The Hon. Cyclops from West Virginia

Fess up: It's been out a whole week already, but still not a soul among you has taken the time to track down and purchase a copy of Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields.

And let's keep it that way, shall we?

Rather than plunk down $35 for this 770-page doorstop, let's instead simply indulge ourselves, first, in a loud, lusty snicker over the preposterous promotional campaign West Virginia University Press has prepared for The Great Fossil's long-unawaited autobiography. This kind of thing: "Senator Byrd's journey from the hard-scrabble coalfields to the marbled halls of Congress has inspired generations of people in West Virginia and throughout the nation. From reading the stories of the Founding Fathers as a young boy by the light of a kerosene lamp to the swearing of an oath for more than half a century to guard the United States Constitution, Senator Byrd's life is legendary." Barf.

Also, before we're done with him for good, let us pause yet again to consider that one special aspect of Byrd's "legendary" life that the senator himself apparently remains most desperately eager to obscure. For as the Washington Post's Eric Pianin was careful to point out in a June 19 feature story previewing the book, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields is, above all else, "the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch" to "explain" away, "truncate," and "minimize" his ought-to-be-permanently notorious history as a Ku Klux Klan recruiter and locally elected

His Orotundity would now have us believe that his was merely an error of "youth," an episode of "very bad judgment, due to immaturity and a lack of seasoned reasoning." But how conveniently he forgets! Such was the reputation Byrd carried around with him well into his fifties, for example, that in 1971, amid rumors that Richard Nixon might nominate him to the Supreme Court, Byrd's own party's soon-to-be presidential candidate felt obliged to announce that he opposed the move. "Let me emphasize," George McGovern remarked about Byrd during a speech at Dartmouth College, "that I cannot accept a man who is mediocre or who is a racist or who is unethical for membership in the United States Supreme Court."

Put that in your autobiography and smoke it, Mr. Inspiration-to-us-All.

The Kennedy Chronicles, cont.

For both edification and relaxation, The Scrapbook loves to read about the mating habits of animals--the most entertaining of which are neither the flatworms (males come complete with spikes and poison glands) nor the California sea lions (peeping toms), but a Massachusetts specimen known as the Kennedy man.

We enjoyed very much the early '90s, details from the William Kennedy Smith rape trial (he was acquitted), in which it was revealed how Uncle Teddy walked in on son Patrick and his prospective paramour with love's pure light in his eye. She alleged that the senator was wearing a long dress shirt "with no pants" and walking "kinda wobbly."