JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

I got very depressed when that Los Angeles multimillionaire, Dennis

Tito, went up into space on a Russian rocket last week. Took me awhile to

figure out why, but now I know. It rubbed my nose in a reality I’ve

always had a difficult time acknowledging: that in this country today,

virtually anything can be had for a price that only the rich can pay.

Maybe even happiness -- or what passes for it. And I don’t find that very

comforting.

I think Tito’s weekend sandbox in space hit me especially hard because

I was so closely involved with the beginnings of manned space flight in

this country. I watched firsthand as the original seven astronauts

prepared for this remarkable and perilous venture into the unknown.

They were all highly trained professionals, test pilots with military

combat time. They were meticulously chosen from a much larger group with

similar qualifications. There was no precedent for what they set out to

do, and no assurance that they would come back safely. They were pioneers

in the fullest sense of that word, as were those professionals who came

after them to bring back scientific data and set foot on the moon.

So now along comes Tito, with only one qualification for climbing atop

heroic shoulders to reach out into space. He’s rich. Very rich. And

although there must be hundreds of thousands of civilians just as eager

and better equipped, Tito was allowed to buy his way into history.

There are plenty of precedents in other fields, of course. People

whose qualifications start and end with money. Elections are bought

routinely. So are ambassadorships. So are presidential pardons. So are

baseball teams and movie studios and VIP lines at public events and tax

exemptions. So is the ability to hire high-priced lawyers and to exploit

our virgin lands and pollute our streams and air.

Major league owners used to be baseball people who made their living

that way. Some of them were barbarians, but they knew the game inside

out. And Hollywood studios were run by movie people, not all of them

nice, but still movie people. Now both are run mostly either by

aggressive multimillionaires buying an expensive and endearing toy

(George Steinbrenner of the Yankees) or conglomerates that frequently use

them as a tax write-off and hire lawyers and accountants to run them (the

current owners of the Dodgers).

You want other examples? A few years ago, a man who was probably the

least qualified political candidate in American history came within a few

thousand votes of becoming a U.S. senator from California. His name was

Michael Huffington, and his credential was money. Just money. Lots of

money. He bought a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and almost

made it into the Senate the same way. You can blame this on voter

stupidity, if you like, but it was the money that brought out the

stupidity.

Then there is Horace Vignali of Los Angeles, who bought broad support

for a presidential pardon for his son, Carlos, with a long series of

low-level political contributions. When Bill Clinton pardoned Carlos, a

convicted cocaine dealer, his father told a Los Angeles Times reporter:

“This is a case where America worked.” Indeed.

Or take a look closer to home. The airport at El Toro is being spent

into oblivion, washed away in a tidal wave of expensive brochures and

advertisements for which Irvine taxpayers are picking up the tab. I must

say here, with grudging admiration, that they’re making the pro-airport

people look like novices. First, they asked voters to reject jails and

landfills in their backyards, along with the airport, and won big. Now

they’re asking people if they’d like to have a Great Park. Not at the

expense of an airport. Just a Great Park. And the unwashed are not any

more likely to say, “Hell, no, I don’t want a park” than they were to

embrace a landfill.

Which brings me to another problem I have with Tito. As I grow older,

I have less and less patience with amateurs. The Irvine anti-airport

campaign is making those who favor it look like amateurs. Tito is an

amateur in space. The recently displaced publisher of the Los Angeles

Times was an amateur in journalism. Bob Daly is an amateur in baseball.

Wealthy political contributors who buy ambassadorships are amateurs in

diplomacy who hopefully will lean on the pros in the State Department for

the heavy stuff.

I once had a plumber who came to my house regularly to bail us out of

critical situations I had created by trying to fix something. Finally, he

said to me in some exasperation: “From now on, you write. I’ll plumb.”

I’ve never forgotten that advice. Trouble is, nobody says it to rich

people. There’s a myth that’s been around a long time in this country

that wealth automatically connotes superior intelligence and wisdom. This

is baloney, of course, but it somehow prevents them from being told that

they can’t buy their way into or out of any situation that arises. So

Tito paid up and took off.

I still like to cling to the last vestiges of hope that this isn’t

true. That’s why I’m currently excited about the Minnesota Twins.

Although the Twins have the lowest payroll in major league baseball, they

are leading the American League and just took a series from the Yankees.

If the Twins could hang in and win a pennant, it would give me new hope

that even Tito couldn’t destroy. Or those twice-a-week brochures about

the Great Park.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.