People in the News for September 12, 1997

Friday, Sept. 12, 1997 | 9:58 a.m.

Now this is nice: Charlton Heston is vowing to raise $50 million by the year 2000 for a very important educational initiative! Boffo, you're saying. It's about time someone attacked illiteracy! Well, not exactly. OK, then, it's certainly time someone took the lead in modernizing classrooms! Wrong again. Um, more money for better teachers? Nope. How about this: "To teach American kids what the right to keep and bear arms really means to their culture and country." Ah, it's late summer and an old man's fancy turns to thoughts of indoctrinating the nation's youth! Heston made his fund-raising pledge Thursday during a speech at Washington's National Press Club, in which he attacked the media for being biased in favor of gun control. "Your efforts to undermine the Second Amendment ... threaten not only the physical well-being of millions of Americans," he said, "but blah blah blah individual liberty blah blah blah Founding Fathers blah blah blah ..." Somewhere between liberal alarmism and Second Amendment stridency there has to be a postage stamp of middle ground, but you won't find Heston there: He's vice president of the National Rifle Association. Of course, if he read the press as much as he griped about it, he'd know that many American children already have more than a passing familiarity with guns.

Smoking awards

Even as the damned liberal media are busy dismantling the Second Amendment, insidious Hollywood TV producers are doing their best to flout the "No Smoking" sign posted over American culture. Kramer throws a smoking party! Cybill lights a cigar! Dennis Franz offers a suspect a cigarette! Well, they won't get away with it, not as long as the American Lung Association has Phlemmy Awards to hand out. "Seinfeld," "Cybill" and "NYPD Blue" were singled out as examples of TV role models abusing their responsibility to act responsibly. "When they smoke, it just encourages young people to use tobacco," says association President Donald Clark, who issued a stern warning: "You don't want to be a Phlemmy winner!" Winning dishonorable mention were "Suddenly Susan," "Seinfeld" and "Friends." Of course, television isn't entirely a smoke-filled box: The association gave Pink Lung Awards to "Chicago Hope," "Spin City" and "Touched by an Angel."

Mansion family

Gun control, the tobacco debate -- the PC wars are certainly raging here at People in the News this freaky Friday. So let's end on a PC note: Personal-computer baron Bill Gates and family are finally moving into their $50 million techno-mansion near Seattle. Eschewing the vulgar displays of bad taste the rest of us would indulge in if we could afford $50 million houses, Gates opted for vulgar displays of whiz-bang technology. Guests in the 40,000-square-foot home will be issued computerized badges that adjust temperature, lighting, music and digital artwork as they walk from, say, the 60-foot indoor pool (with its underwater music system) to the movie theater, or from the trampoline room to the 120-person reception hall. Oh, yes, there is an 18-hole miniature golf course and a man-made trout stream. Excuse us a moment, we're suddenly feeling phlegmy.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets