12/04/00 3:15 p.m.
Is It Safe to Come Out?
I emerge — briefly — from the media-proof bunker.

By Jack Dunphy*, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department

pulled the hatch closed on November 12. The air had gotten so befouled that I was in danger of asphyxiation, so I enclosed myself in something resembling a media-proof bunker. There are no moats or earthworks surrounding my home, no sandbags, no aluminum-foil lining the windows, no outward evidence at all that I have cut myself off from the folderol in Florida. I merely turned off the television and the radio, ignored the front page of the Los Angeles Times, and let the copies of the Wall Street Journal pile up on the floor. (The folks over at the Journal must have their knickers completely in a bunch by now, I'm guessing.) I now spend my leisure hours reading novels and listening to classical music. A mixture of Evelyn Waugh and Jean Sibelius serves as a potent tonic to the poisonous winds swirling about outdoors.

From time to time I have opened the windows and stuck my head out, so to speak, allowing some of the mephitic vapors given off by the events in Florida to waft into my awareness. Chief among them, of course, are the curious facts that, with Christmas but three weeks away, we have yet to learn who will be the next president, and that swarms of lawyers are scurrying from Tallahassee to Atlanta to Washington, D.C., and back again in a crazed effort to persuade this or that judge or group of judges that Al Gore or George W. Bush, as the case may be, was rightly and lawfully chosen in an election held nearly a month ago.

During the brouhaha I heard a familiar anthem, sung by an orotund chorus whose voices penetrated even the walls of my bunker. Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state, had announced to the world that the votes had been counted — some more than once — in accordance with state law and that Mr. Bush was the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes. Then came the familiar strains. Harris, elected to her office by the people of Florida, was branded a "crony," a "partisan hack," even a "commissar" for having the audacity to enforce state law as enacted by the legislature. These were the same voices who called Kathleen Willey a tramp, who labeled Paula Jones trailer-park trash, and who heaped insult upon insult on anyone and everyone who dared entertain the thought that Bill Clinton was unfit to remain in office.

Among the vituperations lobbed at Harris were comments ordinarily confined to rush week on Sorority Row, i.e., those regarding her restraint — or lack of same — in the application of makeup. Okay, she may go a bit heavy on the mascara at times. But so what? I think most people would agree that Ms. Harris is an attractive woman, but even the dissenters would acknowledge that she is readily identifiable as a female, which is more than can be said for some women currently occupying senior positions in the Clinton administration and the Gore campaign.

If such talk of makeup weren't silly enough to spur me back into seclusion, what I saw next on CNN certainly was. There is no carnival so vulgar that it cannot be made more so by the appearance of Al Sharpton. There he was in all his radiant splendor leading a protest march in Washington, D.C. A reporter approached with a microphone and asked him to comment on the election and its aftermath. Good God, I thought, not that! In a movement so panicked and frenzied it sent the cat into hiding for hours, I leapt for the remote and hit the mute button before even a syllable could escape the reverend's mouth.

That was a close one. Someone please write and tell me when it's safe to come out.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)