Bryan Caplan and Corina Mateescu to Wed
(AP) Washington - The White House today expressed alarm when Corina
Mateescu and Bryan Caplan announced their intention to marry this June.
"We are very distubed by the prospect of this unholy union" said White
House spokesman George Stephanopoulos. "The danger of people like this
multiplying is fearsome enough already, without having to worry about
the possibility of their offspring engulfing us.  Laissez-faire in
marriage may sound like a good idea, but we need to consider the wider
social ramifications as well as the consequences for the environment."
Mateescu, a Romanian immigrant, has long been suspected of disloyalty to
the American government.  Immigration and Naturalization Service
spokesman Adolf Smith commented, "At the age of seven we had to hold her
over in Italy for six months while we checked out her long history of
communist subversion of the Western democracies.  We weren't able to
prove anything, but I remember saying to myself, 'No capitalist child's
face could be so cute.'  Now that she's a citizen, the damage to our way
of life may be beyond repair." 
Sister Mary Immaculate Contrarian of Mateescu's Alverno High was happy
to speak freely on her former pupil.  "Well, actually she wasn't my
pupil, because we nuns weren't allowed to teach!  Back in the good old
days I would have rapped her knuckles with my cane...Well, I didn't
really know her too well, but I'm sure she deserved a good
knuckle-rapping."
Caplan's background is even more alarming.  "He just kept asking hostile
questions in class, day after day!" said one of his UC Berkeley
professors, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  "He made me feel like
I was some sort of criminal just to teach class."
Caplan's involvement in subversive activities began in the 4th-grade,
when he planned out a Utopian society with himself as the dictator.
But despite this authoritarian background, he claims to have no desire
to run for office.  Another unnamed source reported that Caplan is fond
of quoting Frederick Wilhelm I's famous quip to the Prussian assembly:
"I won't take a crown from the gutter."  There can be little doubt of
his malevolent intentions which extend even to his artistic tastes - for
example, he is known to be a big fan of "Brain" on the Steven
Spielberg's Animaniacs series.  ("Brain" is a mutated laboratory mouse
with plans to conquer the world.)

Sources report that Mateescu and Caplan first met in their sophmore year
- their first semester they had three classes together.  Prof. Rabin of
UC Berkeley says he remembers the two students well.  "Bryan sat in the
front row and read philosophy books, occasionally looking up to ask a
hostile question.  Funny, I seem to remember Corina rolling her eyes
each time he did so...What would she see in a loudmouth like him
anyway?!" Professor Oh, who taught intro statistics to the
soon-to-be-married couple, wasn't sure if she remembered them or not.
"Was he the guy who always sat in the front row and read philosophy
books?  And was she the nice, polite girl who sat behind him?...No, I
must be thinking of somebody else."
Few outsiders know for sure when the Mateescu-Caplan relationship
began, but Caplan's sophmore roommate, who identified himself only as
"Eugenio" claims that on December 16, 1990 he saw Caplan walking up
Channing Street carrying a rose.  Actually, Eugenio refused to speak to
our reporters, but did pantomime out the whole episode.

Since that early spotting, outsiders have been largely excluded from the
details of the Mateescu-Caplan relationship.  
Said one member of Mateescu's Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority, "I could never
figure out why she liked him, unless she's weird too.  
But she seemed pretty normal.
There's just no figuring."

Strangely, there were actually a few Mateescu-Caplan supporters who were
willing to risk public ridicule to come on the record.  "Y'know," said
John Searle, Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Language at UC
Berkeley, "most economists are stupid.  But not Bryan.  And I think it's
great he's getting married, whatever you morons say."  Another
long-time Caplan supporter, who asked to be called by the code-name
"Fab" put the case even more belligerantly.  "I just want to say that
all you media people are a bunch of dweebs...You just don't like us
because we're libertarians.  I think it's pretty sad that you media
people have to ruin a beautiful event like this by digging up dirt from
back in the 4th-grade.  What were you doing in 4th-grade?  Finking on
other kids, or what?  You make me and my newts sick to our stomachs."
And yet another supporter, world-famous computer programmer Ben Haller,
commented, "Well, the reason that you don't approve is that you don't
understand the greatness of this man.  He took pity on me in the midst
of all of my socialist, relativist follies, and convinced me that I
existed, and moreover, had every right to all of the money I make.
Can any of you parasites in the media say the same?"  Indeed, we can't.

The Romanian-American community was divided over the match.  Many
rallied to her support.  "Don't believe a word those guys in the INS
say," said Avreniu Bobescu.  "I'm certain that those tales of her 
espionage activities at the age of six are pure fabrications."  Said
another leader in the Romanian community, "Bryan may be skinny, but if
Corina likes him, that's good enough for us."  Still, an outspoken
minority demonstrated in front of Mateescu's UC Davis dorm room.  "Down
with skinny American boys" said one sign; "Being a male Romanian is not
a crime," said a spokesman for the demonstrators.  "Ms. Mateescu is just
perpetuating the negative stereotype among my fellow Romanians that no
brilliant, beautiful Romanian girl would want to marry within her
nationality.  We've got a message to tell her - we are not criminals!
Why won't she go out with us?"  The rally ended after the
demonstrators burned a stuffed bear with all of the stuffing taken out.
"Hey hey, ho ho, skinny Americans have got to go" they chanted.
Several UC Davis law professors offered to take up their case.  "We are
past the days of rugged individualism, when anyone could marry anyone
they wanted.  Now we have more modern, progressive concepts of legality
that recognize the legitimate claims of each ethnicity upon its
beautiful, sweet, successful women to marry a fair share of their own people,"
said constitutional law professor Thomas Rawls.

Despite widespread concerns there is apparently little than can be done.
President Clinton tried the same tactic he used to settle the American
Airlines flight attendent strike - a personal phone call.  But he met
with little success.  "I doubt that Mr. Caplan has any social conscience
whatever.  I mean, I asked him nicely...OK, I admit that I'm jealous,
and Ms. Mateescu seems vastly smarter and nicer than Hillary and that
other woman I was just sleeping with last week, what was her name...?
Hell, what matters is that this is a time of shared sacrifice, and he
told me point blank that he doesn't like sharing or sacrifice, and never
has...You know, if the Ayatollah can put a price on Salman Rushdie's
head, why can't I have the simple power to annul dangerous marriages?"

The marriage will be held on June 18th this year, giving the world
community little time to prepare for the years of turmoil ahead.  It
will take place at a Romanian-speaking Eastern Orthodox church in
Tustin, a little-known suburb of Los Angeles, or maybe Orange County.
Several thousand guests have already been invited, and most of them will
be bringing several uninvited friends.  Mateescu's mother nevertheless
maintains that she will personally cook for all of them.  Indeed, one of
the recent invites is a representative from the Guiness Book of World
Records, who believes that this may well set a record for the most food
cooked by one person in a single week.
Mateescu's parents refused to speak with reporters, but her grandmother
was happy to respond to charges.  Unfortunately, she only speaks
Romanian, so little was learned.  The Caplan-Mateescu relatioship
remains an enigma to the outside world.  Perhaps the whole thing may be
summed up with an old Romanian saying, which best translates as "True
love is very hard to understand, until it happens to you; then it is
very hard to explain."