
bug-eyed, slap-me, yee-haw manner of old into something more slightly
resembling governmental gravitas. His friendship with the titled tightwad
helps complete the gloss.

"We're kindred souls," Forbes said (of Thatcher, not Jones). "She believes
in free hearts and free minds."

But not - emphatically not - free lunch.