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Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

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Re: Paks and Polls

By Arianna Huffington
Posted Friday, May 29, 1998, at 12:42 PM ET

Now that I think about it, what India and Pakistan really need is a little of that Newt Gingrich sugar-sweet diplomacy. If anything, he could at least convince each side that there is someone worse than the other side. Newt Gingrich: "Can't We All Just Agree to Hate Me?"

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And now I notice that Clinton is making rumblings--not the private kind, but the public sort--about serious sanctions for the Indians and Pakistanis. Which wouldn't be so bad, if we were consistent about it. I seem to remember that when the French (who, unlike the new nuclear kids on the block, happen to be white) made a pretty little Pacific atoll disappear with a nuclear test a few years ago, our "sanctions" consisted of not buying French red wine for a week or so. I'd like to think our muted response was for the obvious reason: that the French would probably surrender before they got a chance to shoot the bombs off anyway. But I think it's more likely that it's because the French Look Like Us and the Indians don't. Therefore, in the interest of consistency, I think our sanctions should be that we don't eat any papadom and shag panir for a week.

And, as a cheap plug for our "Campaign for a Poll-Free America" (currently supported, according to our latest polls, by 110% of Americans), I bring you this correction from the Times:

"An article on May 17 about local elections in South Africa referred incorrectly to the state of nationwide opinion polling there. Scientifically accurate polls of likely voters do indeed exist."

Of course, they're much like quarks and neutrinos. They help explain certain theories, but no one's ever seen one.

Arianna