Bouncing babies, bailouts and a bit of ballyhoo.

Byline: Sid McKeen

COLUMN: WRY AND GINGER

Just thinking out loud:

The politicians want to get a lot of money into our hands in a hurry to prop up the failing economy. So why don't they do it the way it's done in a game of Monopoly? Easy. Just let us all advance to Go and collect $200.

I guess I have no head for economics. Let's see if I have this straight: The country is in trouble largely because so many of us have been living beyond our means and can't manage our cash or credit, so the government wants to give us billions more to spend on anything we want. I guess you'd have to call the big bailout plan the methadone of the money world.

If the stock market doesn't start snapping back soon, we may have to decide whether we want to start hiding our money under the Beautyrest or wait for the grand opening of the Obama National Bank. Maybe you'll want to sleep on it.

I'm old enough to remember when banks used to offer toasters to people who opened new accounts. Before long, some of them may be toast.

There are three places in this country where you rarely hear an American accent. In the front seat of a big-city taxicab, at the U.N. in New York and in the acceptance speeches made by Oscar winners in Hollywood.

Sean Penn, of course, was the exception this year, and he delivered the only political diatribe of the night. Sometimes Sean makes me yearn for the good old days of "Hanoi Jane" Fonda and Tokyo Rose. And what is it anyway that makes us think somebody who happens to have a talent for play acting is an authority on everything else?

Tinseltown made a brave effort to cut back on its glitzy spectacular because of the country's economic plight. The Academy scrapped plans to rebuild the Taj Mahal on stage to ballyhoo its picture of the year, "Slumdog Millionaire," which turned out not to be the real life story of Manny Ramirez.

Apropos of nothing in particular, the only place I know of where celebrity and fame come before hype and hoopla is in the dictionary.

Well, perhaps not in the case of that mother of octuplets. "Octomom," as the press dubbed her, not only achieved notoriety overnight but managed to give new meanings to two tired phrases - planned parenthood and the labor movement.

Speaking of which, the news media people know a thing or two about head counts. That's why they invented the word "Octomom" - to save headline space. Eight is a remarkable head count for any mother, but it's really no surprise. Doesn't the president keep reminding us that Americans can do anything if we set our minds to it? Nine, anybody?

Lots of speculation in the papers about a new pet for the White House. "First dog," they're calling it. Funny, I thought Joe Biden already held that post.

You never know what the mail is going to bring these days. Last week I got an Indian blanket from a school attended by Crow and Cheyenne children in Montana. It was made in China. Now that's what I call outsourcing.

China's come a long way. I'm old enough to remember when that was given away too, just to get people to go to the movies.

Sorry about that.

Reach Sid McKeen at [e-mail].