Turner Tosses Gauntlet to ‘Bozos’

Ever-colorful television mogul and yachtsman Ted Turner has sailed smack into the abortion controversy, dismissing anti-abortion activists as “Bozos” while applauding the pro-choice stance of an upcoming abortion program on his TBS SuperStation. Turner told a gathering of television critics and writers at the National Cable Forum in Century City that he didn’t even try to find sponsors for the half-hour show, “Abortion for Survival,” scheduled for broadcast next Thursday. “We’ll just take a lick for a night. You know, so it’ll cost us four or five hundred thousand dollars.” But Turner has agreed to broadcast a panel discussion after the show, with debate on both sides of the issue. “We’ll give the other Bozos a chance to talk back. They look like idiots anyway,” he said. While criticizing the anti-abortion activists for imposing their views on others, he also found their opinions objectionable on another level. “The pro-lifers say we don’t want people to have sex for fun, only to have babies. . . . Sex is sinful,” Turner said. “Well, that’s fine if those people don’t want to ever have sex. . . . I happen to enjoy it.”

--When Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd goes in for surgery, it’s an operation. Twenty rooms of the Cleveland Clinic are currently being refurbished to accommodate the 67-year-old monarch, his wives and retinue of 200 when he arrives in a few weeks for a physical and possible knee surgery, said clinic spokesman Gary Weiland. The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to confirm or deny that the king is headed for the clinic, but Weiland said that Fahd will come to the hospital during a state visit. The king is scheduled to meet President Bush on July 27. The clinic was selected because of its staff’s experience in orthopedic surgery and because the king’s half-brother, Khaled, who preceded Fahd as king, had heart surgery there twice, Weiland said. Khaled died in 1982.

--Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater’s patronage of the blues has hit a sour note with two Nashville musicians, who have written a satirical song “The Man Who Would Be B. B. King” to express their views. “When he’s meeting with the President and planning what to do, whoa, does he think about his ‘brothers’ and what they’re goin’ through?” asks the tune by Marshall Chapman and Gary Nicholson. “The whole thrust of the deal is here’s a guy courting black musicians and playing black music,” Nicholson said, “but at the same time he’s involved with slicing social programs and knocking the legs out from under poor blacks everywhere.”