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About The print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1977-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1983)
Monologue Idle Hands J. Dana Haynes Editor In Chief Important notice to all Americans: There are now only 515 shopping days until the next presidential election. That’s right, folks, there are a mere 82 weeks left for us to choose our candidate. Enough of this dawdling!' There must be some mistake here. Perhaps the politicians of this country don’t realize that the elections will be held on the second Tuesday of next year, not this year. Perhaps they are under the impression that they have only seven months in which to win us over to their camps, not a full 19 months. But in fact, that is exactly how much time there is between today and Nov. 13, 1984. Yet already, the politicos are tilting against each other. We are barely more than halfway through President Reagan’s first term in office, and already the fight for the job is on. The Democrats are probably the worst offenders here, since they are currently out-of-office and playing from a posi tion of weakness. However, that does not explain why we are even now seeing the opening gambits of several contenders, including John Glenn, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. And to make the comedy all the funnier, the press has dubbed Mondale the front-runner, as if someone, somewhere in America already cared enough to know the political differences between Messrs. Mondale, Glenn and Hart (of course, no one can really tell the three of them apart yet, anymore than anyone knows which of the Andrew sisters is Maxine. So far, all the public knows about the candidates is that they wear three-piece suits and walk around unemployed people, shak ing their collective heads). As early as January of this year,'we were even given the cataclysmic news that Senator Edward Kennedy was going to disappoint us all and not run for the oval office. The reason given? Teddy didn’t want to spend the next year and a half on the campaign trail and away from his family. Never mind the fact that Kennedy couldn’t win in this country if his running mate was Jesus. And another almost-candidate, Morris Udahl, dropped out in February. The reason given? At that point, it was simply too late to start raising money. I have rarely agreed with Gore Vidal, the novelist-turned-would-be-politician who was trounced so badly last year when he ran for the Senate in California. However, Vidal has had one or two viable notions about politics in America. One of his more logical suggestions is to place limits on the amount of time and money any candidate may spend when running for office. Vidal has suggested 90 days be all the time allow ed between the candidates’ announcement to run, and the election day. There are some people who would say the idea is absurd, that the American people are simply too lackadaisical and uneducated to make so major a decision in a mere three months. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps six months would be better. But certainly everyone (well, everyone not running for office) would agree that 90 days is more logical than 589 days! One of the persons most affected by the in sanity of the 20-month contest would have to be the president himself, in this case Ronald Reagan. If he should run for office, and most analysts and bookies think he will, then he must start sometime soon, definitely no later than this summer. That means the country will probably have only a part-time president for a year and a half while the battle wages. That was certainly true for the last third of Jimmy Carter’s term in of fice, and it was true of Gerald Ford’s briefer-than- normal reign. Is this a fair plan? Is this logical? Is this a musical comedy? No, no and yes. Page 2 Country under seige by plague of “Valley” jargon Brett Bigham Arts Editor Like gag me with a spoon! If I hear one more ‘totally’ or ‘tubular’ I’m going to barf out! Of course you know what I’m talking about. That dreaded language that has washed over TV and radio and into our per sonal lives. I mean, of course, the language of the Valley Girl, VAL-speak. Valley Talk started, of course, in California, in the San Fernando Valley. Now this would have been fine if it had stayed there, but enterprising Frank Zappa decided to use his fourteen-year-old daughter, Moon Unit Zappa, to cut a valley-girl disc. The record was released nationally, climbed onto the charts and gave every impressionable person a new way to talk. The hit record proved that valley talk was saleable and so valley products flooded into the market. Television and radio ads also picked up on the new talk. Kech 22 used the talk to describe “Leave It to Beaver” and “Bewitched” as totally awesome. Jean and clothing ads swamped TV and radio sporting valley girls and TV started guestspotting them left and right. Even the Christmas Season was attacked by the Valley Girls. One card sported three VALs on a classic Cor vette and gave the always tradi tional message: Gag me with a spoon! Christmas is so tubular! Valley girl posters are available in all different sizes and types now. There are some showing a labeled picture of a VAL with all her parts labeled and catalogued from her tubular bracelets to her bit ching mini-skirt. The best posters, though, are the ones defining VAL- speak. Like for instance, did you know that Barf me out means: Total, terminal rejec tion. “Like my parents make me listen to Don Ho records. It’s so GROSS, like barf me out totally, fer sure.” Grody, Grody is ultimate slime, like you know, moldy lint in your belly button. Like spam with marshmallow sauce. Fatal grunge. A Jel is having fewer than 15 brain cells left. Jell-O head. Having the IQ of Cool Whip. Beastie means you are not a nice person. In fact, you are a gnarly geek, like totally! The word like is very im portant to the VAL. You know, LIKE! A sound designed to fill air pockets in the brain. Valley Talk was really tubular when it first came out. But it’s getting kind of mundo grody. Maybe it’s time to let the Valley Girls go back to the San Fernando Valley and let us get back to normal. Editor’s note: The ter minology is from the “Totally Awesome Glossary” poster distributed by Western Graphics Corporation. THE PRINT, a member of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, aims to be a fair and impartial journalistic medium covering the campus community as thoroughly as possible. Opi nions expressed in THE PRINT do not necessarily reflect those of the College administration, faculty, Associated Student Govern ment or other members of THE PRINT. Clackamas Community College, 19600 S. Molalla Avenue, Oregon City, OR 97045. Office: Trailer B; telephone: 657-8400, ext. 309, 310 Editor In Chief: J. Dana Haynes News Editor: Doug Vaughan Arts Editor: Brett Bigham Sports Editor: Rob Conner Photo Editor: Duane Hiersche Copy Editor: Shelley Ball Staff Writers: Shelley Ball, Dianna Hardy, Buck Jennings, F.T. Morris Staff Photographers: Russ McMillen, Buck Jennings, Troy Maben, Joel Miller, Rick Obritschkewitsch, Jenni Weber Business Manager: Joan Seely Typesetter: Teresa A. Hannaford Advisor: Dana Spielmann Clackamas Community College