BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' decision to move training camp to Wichita Falls was a stroke of genius. Without all the distractions of big city Austin--that gymnasium of sin--the Boys can get down to business and stay out of trouble.

My friend Mitzi sees it as a chance to tame her husband Kyle, back-up holder for the Cowboy place kicker. She's been through years of public humiliation and marital strain.

"Topless dancers. Public urination. Assaults on autograph seekers. I was beginning to feel like Hillary Clinton," she said, as we celebrated the move at a sports bar with other players' wives.

"But what's a woman to do?" she said. "Rap him on the head with a rolling pin? Drag him home by the ear? Toss his clothes on the front lawn and have the locks changed? I don't see how Hillary puts up with it."

Wives who have "been there" agree that, no matter what happens in the polls, the President's still in the doghouse. Columnist Liz Smith, in town recently to speak at a Rotary luncheon, suggested that President Clinton needs to have an Oprah moment. Admit he's a sex addict, then everyone can feel sorry for his wife and get over it.

Maybe I've been around too many southern preachers, but I can't help but picture it as a Jimmy Swaggart moment. A flash of weepy public contrition and insincere self-flagellation--"I have sinned against y'all." I'm afraid I might barf.

In an era when we view health as a virtue and bad habits as illness, do we really want to hear the commander-in-chief confess that he's a slave to his nether regions? We're willing to let bygones be bygones, but then are we enabling him? As Stuart Smalley so aptly puts it, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

Do we want to be members of this 12-step group?

Personally, I can't stand to see a grown man cry. They're such amateurs. As an oft-wronged woman, I can blubber till my eyes are slits. My husband Sonny's crocodile tears and getting the vacuum cleaner fixed as an act of penance only inspired me to put on a pair of spiked heels and hit the bars. I hope that's what Hillary's doing.

Do we need to see the President grovel in the mud like a worked-up Promise Keeper, vowing to treat his family the way he should have been doing all along? Politics and the Old Testament are full of scalawags whose spirits are willing but the flesh is weak. We don't care if a used car salesman is faithful to his wife as long as the Buick runs. Which means the President better do the job right in Iraq.

And the Cowboys oughtn't to have played so bad.

Public shame makes good soap opera, but we're jaded by the true confessions of bus loads of penitents enjoying their Oprah moments on tv talk shows every day of the week. It didn't work for Marv Albert and it won't work for the President. And anyway, he doesn't need our sympathy. He has our approval.

He's heavyweight champion of the world. And America needs a super-stud leader who can go toe-to-toe with Russia's rabid ultra-nationalist political heart throb Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who called for Muscovites to drag Americans from their cars and beat them up. Russian women swoon over the ugly man. And he's on Saddam's side.

Compared to Zhirinovski, the President's a big old teddy bear. All he needs is a swat on the butt. It would be so much easier if the nation's capital were moved someplace like Wichita Falls. Surely a husband couldn't get in too much trouble playing foosball at Graham's Central Station, the town's main night spot.

At least that's what Mitzi's counting on.