Veni, Viagra, vici.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Humor - Unplugged - Column - Brief Article

Yes, we have the Viagra was hastily scrawled on a lid ripped from a pizza box and tacked up in the prescription department of my local Upper West Side apothecary in Manhattan. It echoed that old song about bananas but also connoted a sense of exasperation: "All right, already--quit bugging me. It's here." When I asked the frazzled young pharmacist at the counter if she had been filling a lot of requests for the new blue potency drug, dubbed "Pfizer's Riser," she glowered at me through lowered eyelids. When I asked who was getting the drug, she said flatly, "Old guys with canes."

When Bob Dole appeared on Larry King Live and they both enthused about taking the drug, you could practically see the table rising up between them.

But darn it, they both seemed happier than they have been in a long time. And happy straight guys are a good thing. When they get petulant, they are liable to stand in their driveways and sip big gulps of coffee and then subpoena every one who has ever voted. No wonder Bob Dole retired. Now with something better to do at home other than spin cats by the tail, maybe Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, heck, even Helen Chenoweth will retire.

The deep, dark secret of impotence--and who knew there was such impotency in this the last remaining superpower?--is now out of the bedroom closet. It explains a lot of things. Trump Towers. John Glenn in orbit. Wall Street ups and downs. Peterbilt double-width trucks. Bow ties. Nuclear testing in India. Godzilla. The Powerball lottery. Stand-up comedy.

A lot of corporate executives must be taking Viagra. How else to explain merger mania? The mergers of ABC/Disney CBS/Westinghouse, and MS/NBC are pitiful pommes de terres compared to banks merging with anything that's not nailed down. Banks with insurance companies? The other day, I tried to do a simple transaction at BankAmerica and my ATM laughed at me as I walked away. Banks with telecommunications companies? Recently, I dialed a wrong number and accidentally bought a medium-sized prison.

Disney is getting in on the act, too. It has just opened a Wild Animal Kingdom and is promoting it through McDonald's, which somehow did not violate Texas's food...