Hello, Eleanor?

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: A brief humorous look at various news items, including Hilary Clinton's relations with Eleanor Roosevelt, Jeffrey Dahmer's belongings, Timothy Leary ashes, Russian election slander, and AIDS activists battling animal righters - Off the Map - Column

In the fiercest contest seen on the radical circuit this season, PETA versus ACTUP was a classic overtime confrontation between two titans of the left. Perhaps a wee mite overconfident due to their previous unrivaled supremacy atop the Politically Correct League, the animal-rights movement's grizzled veterans seemed stunned when challenged by upstart rookies filling the roster of the plucky AIDS activists. Pitching their usually capable heavyweight battery of "animals are dying in their own feces" and "anyone who has a heart is going to care," the PETA team astonishingly failed to mine its deep bench of celebrities bolstering its cause. Apparently, Kim Basinger's rotator cuff was more seriously damaged than first thought. In response, the AIDS activists struck swiftly with a surprise counter-demonstration featuring a barrage of speakers who owe their lives to animal research. They proceeded to stun the defending champions by trotting out their secret weapon, Jeff Getty, the baboon-bone-marrow-transplant dude. And that's when the fur really started to fly. Just the first in what promises to be a series of skirmishes. An exciting season of battles looms before us, with both sides blitzing the media for the right to call itself "darling of the left."

* Stanford University, where scientists found a genetic key to the aging process in worms, which means one day man will finally break the shackles of mortality and fish much longer with the same bait.

Actual slogan by communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov in his presidential race against Boris Yeltsin: "A bus driver can't go to work without a breathalyzer, but apparently a person can rule an entire country in any condition." Ooh, scathing. Among the eight others who ran for Head Russian were the guy who started this whole election nonsense, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a man so angry he makes David Duke look like a character on Disney's Animaniacs. It was good to see the Russkies getting into the American spirit of things. Other slogans the candidates trotted out: YELTSIN, HE'S THE ONE, OR HE KNOWS HOW TO FIND WHERE HE'S BURIED; ZHIRINOVSKY, LIKE HITLER--IN THE BEGINNING, WHEN HE WAS GOOD; THE ONLY GOOD RED IS A DEAD RED; VOTE FOR ME AND YOUR MOTHER WON'T END UP IN A GULAG; GORBACHEV: VOTE FOR THE BRAIN WITH THE STAIN; IN YOUR HEART, YOU KNOW HE'S DRUNK.

* Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where some guy spent half a million dollars to buy all of Jeffrey Dahmer's personal effects just so he...