Those wonderful "Meat is Murder " people are at it again. PETA (which apparently stands for Puerile Ethics, Tasteless Advertising), put up a billboard in New York showing "Rude Rudy" Giuliani with a milk mustache and the words "GOT PROSTATE CANCER?" Since the Rudester is a PLWPC (Person Living With Prostate Cancer), some people thought this was a bit insensitive, to say the least. Driving into town this morning, I heard a radio host asking his listeners to come up with equally tasteless billboards, such as Magic Johnson: GOT AIDS? The corpses on the Russian submarine Kursk: GOT AIR? My favorite was Monica Lewinsky, with a mustache of ... ah, some white substance: GOT HEAD?

If meat is murder, is yogurt rape? Are curds and whey assault and battery?

The news story I read directed me to a site called milksucks. When I went there I was informed that a dozen studies had shown a link between drinking milk and prostate cancer. And breast cancer. And ... zits. In fact, according to milksucks.com:

Dairy products contribute to almost every disease except carpal tunnel syndrome, including stroke; iron-deficiency; allergies; cancers of the prostate, breast, colon, and ovaries; asthma; heart disease; and even the common cold (milk helps promote the production of mucus).

Chees-us Christ! Now, I don't dispute that a vegetarian diet is healthier. But I question these "facts" a LOT. For one thing, I think that if any of this had been established, as is the link between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease, I'd have heard about it. I suspect these studies didn't rule out other possible causes, as in the classic study linking eating carrots to car accidents. That is, 90 percent of people in accidents had eaten carrots in the last two weeks; therefore, eating carrots causes traffic accidents.

Why don't these people just be satisfied spending a few thousand dollars every once in a while shipping a lobster back to Maine so it can be released, as Mary Tyler Moore once did? Now that's real commitment to animal rights. And we won't have to witness what passes for a sense of humor among the sanctimonious idiots.

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Driving two of Lee's grandchildren back to their other grandparents' house. I breezed across the Fremont Bridge, took the exit onto I-5 South, past the Rose Garden, and negotiated the worst quarter mile of freeway in Portland, where EVERYBODY entering from the right wants to cross one lane to the left to get on I-5, and (almost) EVERYBODY coming down I-5 on the left wants to get over one lane to the right, and they all have to do it in about 200 yards, sometimes at high speed ... breathed a little easier as I arched out over the river and curved around to enter I-84 ... when suddenly a motorcycle cop stops a car about ten cars ahead of me just as he's about to get on I-84. But it's not a speeding stop; he stops ALL of us.

From the spot where we were stopped I could see the two lanes going from I-5 North to I-84; after a few minutes, no more traffic was going by down there, either. With nothing to do but think about it, I eventually solved the puzzler. Somebody "important" was about to grace us with his brief presence.

Sure enough, after another ten minutes 14 motorcycle cops roared by, in pairs. Then nothing for another few minutes. Looking over my shoulder I could see traffic backed up all the way over the Marquam Bridge, probably halfway to Salem by now. I couldn't see that far in the other direction, but surely it was jammed up for miles.

I thought I'd heard that Dubya was going to be in town. Al, I thought, was still floating down the Mississippi on the Vice-Presidential barge, eating grapes and dates and being fanned with ostrich feathers by nubile slave women. (I was wrong, but he wasn't in Portland.) Either way, I was pissed. All this fuss for a Vice President, or a Texas Governor? Give me a break.

More motorcycles; I eventually counted 37. Thirty-seven bike cops, and certainly many more I couldn't see, blocking off other entrances to I-84 all the way to the airport. Several police cars zipped by. Some big Blazers. A couple black sedans, more cop cars, two—count 'em, two—ambulances. Sheriffs. State Police. I sat and I fumed, wishing for a high-powered rifle. I began to understand how a Lee Harvey Oswald is made. Lacking a firearm, I vowed to honk my horn and salute with my middle finger when the limo came by. For all the good it would do.

Lee told me who she thought it might be. Him? Certainly not him, I told her.

Then, after about half an hour of waiting (okay, probably more like twenty minutes, but this was a situation where subjective time was MUCH more important, and remember, we were at the HEAD of the line, through sheer luck; god only knows how long it took to get it all unsnarled) ... the traffic started up again. The cycle cop ahead of us sped away and we thousands of innocent internees were suddenly free to go. There had been no limo.

The next day I saw the news stories. Lee had been right. It was ... Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney.

DICK CHENEY???

If there is anything more useless than a Texas Governor or a Vice President, it can only be a Vice Presidential CANDIDATE. If he doesn't even rate a limo, how do they justify his monopolizing several hundred Portland cops and creating traffic jams?

I am resigned to (but not happy about) this sort of insanity when it comes to the President. I am convinced it is all laid on more to make the Big Man feel important than to actually protect him. I mean, everyone knows that if someone really wants to get him, they can GET him. When Clinton came to Portland once I had no trouble figuring out a way to get him that I guarantee would work ... all it would take is that I didn't care about escaping afterwards. I mean, what good is a million-dollar armored bus or limo if the guy plunges into the crowd after his speech, shaking hands? And they ALL do it, not just habitual flesh-pressers like Bill.

So how far down does this royal disease reach in our democratic government? Would they do this for the Secretary of State? How about the Secretary of Labor? The Senate Majority Leader? The House Whip? A four-star General, or a Supreme Court Justice?

One of the things I've always loved about Portland is the informality of its government, which is astounding considering how big the city has become. Mayor Bud Clark used to ride his bicycle to work, alone. I once saw him walking down Burnside Street in a Tyrolean hat and lederhosen. I waved to him, and he waved back. Lee and I have encountered the next Mayor, Vera Katz, with a group ordering lunch at the deli where we were eating. Talking up a storm, as usual. Can you see the mayor of New York City doing that? Or San Francisco? I used to sometimes see Joe Alioto arrive at City Hall with two cars full of cops that surrounded him all the way into the building. And, in spite of that kind of security, Dan "Twinkie" White managed to assassinate Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. If they want to get you, they will GET you.

Does anyone really think anybody WANTS to get Dick Cheney? Or that anybody other than his frightening wife would really CARE?

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