It's been a tough couple of days

for salt of America's earth.

Norma McCorvey today marks the

25th anniversary of her star

turn as "Jane Roe" with yet

another expression of profound

regret for making the most

painful decision in a woman's

life. McCorvey, baptized in a

Dallas swimming pool in 1995, is

bitter at the big-city lawyers

who made her a pawn in the

abortion contest, and who can

blame her? Sarah Wedddington,

McCorvey's erstwhile attorney,

now expresses regret at not

having picked a more presentable

client. Considering all the

nasty comments left-centrists

have made about Paula Jones'

big hair and industrial-strength

maquillage, you might conclude

that there really is something

to all this talk about the

classism of the liberal

establishment. Jones' legal case

has always been as hard to

swallow as a morning-after pill

(or an Arkansas governor's

distinguishing characteristic),

but only dyed-in-the-Beltway

democrats can still doubt her

version of events. Amid these

repeated slaps in the face to

the nation's white-trash

backbone, you might suspect the

Texas cattlemen's suit against a

certain life-affirming,

burger-eschewing gab queen is

intended as payback to the

big-city elites. Given Oprah's

Greenspan-like ability to move

markets with a wag of her

tongue, the Lone Star butchers

may even have a case. McCorvey,

on the other hand, may not.

In other Texas news, a new

sacrament there awaits punks and

dirtballs who make the mistake

of parading their beatnik ways

around before the Lord, and this

love offering delivers up the

body and the blood - at a

whopping 1,800 feet per second.

Yes, that's right: The Texas

legislature has amended the 1995

concealed-handgun law;

churchgoers in the don't-mess

state may now sneak heat into

Casa Dios without, well,

sneaking. As one (presumably

pistol-packing) pastor told the

Cox News Service, "If it's

against the law for law-abiding

people to be wearing guns inside

of church, who will be wearing

them inside of church?

Lawbreakers." Other men of the

cloth weren't so sure about

having heaters behind the

hymnals; while they were used to

having cops and soldiers show up

armed, the pastors told a

reporter that "it doesn't seem

right to have the average

congregation member bring a

weapon to church." But the song

does say "Onward Christian

Soldiers."

Last week, the Sundance Film

Festival launched its annual

parade of celebrities

glad-handing and grab-assing in

some Mormon settlement in the

Utah outback. Of course, in the

past decade the festival has

become more of a Hollywood

schmooze than anything else. It

would be easy enough to cop an

attitude about the mainstreaming

of everything good, worthy, and

indie; easier yet to sit back

and watch Hollywood hipsters and

rock stars show up making asses

of themselves for the sake of

Entertainment Tonight. How

confusing it must be, then, that

the festival has been marred

this year by a little legal

intrigue. Courtney Love

attempted to block the premiere

of a Nick Broomfield documentary

on her late great husband, Kurt

Cobain. Love's people say the

director never obtained

permission to use "Smells Like

Teen Spirit" or "Doll Parts,"

both of which are featured

prominently on the soundtrack.

But the truth of the matter is

that Broomfield, director of

such underwhelming muckraking

classics as Heidi Fleiss,

Hollywood Madam, will get the

go-ahead when hell freezes over.

The girl with the most cake

didn't much like her

unflattering portrayal in the

flick. And since she's trying

to parlay a mediocre career in

music for a mediocre one in

film, we're sure everyone at

Sundance - a veritable

crossroads of the mainstream and

the mediocre - will understand

and live through it.

Unfortunately,

PR-binge-and-purger Love's newly

discovered desire for privacy

failed to carry over to Los

Angeles, where the world's most

glamourous exhibitionists

showered Golden Globe Award

viewers with a steady stream of

coquettish urinary updates

during Sunday night's

all-holes-bared gala. Who would

have guessed the trickle-down

effect Roger Avary's second

banana stab at enfant terrible

status at the 1995 Oscars - "I

have to take a pee" - would have

three years later? Christine

Lahti, Robin Williams, Jack

Nicholson, James Cameron, and

Anthony Edwards all demonstrated

that writing for South Park is

harder than it looks; while

Nicholson seemed under the

influence of whatever mood

enhancers were in that baggy

before he made it the punch line

of his weak joke, all the others

appeared alarmingly sober. Memo

to everyone involved: It was all

a little bit more information

than we needed.