O.J., pot, drag queens among bizarre news items

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This Rusty Saber is dedicated to readers too busy to keep up with other-than-front-page headline news stories: |ret||ret||tab|

Is O.J. Simpson the poster child of trial lawyers, or what? First, the "Dream Team" of su-perstar lawyers defended him on murder charges in Califor-nia. Now it's Florida's turn. |ret||ret||tab|

Florida endured the Elian Gonzalez fiasco, Elian Mania. Next came inept Florida voters the Hanging Chad Disaster now O.J. has moved to Miami. |ret||ret||tab|

He's at it again; this time, his temper, the one made famous in the murder trial, led to road rage charges in Miami. The trial got press coverage, but not on the front page. |ret||ret||tab|

Simpson got into it with a driver who cut him off in traffic. Road rage is a serious thing, but the charges against him were unusually severe. He reached into the car and grabbed the man's glasses. Reaching in was considered car theft, grabbing the glasses was battery. If guilty, he could have been sentenced to 16 years in prison. Wow! That sounds excessive. No wonder he was acquitted. |ret||ret||tab|

What the prosecutor should have done was charge him with being O.J. Simpson; that one they could pin on him. Ah, but this story had a happy ending: A "dream team," consisting of two less well-known Florida law-yers, got him off. |ret||ret||tab|

If Johnny Cochran had been there, he might have pointed out that Simpson didn't even break the victim's glasses; thereby dramatically proclaiming: "Since the glasses aren't broke, you must revoke!"|ret||ret||tab|

This story you probably missed, but I didn't. To raise money for the Calais, Vt. Com-munity Center, 13, er, shall we say, "overweight" men between ages 39 and 78 posed sans garments what the heck, they were buck naked for a calendar. |ret||ret||tab|

You may ask, why 13? For reasons known only to the models, there are two Novembers. To avoid an XXX rating, the models all were posed with various boating and fishing props covering up their, uh, how to say this, more sensitive body portions. For their sake, I hope these guys raise a lot of money for a good cause.|ret||ret||tab|

Vermont also provides the background for this story. It seems that deer hunting in Ver-mont hasn't been good this year. The deer may be happy, but hunters aren't. A state biologist explained that last winter's long snow season killed off a large portion of the deer population. |ret||ret||tab|

The biologist offering this explanation is John Buck. Say what? A guy named Buck is ex-plaining a shortage of "bucks" for hunters to shoot. I certainly hope some disgruntled hunter doesn't decide to blame the messenger and drape the human Buck over the hood of his pickup. |ret||ret||tab|

Football fans may recognize the name of Nate Newton, a former player for the Dallas Cow-boys. The police recently pulled over his van and found 213 pounds of marijuana inside. Since a few grams is needed for one joint, that's a lot of marijuana, and I mean a lot! Why so much? This guy must have been trying to do for the drug business what Sam Walton did for retail sales.|ret||ret||tab|

If Newton had kept up on the latest news, when arrested, he could have thought fast and said he was taking his "stash" to Alaska. You see, voters will face an election to legalize marijuana if a petition drive to place it on the ballot is successful. He could have said he wanted to be ready in advance to open the first Grass-Mart in Alaska. It would have been worth a try.|ret||ret||tab|

I have looked high and low trying to learn the outcome of this story, but no luck. Bill Sanders, a drag queen who calls himself "Little Miss Mess-up," entered the New Haven, Conn., mayoral race against the Dem-ocratic incumbent and his Re-publican challenger. |ret||ret||tab|

The last I heard, Miss Mess-up had challenged the two candidates to a debate on Hallo-ween. That would have been one heck of a Halloween trick-or-treat for New Haven.|ret||ret||tab|

In Boulder, Colo., a man was accused of stealing an "art display" consisting of 21 brightly colored ceramic penises hanging from a clothesline at the Boulder Public Library. The culprit, thinking the display was pornography, certainly not art, misappropriated all 21 "works of art," leaving an American flag in their place. |ret||ret||tab|

Why did the Boulder Public Library have 21 brightly colored penises hanging from a clothesline? It may be that I don't want to know; I think I would if I were a taxpayer in Boulder!|ret||ret||tab|

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury Un-iversity.)[[In-content Ad]]