From the Editor October 13, 1997

T Y P EC A S T I N G

J O H N

O' S U L L I V A N

Our contest for the best use of ``multicultural'' to mean ``good'' or ``worthy'' produced many amusing entries — and one clear winner. Mr. Tom Rood of Decatur, Illinois, sent in the following Knight-Ridder advance puff for Disney's forthcoming television Cinderella:
``Disney's newest Cinderella passes multicultural muster with flying colors. The title role belongs to singer-actress Brandy [who is black] . . . Her prince is Paolo Montalban, a newcomer of Hispanic descent. Milk-skinned Bernadette Peters has the role of the wicked stepmother whose two haughty daughters are played by white and black actresses [Ugly Sisters under the skin, presumably]. Whitney Houston is the fairy godmother, Jason Alexander [is] . . . the Prince's loyal steward, Lionel, and Whoopi Goldberg gets to be Queen Constantina.'' (My brackets.)
``We hope that this Cinderella, as we approach the millennium,'' says co-producer Debra Martin Chase, ``is reflective of what our society is today.''
Not quite. The Ugly Sisters — oops, sorry, ``haughty daughters'' — should surely be white and Asian. But the new Disney Cinderella is a brilliant reflection of what multiculturalism itself means in our society — i.e., a monocultural fairy tale involving people of different races and ethnic groups.
So, congratulations and the usual bottle of bubbly to Mr. Rood.

Several entries lost because, though hilarious, they did not use ``multicultural'' as meaning ``good'' or ``worthy.''
Of these the best was Appendix B of the U.S. Army's Training Circular 28-6, the ``Commander's Guide to Equal Opportunity,'' listing the concessions that the armed forces should make for the sake of ``contemporary religious accommodation.''
The religions to be accommodated include not only black and white supremacy ``religions,'' the Branch Davidians, and scientologists, but even the Church of Satan.
The document does not actually list what concessions commanders should make to Satanist practices. One suspects that they might be prejudicial to good order and discipline. But Native Amer-icans are to be allowed ``sage-burning'' (peyote) and adherents of Santeria get animal sacrifices.
Native Americans also are given access to a medicine man in time of sickness, unlike Christian Scientists, who are accommodated with perfect logic by getting ``no use of medicine'' at all.
On the whole, I think this document is a hoax, but the modern world outdistances satire so often that I cannot be absolutely sure.

Recently Michael Kelly was fired as editor of The New Republic after turning down an article by proprietor Marty Peretz, who wanted to argue that the latest revelations of Al Gore's chicanery were ``old news and overblown.''
This led me to recall a remark of Schopenhauer's sent in by a reader: ``There are three steps in the revelation of any truth: in the first it is ridiculed; in the second, resisted; in the third, it is considered self-evident.''
If most people now regard Mr. Gore's chicanery as ``self-evident'' — which we may reasonably treat as synonymous with ``old news'' — that is not least because of Mr. Kelly's fine columns.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller recently protested that Trent Lott had not included John Chafee as a Republican member of the House - Senate conference on children's health.
Chafee had been denied a seat, complained Democrat Rockefeller, simply because he ``tends to agree a lot more with people like me than with those on his side of the aisle.'' Sen. Chafee has been ``outed.''
I am grateful to a friend on Capitol Hill for this testimonial — one of those inadvertent little truths (``gaffes'') that illuminate the political scene.