John-John, We Hardly Knew Ye

He may have ended up in the drink,

but it's hard not to admire John

F. Kennedy Jr.'s camera-ready

ability to mop up the

perpetually besmirched family

reputation. A public life that

took shape with the most famous

salute in TV history (with the

possible exception of Gerald

McRaney's episode-ending

snap-tos on Major Dad during the

Persian Gulf War) ended with a

media spectacle that eclipsed

not only Neil Armstrong's

30-year-old shouldering aside of

Buzz Aldrin but, more important,

Uncle Ted Kennedy's own small

swim for mankind at

Chappaquiddick (an anniversary

that, we now learn, had

attracted a cadre of

third-string reporters to

Martha's Vineyard even before

JFK Jr.'s Bermuda Triangle

routine cleared the runway for

mawkish evacuations and unexpected

advertorial tie-ins). More's the

pity that Ted's excellent

adventure with a woman not his

wife has been forever consigned

to Davy Jones' locker by the

curious timing of the two

accidents. Teddy's ability to

shake off that scandal as if he

had just finished swimming laps

at the Kennedy's Florida

"compound" (the site of another

Ted-related romance gone wrong)

proved you can beat the Kennedy

curse if you drink hard enough —

a lesson the durable senator

apparently failed to pass on to

his nephew. As John-John tended

to limit his escapades to the

occasional nude pose in his

failing magazine (which now

turns out to have been a

universally loved American

Treasure all along), his status

as the least objectionable

Kennedy is likely to remain

intact. Whether his death will

close out public fascination

with the family remains to be

seen. Certainly no one wants to

see the likes of Representative

Patrick Kennedy (Drunkard-Rhode

Island) in the buff, but then

again, there are plenty of

Kennedys to go around. As we

await the inevitable Robert

Maxwell conspiracy theory, we

console ourselves with the

thought that, except for

employees of George, life will

go on.

Last Tuesday, after less than

three months and more than 2,200

posts, the message board

NKGuttersnipeINC — featuring

young women recounting their

sexual experiences with the

artists formerly known as the

New Kids on the Block — shut

down. To get the 411 on the

dopest message board around, we

caught up with Monique, 23, a

recent Georgia Tech industrial

engineering grad, who along with

partner Kea, 22, launched the

site in May and shut it down on

13 July.

It's Jesse "the Body" Ventura

versus Ross "Crazy Old Coot"

Perot. If the media cared more,

we'd be in for a hazardous flood

of unamusing editorial cartoons

portraying the two potted

politicos, mano a mano in the ring,

wrastlin' for the soul of the

Reform Party. That's roughly

akin to fighting for the soul of

the UPN Network or any other

entity eking out a bare shadow

existence, unnoticed by most of

humanity. But there's more at

stake than a name that means

nothing to even many of the

people who voted for it. The

US$12 million in federal funds

"earned" by the so-called party

are at stake during its 23

to 25 July convention in

Michigan. The law of diminishing

returns might lead us to believe

that this gives Ventura the

motivational edge — he needs

that cash more than the cracked

plutocrat. But don't count out

the loyalty of the party

rank-and-file to the

wallet-packing bill payer over

the pistol-packing office

holder. It's ultimately a

sideshow regardless. Ventura's

unprecedented gubernatorial

victory and powerhouse Bob

Smith's defection from the GOP

notwithstanding, third parties

will doubtless be as important

to next year's election as

Nostradamus' apocalyptic

prophecies.

Political science marches on:

The US Department of Commerce's

The National Telecommunications and

Information Administration has

made front page news for

rediscovering that rich people

tend to get new technologies

first. By casting this eternally

recurring pattern in racial

terms, the DOC has created

maximal tut-tutting across the

land, stressing that the

computer adoption gap between

blacks and whites has widened

recently. It doesn't stress that

in percentage terms, computer

use among blacks is growing

faster than that of whites or

the obvious fact that technology

adoption rates have increased

more and more as the century has

worn on. Computer use has spread

much wider and faster than such

fogey technologies as

electricity and the telephone.

Head-shaking news stories

lamenting America's continued

racial divide notwithstanding,

we predict that just as 98

percent of the population now

has a TV, we will all —

black or white, rich or poor,

eventually, and sooner than

later — be together in

perfect harmony, cursing at slow

download times, whether or not

some new Al Gore initiative

comes to our rescue. Then of

course, we'll need to redress

the racial imbalances in

personal cloning or

teleportation. Like the poor,

the Professional Uplifter will

always be with us.