THE JAUNDICED EYE : Oh, No! Chenowethism!

President Bill Clinton today issued a call for Elvis Presley and James Dean to “quit torturing their millions of fans, come out of seclusion, get plastic surgery and physical therapy and resume their public lives.”

In so doing, the president appeared to be lifting a chapter from the political handbook of one of his fiercest opponents. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, the far-right Idaho congresswoman, continues to condemn the Department of the Interior’s use of military helicopters to observe and harass anti-government citizens in her state--despite being informed that, in fact, the department has no such machines. Chenoweth claimed she had no choice but to press her attack, nonetheless, on the ground that so many of her constituents believe such machines do exist.

Similarly, the president was forced to admit no proof exists that Presley and Dean are still alive and in hiding--but that this was irrelevant. “As president of all the people,” he explained, “I am constitutionally bound to consider and act on their concerns. So they’re nutcakes and dribblechins; they’re registered voters, aren’t they?”

Clinton’s statement triggered a wave of me-too Chenowethism by political leaders across the nation. In a speech on the Senate floor minutes after the president’s plea, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) attacked the “foot-dragging and irresponsibility” of Washington bureaucrats in refusing to immediately airlift all U.S. scientific teams from the Arctic and Antarctica, citing the danger that they would fall off the edge of the Earth.

The senator brushed aside demands for evidence to support his stunning demand. “Who am I, a loyal servant of the public, to judge?” he asked. “And, after all, the Flat Earth Society is part of that public.”

Chorusing that “the so-called authorities have turned a blind eye long enough to this nonexistent menace,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for production of stealth fighters to be immediately quadrupled in order to engage the squadrons of flying saucers responsible for so many human abductions and grotesque medical experiments in his home state and throughout the Southwest. Countering widespread claims that such incidents were mere hearsay, if not paranoid fantasy, McCain said he was “only reflecting the will of the people, as I was elected to do. Far be it from me to judge whether they’re a few bricks shy of a load.”

Not to be outdone, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wielded a letter just received from the Georgia chapter of the Marlovian Society and simultaneously demanded at a news conference on the steps of the Capitol that all busts of “the so-called Bard of Avon,” William Shakespeare, be pulverized in mass public rituals as part of an overdue literary revisionism movement aimed at crediting Christopher Marlowe as the real author of Shakespeare’s works. “Sure,” Gingrich said, “the Marlowe gang may all be raving idiots--but they’re my raving idiots. Anyway, honestly, what red-blooded American today reads 400-year-old Limey fairy tales by some guy with long hair wearing pantyhose, whatever his name?”

Nor are state governments, according to a report received today, dragging their feet in the nation’s sudden fit of Chenowethism. An order has just been issued by a joint emergency committee of the Oregon and Washington state legislatures to apprehend the so-called Sasquatch monster, a.k.a. “Bigfoot.” “It is high time this antisocial marauder was brought to justice,” a spokesman announced, adding that he, or it, could face heavy legal penalties for failing to submit income tax returns, hunting without a license, and damaging public property with his/its oversized footprint. The spokesman had no comment on reports that operational plans for Sasquatch’s apprehension call for Oregon and Washington state law enforcement personnel to drive in circles, rent videos and take naps.

The last word on America’s sudden spate of Chenowethism, however, belongs to Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a GOP presidential contender. Interrupting a meeting on balancing the budget, Gramm told lawmakers to “call if off, pronto” because all such efforts are now futile and a waste of taxpayer money. According to information just faxed to his office by Armageddon America Inc., a religious think tank based in Lubbock, Tex., “the world will be coming to an end next Tuesday, right after ‘Roseanne.’ “*