by Jackson Baker
As Vice President Al Gore gets ready to
make his expected run for the presidency in 2000 (and getting ready is mainly
what he's been doing, giving interviews right and left and being featured
on this or that TV magazine show during the last week), he might first have
to do a little fence-mending in his home base.
Still simmering about the way the Tennessee Ball, a Gore project, was handled at last week's presidential inauguration (now that they're in out of the cold) are various high potentates in the political universe, more than a few of them Tennesseans.
At about 8:30 p.m. Monday when, in the judgment of most of those on the inside of the sprawling Union Station venue, there was room for lots more the District of Columbia fire marshal abruptly shut things down and barred a large crowd still outside from entering.
For two hours, during which time Hootie and the Blowfish did their number and the vice president and wife Tipper Gore came and went, as many as a thousand people including prominent officeholders, ambassadors, and fixtures on the Washington social scene were left to huddle together in sub-30s temperature.
Among the Tennesseans so stranded were state House of Representatives Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, House Speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry, and Bunny Burson, wife of outgoing state Attorney General Charles Burson (who had made it inside).
Eventually, most of them were admitted if not in time to see President Clinton make his appearance, then at least in time to catch Gloria Estefan's show-closing act.
One theory in wide circulation among some of the disgruntled was that the fire marshall acted at the direct behest of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, an ex-Memphian who was conspicuously among the uninvited. Whether or not that is so, it is clear that the guest list was the subject of major snafus.
The state's congressional offices did not get their expected share of complimentary tickets, and, coincidentally or not, 8th District U.S. Representative John Tanner of Union City held his own party at the same time as the much-vaunted ball.
Returning in D.C. is former aide Mark Schuermann, who for the last couple of years has been doing PR for a liquor distillers' lobby. Remaining on hand is all-purpose aide John Freeman. As previously announced, Ford Jr.'s chief of staff is Mark Yates. Deputy chief of staff in Memphis will continue to be Latrena Ingram.
"MILLION MAN MATH MADE EASY," THE free-handed
rap which makes up the third cut on Paul Shanklin's new parody album,
Bill Clinton: The "Comeback Kid" Tour, indicates
how far the Cordova mimic and satirist has come since his initial effort
in 1995, Bill Clinton: The Early Years.
Back then Shanklin, operator of a carpet-cleaning franchise in real life, was content to indict a subject like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan indirectly, through the bite of his descriptive lyrics. By now he has Farrakhan's voice down cold. Ditto with that of Pat Buchanan, the erstwhile champion of the Populist Right.
Shanklin's most severe problem is the one that serious mimics from Vaughan Meador to David Frye to Rich Little to Dana Carvey have always had, the prospect that their pet targets will fade out of public life, leaving them stranded with perfect command of voices that no one any longer wants to hear.
Shanklin need not worry: His Bill Clinton and Al Gore are dead-on (in more senses than one), and the real guys have just taken the oath for four more years meaning that, for at least that length of time, they'll be fish in Shanklin's comic barrel.
Like its conservative-minded predecessor, largely drawn from sketches heard first on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, this Comeback Kid album is so slanted that it's virtually right-angled to reality. Is Bob Dole missing here for that reason, or because his time onstage wasn't long enough for Shanklin to get his voice down? Whatever.
But Clinton and Gore are represented abundantly, doing duets like "Werewolves in Congress," "Poll Man," and "Only Baloney" (after standards by Warren Zevon, David Porter, and Roy Orbison, respectively).
And so is Ross Perot, whose 15 minutes are surely up, but whom Shanklin renders so well (in the self-descriptive "A White Tight Coat," for example) that we don't mind his taking up a minute or two more.
As before, Shanklin gets good help from co-writer Greg Sublett and capable supportive voices (notably Ivy Heschman and Rick Robinson as Simpson family sound-alikes). There's decent musical work, too, done at Memphis' Rockingchair Recording Studios and Wilkerson Sound Studios, and some typically acidic cover art by Mike Ramirez.
The album is available from Narodniki Records at 1-800-955-9188. Cassette is $11.98 and CD is $14.98. Either one requires an additional $3.75 for shipping and handling. J.B.