Funny Business

Cranberries, Crustaceans, and The Sex Life of the Fly

Claps and congratulations to the cranberry and crawfish cultivators for courage, charisma, and commitment. They didn't let Ronald Reagan get away with it.

Reagan's remarks in his State of the Union address about unnecessary federal spending on such projects as cranberry and crawfish research may have elicited a few chuckles, but Capitol Hill lawmakers and researchers around the country were fuming at the slight. "Frankly, I don't see what's so funny about cranberry research," said Rep. Don Bonker (D-Wash.), whose home district includes many of his state's cranberry growers.

The president's jab at wildflower research also created an uproar. Said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who acquired $50,000 seed money for native wildflower research at New Mexico State University, "My own view is that it is better to spend $50,000 in New Mexico for research on the propagation of wildflowers than to send $8 million to the contras."

Rep. E. (Kika) de la Garza (D-Tex.), chair of the House Agricultural Committee, added, "When we started studying the sex life of a fly, eventually that became the screw worm eradication program. It saved several billion dollars for ranchers and cattle breeders. But anybody would call it pork barrel when you study the sex life of a fly."

Ferret Breeder Makes Good

Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture aren't laughing either, but for a different reason. In late November a press release went out on official USDA stationery, announcing that "A prominent northern Virginia ferret breeder has been appointed head of the Department of Agriculture's Office of Information."

The release went on to say that the new director, David R. Lane, said his new job would be "a lot like raising ferrets. Government public affairs employees are known for their ability to weasel through tight spots and they'll often turn around and bite the hell out of you." It said further that Lane planned to rewrite job evaluation criteria, making them "so unintelligible [employees will] think they're reading an administration position paper on farm policy."

The press release was a joke to be read at the farewell party of the former director. But somehow the fake release was sent to the print shop. About 230 press correspondents received the announcement before the mistake was discovered.

Dave Warren, chief of the USDA news division said, "I've had less than 20 calls but more than a dozen from people who wanted to know what was going on." Did he wonder why so few responses? "It shows that either people don't read our releases or that not every one of the 230 got them," he responded. Or perhaps nobody thought there was anything particularly odd about it?

Off With Their Heads

St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, ran the following item in its most recent newsletter: It seems San Francisco businessman John Lee Hudson lost $30,000 in an effort to market Oliver North dolls after the Iran-Contra hearings. In the wake of the Soviet general secretary's popularity in America, Hudson decided to convert them into Mikhail Gorbachev dolls for Christmas.

Hudson said just before the holiday that his dolls were sitting in a South Korean factory waiting to have their heads removed and replaced with Gorbachev heads, complete with birthmark. Who cares about 2,611 leftover missiles -- what are we going to do with thousands of left-over Oliver North heads?

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.