Meet Mary . . . Quite Contrary

Eric Ellis San Francisco

12/12/1998

There are a lot of odd places in the United States, and Palm Springs is one of them. Smug and perfectly manicured, it has this strange other-worldly quality about it, appropriately enough given that it's a "God's Waiting Room" of superannuated entertainers with allergy problems cocooned from real life in palatial residences and over-watered golf clubs, sometimes their own.

It is as close to Death Valley as it is to Los Angeles. An Australian Palm Springs would be Bellevue Hill and Toorak sprouted 200km from Alice Springs. Needless to say, Bob Hope is big here. And Palm Springs may well be the most selfish community in the US, and that's not just because of its surfeit of uniformed Latino house staff attending its over-monied retirees.

In a Southern California where the scarcity of water can be a matter of organised crime - aka, the movie Chinatown - Palm Springs' rapacious residents boast their own micro-climate of chlorinated clouds formed by draining the myriad permanently-replenished swimming pools and lawns.

It's said you get the politicians you deserve and this ostentatious oasis of opulence has 37-year-old Mary Bono, the widow of its former mayor and 1960s pop icon Sonny.

An accidental politician, the blinking Bono is now fashioning herself as the conscience of yuppy American "soccer moms" with a big say in whether Bill Clinton faces the ignominy of impeachment.

She now sits ostensibly as a "swinging" albeit Republican member of the house judicial committee hearing Monicagate.

Mary would be the first to say she is not an experienced politician.

Indeed, she says as much just about every time she opens her mouth, prefacing her statements and questions, whether it be in the committee room or on Larry King Live, with the faux-apology, "Well, I may not have a law degree like these scholarly men around me, but in my gut I . . ." and so on.

It is as if she thinks she's being a breath of fresh air, the anti-politician Middle Americans are purported to favour.

But unfortunately she has a happy knack of looking what could politely be described as overshadowed, something patently obvious whenever she comes up alongside a Capitol Hill pro. She'd like Americans to see Mary Bono, strident Republican, when in reality Americans can't see much beyond Sonny Bono's widow.

Although she sells herself as a Citizen Jane focused on family issues, she has blotted her copybook by fighting publicly with her mother-in-law and taking up with a country and western singer in DC while leaving her children, Chesare, 10, and Chianna, 7, at home with the nanny.

But she does have a talent for the limelight. Because of her taste for public life she can embarrasses herself.

Sonny Bono met his maker last winter at the Heavenly ski resort on the California-Nevada border, skiing into a tree on a moderate slope called, appropriately enough, Orion.

His death shocked a nation of baby-boomers which had grown with Sonny as he transformed himself from a pop idol, the other of Cher, into a hard-nosed Republican ensconced at extremes of the party.

Once Congress decided to take Sonny seriously as a politician and not just someone in its record collection, he became a well-liked and, by all reports, effective representative. But that legacy was jolted last month when the grieving Mary, half Sonny's age, revealed that her erratic husband had a thing for, er, painkillers, and that more than a Nevadan pine tree may have contributed to his untimely demise.

His death opened the way for a "special election" which Mary won in the wake of a grieving Palm Springs.