“At a Washington party, where power, curiosity, conviviality and alcohol all get mixed together, someone is apt to spring a leak.”
—The New Yorker, August 4, 1997.
“Seeking to tap the booming, $4-billion-a-year market for bottled water, officials in these cities [Houston, Kansas City, and North Miami Beach] said they were exploring plans to market water from their municipal water supplies, complete with eye-catching labels and the ever-popular ‘sport caps’ that enable the container to be opened with a pull of one’s teeth.”
—The New York Times, August 6, 1997.
“When it comes to offending people, nothing fits the bill like ethnic jokes.”
—The National Review, September 29, 1997.
“U.S. debts of $1 billion should be measured against the nearly $30 billion contributed to the U.N. over the past half-century.”
—Michael Michalski,The National Review, July 14, 1997.
“Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of medieval hangover.”
—The New Yorker, August 4, 1997.
“Our culture prohibits making fun, whether in malice or in jest, of any ethnic or racial group except your own…this only perpetuates divisions by maintaining ethnic groups in their self-mocking monopolies. This will never bring Americans together. But the free market will.”
—E.V. Kontorovich, demonstrating a thorough understanding of punch-line economics, in The National Review, September 29, 1997.
“Number of trout and perch dumped into Russia’s Lake Ukshe last July for Boris Yeltsin’s fishing trip: 10,000.”
—Harper’s Magazine, September, 1997.
“Reasons to Worry about Rising Wages.”
—headline in Fortune, July 7, 1997, presumably taking a management-eye view.
“No wonder so few Americans grow up aligned with the Party of their parents. They may look to politicians for a manifesto. But they’re more likely to get a Chinese menu.”
—David Shribman, Fortune, July 7, 1997.
“The Miller Brewing Company, a Phillip Morris subsidiary, gives $150,000 annually to the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund… Miller spends $300,000 annually just advertising the program, with those ads all carrying the Miller Company logo.”
—Dollars and Sense, January/February 1996.
“I look at pageants like any other hobby, like golf.”
—Darlene Burgess, child beauty pageant grandma, “Beautiful Girls”, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker, August 4, 1997.
“America’s 12 million undergraduates…drink 4 billion cans of beer a year…and spend $446 [each] on alcoholic beverages—more than they spend on soft drinks and textbooks combined.”
—Time, September 8, 1997.
“‘China could be number three in the world [in new PC sales, after the U.S. and Japan] by the year 2000,’ remarked IBM’s Lo. ‘That’s a lot of little emperors with PCs.’”
—Forbes, October 6, 1997.