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not represent the way most people in this country feel."
He has been known to belt out a few bars after belting down a few beers at a pub of an evening, but one morning last week Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, 71, welcomed reporters to his daily press conference with a sober but boisterous—he knows no other way—rendition of Ireland Must Be Heaven for My Mother Came from There. The outburst was by way of confirming his aspiration to retire from Congress early next year so that he can be appointed Ambassador to Ireland. That plan, of course, depends on the election of his choice, Walter Mondale, as President. Should Ronald Reagan be reelected, the Massachusetts Representative said, he would stay on to fight the good fight as Speaker at least through 1986. Might Reagan make a grand gesture and ship Tip off to the Emerald Isle himself ? Not likely. Last week newborn Boston Sportscaster Carl Yastrzemski asked the
President in an interview what he would do if it were the last of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series with the bases loaded and he were pitching to O'Neill. "I'd hit him right in the head," responded Reagan unhesitatingly. A nice line, but if the score were tied, wouldn't the President lose the game?
All right, knock off the snickers. This is going to be done straight. Larry Harmon, 59, better known as Bozo, "the world's most famous clown," was in Washington, D.C., last week to announce he is a candidate for the U.S. presidency. "I'm wearing glasses because they make me look a little more like a statesman than I already do," said Harmon, who is running in full regalia on the Bozo Party ticket. The native of Toledo, who started on TV some 35 years ago, claims that he got a hankering for the nation's highest office during a telephone conversation with President Kennedy, who told him, "Let us not ask what we can do for Bozo; let us ask what Bozo can do for us." Hold it; stifle that guffaw. The clown is serious about all of this. He really wants to do "something good for the world." But his campaign literature does have one glitch in it, he admits. The slogan "Put a real Bozo in the White House" should have been "Put the real Bozo in the White House."
O.K., end of announcement.
Now those who wish to make their own jokes are free to do SO. —By GuyD. Garcia On the Record
Margaret Thatcher, 58, British Prime Minister: "I don't think any woman in power really has a happy life unless she's got a large number of women friends ... because you sometimes must go and sit down and let down your hair with someone you can trust totally."
Edwin Newman, 65, newly retired NBC-TV correspondent, on a continuing weakness of TV news: "There are too many correspondents standing outside buildings and saying, 'Time will tell.'"
Grace Slick, 40, rock vocalist with the 1960s Jefferson Airplane (later Starship), on the apolitical content of lyrics in the 1980s: "If you wanted to write a song that directly affected the problems of today's college student, it would deal with the perils of being a preppie."