Baywatch.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Satire: 1996 primary election campaign - Unplugged

On Ash Wednesday, the day after Pat Buchanan's upsetting win in the New Hampshire primary, it was announced that 648 Sisters of Notre Dame would be donating their brains for medical research on Alzheimer's. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see a causal link between Buchanan's New Hampshire primary victory and the urge to relinquish one's brain.

There was, by the way, no comment from the Vatican, which still has some pretty strict rules about the Judgment Day reuniting of body and soul. Temple of the Holy Ghost or Vessel of Sin? They'll be the judge.

No word either if the sisters' practically bionic kneecaps were to be donated to the National Baseball League's Yogi Berra Home for Retired Catchers.

The nuns' brains, untainted by trace elements of CNN, FNN, VH1, or MTV, are to be tagged with large post-its printed with the "Why I Want to Be a Sister of Notre Dame" portion of the application they had filled out in their teens.

Scientists hope to be able to establish that early linguistic ability (perhaps a teenage flair for hyperbole or imaginative use of symbol--"Then I looked down and saw the Baby Jesus lying in a bed of shredded lettuce in my hard-shelled luncheon taco and He beckoned me with the sweetest look to serve Him and be His Bride") is an indicator of a later onset of Alzheimer's. In other words, if you dint talk too good when you was a kid, then...

What was I saying?

I think the linguistic flourishes of the Republican Presidential candidates, the unopposed Democratic incumbent, and a host of pundits are an indication of brain drain. A national attention-deficit disorder. Someone has slipped some chlorine into the nation's think tanks. It's like being present at the death of language.

Bob Dole, punch drunk and only dimly recalling lost wages, resorts to the reflexive. "The real Bob Dole is going to go to North Dakota and that Bob Dole is going to fight to win the heart and soul of the Republican party." It's like he's reminding himself. "Pinch me, I'm running again." Pinch me, there's a heart and soul to the Republican Party? Bob's self-reflexivity bears an eerie similarity to that old "you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore" line. Perhaps it's the effect of sleep deprivation. I think someone could use a nap.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Steve Forbes has a flair for repetition. "Hi, Steve, how's it going?" "Flat tax." "How are the wife and kids?" "Flat tax." "It's so cool that your dad was gay." "Flat tax." Flat tax...