* Save the Quayle: Dan Quayle is...

* Save the Quayle: Dan Quayle is not the fool that comedians portray him to be, says the Hit the Trail for Quayle Club in Peoria, Ill. Members have written to Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman asking them to stop joking about the vice president. Club founder Dorothy Vallosio said: “The public is being programmed to think our vice president is a laughingstock.”

* I Shall Not Return: ABC news correspondent Carole Simpson, who claims to have been assaulted Feb. 10 by a South African policeman, said Monday in Pittsburgh: “I’ll go back when apartheid is over, and I don’t think that’s going to happen soon.” Simpson, who is black, said an officer threw her against a car and struck her in the kidneys during a Johannesburg church service. ABC lodged a formal complaint, she said, “but I’ve given up waiting for a response.”

* Cat Lover: Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed al-Fassi gave $1 million Monday to Minnesota animal-protection groups to set up a shelter and to educate the public. Al-Fassi turned his south Florida mansion into a refuge for abandoned cats last year when he was told American animal pounds put unwanted cats to sleep.

* Ex Libris: The 10th Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Awards will go to Tracy Kidder for “Among Schoolchildren,” an account of a year in a public school classroom, and Alec Wilkinson for “Big Sugar,” a report on dire conditions for migrant workers in the Florida sugar-cane fields. The judges also cited James MacGregor Burns for “The Crosswinds of Freedom.” The awards will be presented May 9 in Virginia.