The Hot Seat Our Weekly Look At Who’s In Trouble

Flatten thy neighbor, but save the ducks

Thursday morning, a mother and her baby stepped into rush hour traffic on Spokane’s Grand Boulevard. Drivers stopped and waited politely, without honking. A bicyclist squired the two across the street. Motorists smiled sweetly. The mother hopped safely onto the sidewalk, but the baby was so short it had to jump three times to clear the curb. Whereupon the two ducks waddled away. When HUMAN pedestrians step into Spokane crosswalks, it’s another story. Drivers look away, speed up, honk, shout obscenities, roar past. We are a sick community. Either we slow down and treat each other as neighbors, or we ought to issue every pedestrian a duck.

It takes one to know one, senator

Quotes of the week: “Can you make me some money?” asked the greedy politician. “Are you sure you want to do this? It would look bad,” said the broker. “Since when is it illegal to make money?” said the politician. No, that wasn’t Hillary Clinton and her cattle futures broker. It was Hillary-basher Al D’Amato, from the Senate committee that oversees Wall Street, schmoozing at a D’Amato fund-raiser with a broker under investigation for fraud. Later, the broker treated D’Amato to a shady deal that made the senator a bundle: $37,125 in one day. Exposed, D’Amato huffed last week that “I am no Hillary Clinton.” Yeah, and Richard Nixon wasn’t a crook.

What next? Will Murphy Brown marry Dan Quayle?

Here’s a shocker. Last year, Hollywood gave 58 percent of its campaign contributions to (shudder) Republicans, up from 31 percent in prior years. But it was just a ploy, the Wall Street Journal reports, to jolt Bill Clinton into cracking down on China’s trade in pirated videotapes. He obeyed.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos

MEMO: The Hot Seat is an irreverent look at controversial issues in the news. The views expressed are those of the writer. Today’s Hot Seat was written by John Webster.