Laugh-In

Illustration by Bob AulCops in two Philadelphia suburbs compared notes last week and discovered a heinous crime wave plaguing their fair townships: whipped-cream huffings. Employees found 19 discharged cans of whipped cream in the women's bathroom of an Upper Southampton supermarket on March 16. Five days earlier, 51 empties had been discovered at a market in nearby Richboro. Police believe the same two women sucked down the dessert toppings for the nitrous-oxide high. Either that, or they're trying to make their asses as big as Jennifer Lopez's.

TALE OF THE TAPE A Tustin substitute teacher was fired on March 19 for allegedly taping shut the mouth of a first-grade girl and threatening to tie her up. Clockwork does not condone such behavior, but having recently helped out in a local school, we understand.

SURVEY SAYS According to a survey released on March 21 by Baldassare Associates—the firm responsible for regional studies commissioned by UC Irvine and Orange County's daily newspapers—California voters are acutely aware of disparities in the availability of quality health care for lower-income and nonwhite children and families. They are unwilling to do anything about the disparities in the availability of quality health care for lower-income and nonwhite children and families, but they are aware of them.

DANA SORE POINT Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) introduced a bill in Congress on March 22 that would allow about 40,000 American prisoners of war to sue Japanese companies that used them as forced labor during World War II. However worthy the cause, it begs this question: What is the deal with Dana Rohrabacher and the Japanese? Last year, he sponsored a bill that called on the Japanese government to formally issue a “clear and unambiguous apology for the atrocious war crimes committed by the Japanese military during World War II.” In 1989, he riled up the Japanese American Citizens League and other Asian-rights groups when he misused their concerns about college-enrollment limits on Asian-Americans as ammo for his bill to kill programs that enabled other minorities to go to college. That same year, he showed up on network television bashing the Japanese just as then-President George Bush was about to carry out a program launched by Rohrabacher's old boss, Ronald Reagan, to build jet fighters with America's Far East ally. He also voted against a bill—which passed overwhelmingly —to pay $20,000 each to Japanese-Americans who were held in U.S. internment camps during World War II. Got a bug up yer ass or what, Dana?

THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY The administrator who should have been named Irvine Valley College's president four years ago is a little closer to home. It was revealed last week that Terry Burgess was named president of San Diego City College, effective May 1. Burgess, who has been president of the Bay Area's Chabot College for the past four years, was vice president of instruction at Irvine Valley when president Daniel L. Larios left amid the Great South Orange County Community College District Educator Exodus of 1997. Burgess was the logical successor, having been named the best community-college administrator in the state the previous year. But he had a serious character flaw: integrity. He publicly criticized the district's right-wing board of trustees for taking day-to-day decision making away from administrators and professors. The board instead named inexperienced lackey Raghu Mathur as Irvine Valley's president, the opening salvo in a philosophical war that has split the district to this day. Ironically, Mathur's reign has cost the district tens of thousands of dollars in lawsuit losses. Doubly ironically, the winning attorney in some of those cases was Wendy Phillips, an Irvine Valley faculty member—and Burgess' wife.