NEWSCAST
with Leslie Generic, 1/14/00

Leslie: Here now the news, I'm Leslie Generic.
There's been a new addition to the collection of politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and radicals fighting over the fate of that six year old Cuban boy. Chuck Upchurch reports.

Chuck: (phone) The latest entrant in the sweepstakes to determine the boy's future is Hollywood deal maker Spin Williams.

Spin: The boy is gold! He's cute. People love him. I want to build a real life type sitcom around him ... we'll set him up with a house in Miami and another one in Havana ... and work out a shared custody deal.

Chuck: Williams is convinced his production company can make the deal using patience, diplomacy, and a lot of money. As part of a growing trend in television, the people in the Elian Gonzales tv series would all be real.

Spin: Absolutely. We'd have a weekend/weekday split on the custody ... and then we'd do some editing but the plot every week would be about his wacky American family trying to turn him into a capitalist, and his equally wacky Cuban family trying to turn him into a communist.

Chuck: Why would anyone go along with this?

Spin: Everybody gets to be in the series. Isn't that what they want, attention? Even Castro can be in the show, we'd love to have him. We would have to edit his speeches, though.

Chuck: Williams said several networks are interested in the concept, and he's in the process of, as he put it, "seeing people and collecting signatures." Chuck Upchurch, Los Angeles.

Leslie: This week's announced merger of America Online and Time-Warner was a another predictable event in what is a long term process of universal consolidation, according to business astronomer Stan Neely.

(sfx: chalk on board)

Stan: What you're gonna see is more and more and more combining by entities that are unbelievable huge! Look at Time/Warner here ... I can't even draw for you how remarkably big it is! When you see the money coming into it ... it's billions and billion and billions ...
And look at these phone companies out here ... enormous! Car companies! Big, big, big. There's a deal coming ... ONE DEAL ... that will need, for it's fuel ... ALL THE MONEY that there is, EVERYWHERE. When that deal goes through ... the Universe ends!

Leslie: Business astronomer Stan Neely.
A company racing to produce a complete map of the human genome announced this week it will have a "rough draft" ready by summer. Project director Mary Shelley predicted it would be a significant step forward.

Mary: We can't say that it'll be a complete description of what goes into a normal human ... but it will be a close enough guess to be a workable blueprint for a proto-human, like ... some kind of movie monster, or anybody in the WWF.

Leslie: The good governmental budget news continues to come in. Federal officials claim projected tax collections over the next ten years will more than compensate for planned spending increases and will give the federal government continued surpluses. Officials denied charges that these encouraging new numbers are derived from assumptions that are overly optimistic. Budget forecast director Hap Smiley.

Smiley: (cheeful) I've got a chart here with our assumptions in the left column and our numbers on the right. You see here the numbers just keep going up and up. At 2 years out we're assuming no major weather disasters (we deserve a break sometime.) Here at 5 years out we're expecting the stock market to top ten thousand. At 6 years out we're confident there will be leaders in every country who are not insane. At 7 years ... world peace. That's gonna save some money. And here in year 9 ... population growth will have leveled out, and everyone on the planet will have a cell phone, a credit card and good teeth!

Leslie: Budget forecast director Hap Smiley.
Debate continues in the Reform Party over the location of their summer convention. Factionalism within the party continues to make the issue difficult to resolve. Recently I talked with two members of the party, who requested that their names not be used, and I asked them to explain the problem.

Ventura: Rest assured ... the way I see it, there is no problem.

Perot: Yes there is. Only a dang fool would say there's no problem.

Ventura: I'll tell you the problem .. is they won't do it our way.

Perot: No, no. The problem is ... we founded this party and they won't do it our way.

Ventura: To my way of thinking, it's my way or mass transit.

Perot: You know, it's pitiful thing to screw up a cliché, ain't it?

Ventura: Well .. your candidate's a goon!

Perot: Your candidate's an egomaniac!

Ventura: It takes one to know one.

Perot: I hear that suckin' sound!

Leslie: Gentlemen, gentlemen. Please. In light of all this, why should any voter cast his lot with you?

Both: No more politics as usual.

Leslie: Another Fairy Tale has emerged in the news. Forest Grimm reports.

Forest: Little Red Riding Hood was going to visit her grandmother when she surprised a wolf in the act of devouring the old woman, whole! She called 911 and a fire truck was dispatched! But when the fire crew arrived, they didn't have the proper equipment to safely remove grandma from the wolf, and had to return to the station for "the jaws of life." Then a police cruiser arrived and Red begged the officers to shoot the wolf, which they refused to do because there was nothing in their "use of deadly force" policy a suspect devouring a citizen.
Then the paramedics showed up and put the now hysterical Red Riding Hood on a stretcher and immobilized her head so she could be taken to the hospital for observation.
Hours later, she learned that a lowly woodsman had happened by and, hearing the cries of her grandmother, used his axe to free her.
The woodsman is still at large and is being sought for questioning.
Forest Grimm ... the woods.

Leslie: And that's the news, I'm Leslie Generic.

Dale Connelly Reporting Home