Sleigh attracts, offends, confuses

By Eileen Smith, Courier Post 12/19/1998

AUDUBON - 'Twas the week before Christmas and President Clinton was facing impeachment at home and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Or was he?

Motorists on White Horse Pike have spotted the leader of the free world in a white cardboard sleigh trimmed in garland and with Monica Lewinsky at his side.

But a peek beneath Clinton's Santa cap and Lewinsky's beret reveals their faces are really plastic masks. And the sleigh is an old convertible.

"It's a 1970 Beetle." says Betty McGarrigan, who shares Hillary Rodham Clinton's birthday, Oct. 26.

Some folks get such a kick out of the "Ho-Oh-Oh" sleigh that they go into Universal Electronics, the business McGarrigan runs with her husband, Phil, and ask permission to place their kid in the sleigh for a photograph. One couple took snapshots of their toy poodle in a fur-trimmed cap.

But John Chisholm thinks there's something wrong with this picture. He sits in his booth at Weber's Colonial Diner across the street, steamed enough to melt snow.

"It offends me," he says. "I don't think it's a joke for the children who see it."

Chisholm and others who complained about the sleigh thought they had prevailed when it disappeared one day last week. But the McGarrigan had merely sheltered the display from inclement weather.

Sandy Evantosh of Audubon was glad to see the sleigh return. As she walked by, she thought she saw a twinkle in Santa Bill's eye.

"He's watching to see if you're naughty or nice." she says.

The McGarrigan's says passers-by shouldn't assume the couple in the sleigh is the president and his former paramour. Phil and Betty know appearances can be misleading. In fact, they frequently are mistaken for the president and first lady.

"People call me 'Bill,'" McGarrigan says. "I say, 'I'm Phil.'"

So, if Bill is really Phil and Hillary is really Betty, who does that make Donna Rossi, the dark-haired woman who works in their office?

"It's not Monica in the sleigh - It's me," Rossi says.