Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

I'm a big fan of the Internet. It's the best thing to happen to America since take-out pizza. But there is one aspect of the World Wide Web that worries me. No, it's not the proliferation of porn, which, when all is said and done, helps keep teenagers off the street. (Can anyone recall the last time they had a hubcap stolen?)

What does bother me is the proliferation of rumors. You just can't stop the flow of misinformation on the Internet. Here, purely for my reader's benefit, are a few items that are sheer gossip, barely a shred of truth in any of them:

• Donald Trump is close to syndicating a deal to buy Canada

• Janet Reno, saddened by her waning political fortunes, has found solace in the company of Richard Simmons

• "E.R." has an episode in the works about a guy who, in a fit of depression, gulps down a six month supply of Viagra and is nearly strangled by his Jockey shorts

• The real reason Strom Thurmond is leaving the Senate is to devote more time to wooing Barbra Streisand

• Now that the recent flip-flop election fiasco in New Jersey has been made legal, throngs of "fallen angels" have been checking out residency requirements in the Garden State. Unconfirmed reports have surfaced of former Congressman Gary Condit shopping for a condo in Trenton.

• Al Gore was in his previous life, also Al Gore

Apparently, Jewish mothers and grandmothers must look dangerous. Or, perhaps, it's that their unmatched high cholesterol cooking poses a national security threat. Otherwise why would my wife and her mother be frisked at the airport nearly every time they fly. And I mean checked, you know, the whole nine yards; off with the sneakers; empty the handbag; pass the wand front, back, top, bottom and in between. (On the way to a Bar Mitzvah in New York last June they were both screened!)

Then, this past September, as I watched my ninety-year old mother-in-law's K-Mart loafers being checked for TNT, it came to me. This is racial profiling at its best. At last there is something in our war effort that The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union can't complain about.

And it's simple arithmetic. For every ten Saudi tourists given special attention, the screeners have to do one Jewish grandmother. And a great-grandmother is worth an entire delegation of prospective flight school students from the Middle East.

Now that my wife understands how significant her role is, she no longer grouses about being pulled out of the boarding line. And my mother-in-law is happy to struggle out of her shoes and get back in her wheel chair. "Remember Pearl Harbor," she shouted as the attendant pushed her up the ramp and into the plane.

Is this a great country or what?