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Is Clinton an Ash Man?

By Margaret Steinfels
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1999, at 6:38 PM ET

First, seasonal notes. As the world turns: Though dawn was many minutes away, the sky was alight on the Upper West Side of New York at 6:01 a.m.

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It is Fat Tuesday, and I suppose even King Tut would turn over in his sarcophagus to hear of the travesty in New Orleans. Maybe they should spend less time marching around in parades and more time visiting cemeteries. Yes, New Orleans is one of those items in my Cyprus File.

Will Mrs. Clinton go directly to the Cyprus File, or will she have to pass Go, first? Hard to say. A Giuliani-Clinton race for Senator Moynihan's seat in 2000 is definitely a question of who is the lesser of two evils, and it's hard to know which one not to pick. Isn't there a Cuomo or Kennedy ready to come forward and save the Empire State? All those New York pols love Clinton now, but wait till the race gets going. Do you notice the media silence? There's more Sniperland in her future. If she hates Washington, how can she possibly love New York? And how can New York love her? Can a suburban girl from the Midwest find happiness in Gotham? I don't think this is going to fly. To the Cyprus File!

The Italians are fabulissimo! And "Fatuous"? What a movie category! The Italian command of the English language is bravura! As it happens, I love fatuous movies, in plain English, junk movies. My personal all-time favorite junk movie is The Blues Brothers. (Did you know that Park Ridge, Illinois, the childhood home of Hillary Rodham, makes a brief and spectacular appearance in one of those great car chases with John Belushi at the wheel? Fabulously fatuous.)

On the news front: You make think the Cold War is over, but Thomas Friedman seems to think the "Deadheads and Warheads" in Russia need our immediate attention. It is a great curiosity to me that U.S. policymakers seem to have written them off. If they can't help themselves, we're not going to help them either. We're bombing Iraq, while they're supplying Iran. And still we're spending billions on defense. Maybe David Remnick should go to work part-time as assistant secretary for Russian affairs.

Lent: Your tax-lawyer analogy works only for East Coast Catholics. In my native land, Chicago, Illinois, the children used to outdo one another in Lenten observance. No tootsie rolls, no jujubees, no snickers, no little dots of frosting on rolls of paper. The candy industry used to collapse in Chicago during Lent. By Holy Week we would all be weak, wan, pitiful creatures. Sister Mary Bridget would come by our desks and wipe our foreheads with her beautiful white handkerchief. My mother led us sleepy but happy children to Mass every morning and afterward fed us sweet rolls from the Swedish bakery. Penance has it rewards.

The real news query for Ash Wednesday: Will Bill Clinton get ashes? As you can see, my detox from the scandal hasn't fully taken hold yet.

We all know who Prince Valiant is, but Hans Kung?

Catch you later.