It is only fitting that the only magazine left last Sunday evening in the free magazine rack outside the Delta shuttle at Logan was the official magazine of the Republican National Committee. There were at least a dozen copies of the Winter 2000 issue, in fact, stacked up in a large pile--clearly not a big seller in the bastion of liberal thought that is our hometown.

The magazine is titled "Rising Tide" (after the unofficial Republican motto: "A Rising Tide Sinks Everything but Yachts") and is full of quite interesting news about the Democratic candidates. Behold the articles on page 29, "Democrats Play the Race Card While Calling People 'Cripple' and 'Fatso,'" and page 30, "Cabinet Secretaries Moonlight as Gore Flacks." And the cover story: a Gore Supreme Court lineup that's made up of Hillary and Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Naomi Wolf, Al Sharpton, Barbara Streisand, James Carville, Rosie O'Donnell and Larry Flynt.

Didn't Republicans used to be funnier? A few quotes from the candidates last week reminded me of the days of the erstwhile Presidential candidate who provided us with four years of humor back in the days when we actually elected him to public office. Of course, I am referring to former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle.

Listen to George W. Bush, talking about his ties to California: "I was raised in the west, the west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to Texas." Remember Dan Quayle: "I love California. I grew up in Phoenix."

Witness the latest gem from Al Gore '69: "My mother always made it clear to my sister and me that women and men were equal--if not more so."

And, from the New York Times: "While visiting a class of first-graders in Ohio, Mr. Gore remained silent as the teachers and pupils spelled 'sincerely' as 'sincerly,' perhaps mindful of what happened to the last vice president to try to spell in public."

But Republicans still do have a sense of humor. Especially this week--what better time for anti-government sentiment than a week in which the government comes knocking on your door to count you, ask you the status of your household plumbing, and find out what time you leave for work and how long you're gone. Of course, the results of this last question will only be used if you fail to turn in that other form this week to the IRS, in which case official government agents will break into your house and steal your stuff, in lieu of taxes. Because of the new collaboration between the Bureau of the Census and the IRS, implemented only a week ago, the IRS is now the most well-stocked agency in the federal government. (If you'd like to get in touch with the IRS agent selling hot stereos out of the parking lot of your local IRS regional office, call the taxpayer information hotline and ask about the "census bureau exemption.")

The Republican Party has been particularly vocal in opposing what some have termed an "invasion of privacy" in the long form of the census, the version distributed to a sample of households throughout the country. Bush has said he might have refused to answer several of the questions, had he been given the long form (He got the short one). But it was a Democrat who had the most problems filling out the census form--where do you imagine Hillary Clinton said she lives or stays "most of the time"--in New York, or with her husband?