Louis Rhodes is a tomahto in a tomato world, a conservative who defends liberals, a flag-waver who defends flag-burners. He is the state’s pre-eminent defender of people with contrarian views–even when those views are contrary to his own. For the past eleven-and-a-half years, Rhodes has been executive director of the…
Miss Manners, the 1920s bible of Victorian etiquette for polite society, is quite clear on the subject of money. “Never discuss money at the dinner table or in public, and especially not with strangers. Discussion of the ~`haves’ and `have-nots’: those who have met with fortune and those who have…
It took a war with Iraq to do it, but I’ve forgotten all about the sins of Senators Dennis DeConcini and John McCain. These days, I spend every spare moment staring into my television set, watching the war on CNN. “The War in the Gulf,” as television calls it, has…
It’s a paradox. You try to instill in your child a deep, abiding respect for truth and honesty. You strive to establish a firm base of mutual trust. Yet you can look the kid straight in the eye and tell him that when his teeth fall out, he should put…
Onetime child actor Butch Patrick, best known to three generations of TV viewers as little Eddie Munster, thoughtfully examines an old publicity photo. Taken some 25 years ago, the shot features Patrick in a typical Munsteresque pose of the period: Decked out in wolfboy makeup and clad in his trademark…
There were lots of clever signs at the January 15 antiwar rally at the Federal building in downtown Phoenix. The crowd of 500 that had gathered by sunset, just a few hours before the U.S. government’s deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait, still hoped that war would be averted. In…
If her four grandchildren ever come back from Nebraska, Lynette will be ready. She keeps a blue dirt bike propped against the wall of the back porch, and she has plastic-covered children’s books, like Peter and the Wolf and Smokey Bear, stacked in one corner of her living room. The…
Back in 1898, when the cornerstone of the Chipman-Petersen building in Tempe was laid, the national battle cry was “Remember the Maine!,” referring to the U.S. battleship that blew up in the Havana harbor. In fact, the cornerstone was laid the same day the United States went to war against…
The Don Bolles case continues to be a political tar baby for anyone who gets close to it. The latest Brer Rabbit is new Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. One of Woods’ first acts as successor to Bob Corbin was to fire Judson Roberts, an assistant attorney general who was…
Dick Jonas is a guitar-pickin’ Vietnam War hero who says he still gets a kick out of putting on his blue air force suit. “You can call me a true-blue kind of guy,” he says. “You can call me an old pilot who likes to have some fun every now…
For several weeks last spring, angry parents besieged radio talk shows with tearful complaints about their children having been removed from their custody. Their hysteria was directed at the Child Protective Services branch of the Arizona Department of Economic Security. It resulted in joint legislative hearings to scrutinize the inner…
Two men from Harvard. Their names are Samuel P. Goddard III and J. Fife Symington III. Both seek to become the next governor of Arizona. How do we choose between them? What can we expect from either of them? Goddard, the son of ex-Arizona governor Sam Goddard, has never held…
Thousands of years from now, when archaeologists unearth the ruins of my home, they will no doubt assume they’ve stumbled upon a holy shrine constructed by a small but fanatical sect of cartoon-animal worshipers. And they won’t be far wrong. I am married to a woman with an insatiable Disneylust–which…
Pete Rose deserves to be in baseball’s Hall of Fame. The preliminary committee which chooses the names to be placed on the ballot has decreed that Rose’s name will be kept off because he is still on baseball’s ineligible list. Rose was suspended for “life” by A. Bartlett Giamatti, the…
It came so unexpectedly. Congress had been debating for three days. Now it was almost time for the final vote in the United States Senate. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii was one of the last speakers. A camera poised high above Inouye picked him up as he strode wearily to…
Andy Conlin can’t decide whether he’s happy or wary about the antiwar demonstration that turned up at Arizona Center shortly after its November opening. “I was flattered,” says the Rouse Company’s Phoenix point man at first, “because it showed that people were recognizing this as the community’s focal point.” But…
Forget love at first sight. Get ready for marriage on first date! “It seemed like a fun idea at the time,” chuckles Phoenix deejay Danny Bonaduce. “Of course, my fiancee back in Philadelphia wasn’t too thrilled about it.” The erstwhile smartass of The Partridge Family recently married a woman he’d…
The door may be opening a little wider for water raids on rural Arizona by the big cities. And the threat comes from one of the least likely sources–a state senator-elect who hasn’t even taken office yet. Carol Springer, a Prescott Republican, announced December 13 she would introduce legislation to…
When Arizona intrudes on the national consciousness the way an angry red pimple pops up on prom night, expatriate Steve Benson gets tears in his eyes. Then, when he stops laughing, it’s time to get back to work. It’s been a year since the cartoonist left his job at the…
For a comic-book superheroine who hasn’t been in wide circulation yet, the Incredible Librarian has quite a following. She gets fan mail from Australia. Her exploits are publicized in newspaper stories and trade journals. Her image is printed on coffee mugs. Incredible Librarian tee shirts are available in several languages,…
Mario Puzo has always insisted that when he wrote The Godfather, he knew so little about organized crime that he had no real Mafia dons in mind as models for Don Corleone. From his writing, it is clear that he regards them as a higher form of life than politicians…
An anthology of minitales that couldn’t be padded to full-column length–or sold to Reader’s Digest on short notice. If Uri Geller, What Am I? As my wife walked our son home from kindergarten in the company of a new classmate and his mother, the kids got into a bitter argument…
