Correspondence
C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Homosexuals I just read "Men Without Women" (October 1978), and I think it's the best, most balanced, incisive, and charitable-in the true sense of the word, i.e.,...
...It is general knowledge that the ritualistic liberal is quick to issue manifestoes, but has it ever been remarked that he is just as ready to blubber into his hanky...
...My reasons for not renewing my subscription are the following: In general the style and quality of writing in The American Spectator is [sic] not of a high quality...
...Borwick...
...C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Homosexuals I just read "Men Without Women" (October 1978), and I think it's the best, most balanced, incisive, and charitable-in the true sense of the word, i.e., lovingarticle on the subject, an altogether admirable piece...
...a lifer in any prison in the land would boot it from his cell and holler for the chaplain...
...Your advertised self-deprecating comments about the poor quality of your writing style are more than accurate...
...On the other hand, a tap might end the matter by demonstrating King's entire innocence, even to the satisfaction of the FBI...
...O'Rourke Editor National Lampoon At Best Irritating, At Worst Offensive I have seldom been so solicited by a magazine as I have been by The American Spectator, following my decision not to renew my subscription...
...For the moment I am content to let my subscription lapse, secure in the knowledge that nothing is likely to transpire which will be of significant loss to my own thinking or experience...
...It was this concept of independent thinking which first attracted me to The American Spectator, but I think that independence in The American Spectator is confused with what I would describe as conservative rightist polemics...
...A Supreme Court that today refrained from legislating would in fact be stronger than the recent ones, which have bowed to all manner of fashionable ideological whims...
...You obviously must possess large capital resources to be able to pursue such an aggressive sales policy...
...As winner of the coveted Harold Robbins Award for Worst Book of the Year, Mr...
...Had anyone ever written such blah about Lincoln he would have been hunted down and shot by order of the Lincoln family...
...He could be himself at last...
...But Arthur sends up clouds of meaningless poetry, and the ritualistic liberals line up, money in hand...
...Aileen S. Kraditor Boston University Boston, Massachusetts Erratum In my article on the first two years of the Carter administration (December 1978), I made a grotesque error in calculating the cost per job of the 1979 CETA program...
...Karl O Lessker Senior Editor EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) trayals of FDR is gone...
...Schlesinger's honor to be held at the W6men 's Christian Temperance Union drinking fountain on the west portico of the Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington, Indiana...
...What has happened to ritualistic liberalism...
...The total $6.2 billion appropriation to create 660,000 jobs yields a per-job cost of $9.4 thousand, not $9.4 million as I so carelessly alleged...
...If we have failed a you, we have failed race...
...Yet the ritualistic liberals will not complain...
...All the arguments for loose construction that fill the reviews *of Berger's book neglect the one crucial question: If the Court is not bound by the intentions of the Framers and amenders, whose intentions is it to be bound by...
...Sometimes he relies on his audience's gullibility, as when he exonerates RFK for approving the wiretapping of Martin Luther King's telephones-"If Robert Kennedy refused a tap on King and anything went wrong, Hoover would have had a field day...
...When I calculate the cost in pursuing clients and the return on this investment, even assuming they finally take a subscription, it is unlikely to be a wise use of resources...
...Schlesinger will receive Robbins' complete works in handsome, pre-owned, paperbound volumes...
...He was now head of the family...
...Not many Hollywood fan magazines would publish absurdity of this strength, and if they did schoolgirls would not buy them...
...Unfortunately the writing in The American Spectator does not meet this criteria [sic...
...But Berger avoids that trap by reminding the reader repeatedly of Article V, providing for amendment...
...Most are wholly absorbed with fantasies and nitwit crusades...
...But most of the time he relies on sentimentalism and his audience's lust for what is untrue...
...The award will be presented at a ceremony in Mr...
...I have always considered myself an independent thinker and have worked assiduously at understanding the points of view of both liberal and conservative writers, politicians, etc...
...Irving Borwick Brussels, Belgium museum piece like the whole human -RET Recipe for Despotism I should like to comment on two points made by Stephen B. Kanner in his review of Raoul Berger's Government By Judiciary (October 1978...
...I particularly find Tyrrell's editorials badly written, awkwardly phrased, and somewhat tedious...
...It was excellent, and you will have done something to counter the bad reputation of conservatives among Indians and India-lovers...
...on Stephen Miller's article on India (August/September 1978...
...A minority's...
...Camelot eschews sobriety to be sure, but it also apparently adjudges the ordinary household laugh a profanation...
...The qualities he had so long subordinated in the interest of others-the concern under the combativeness, the gentleness under the carapace, the idealism, at once wistful and passionate, under the toughness-could rise freely to the surface...
...Even in the era of the bloody shirt there remained a vestige of dignity...
...For most of them, their lives are now spent frenziedly absconding from reality...
...My sincere and abject apologies to our readers...
...Arthur knows of the lachrymal wellsprings in his audience and so he blubbers along in Robert Kennedy and His Times, alternately sobbing and shrieking righteous testimonials...
...The majority's...
...He feels the primal impulse at Kennedy anniversaries, during primaries in remote midwestern states, and every time one of the Kennedy children scuffs a knee or gets a traffic ticket...
...Nathan Glazer Cambridge, Massachusetts Saturday Night Fiihrer People say life these days is much like that in Germany between the World Wars...
...Students of the species have long recognized that there is a wide vein of mawkishness in the ritualistic liberal...
...Even the late Eleanor would be appalled...
...Do you think that we will have a "disco dance-hall putsch...
...Dear Dr...
...In addition, the obvious bias which characterizes many of the contributions becomes irritating at best and offensive at worst...
...First, Kanner is right in pointing out that to appeal to the letter of the Constitution to support the argument for strict construction is to argue in a circle...
...If I cannot always agree with certain polemical points of view, at least I want them to be expressed in articulate and thoughtful ways...
...Ernest van den Haag New York, New York India Bravo...
...Yet this is the inescapable logic of his position...
...He lived through a time of unusual turbulence in American history," Arthur sings of RFK, "and he responded to that turbulence more directly and sensitively than any other political leader of the era....He was the most original, enigmatic, and provocative figure in mid-century American politics...
...I can only commend your organization for its persistence, energy, and aggressiveness in pursuing clients...
...I continue to seek out journals and magazines in order to keep abreast of the latest thinking...
...Robert Kennedy and His Times costs $19.95, precisely the same as the Nixon memoirs, yet no one has been heard to complain, and no one will...
...P.J...
...Yet Arthur's audience buys...
...I am not sure that I can congratulate you on your judgment-with regard to the use of your budget...
...If the Framers had intended the courts to read any current ideology into the words of the Constitution, Article V would have been superfluous and the amendments that have been added since 1789 would have been pointless...
...Just how keen the ritualistic liberal is to get together with his fellows for a good cry has been seen time and again, since the death ofJFK...
...But this is a decision of yours which I can only observe and wonder at...
...Its own...
...Second, I believe Kanner errs in imputing to Berger (in his penultimate paragraph) a wish that the Supreme Court were weaker...
...Other times he relies on collective amnesia...
...What Berger wants is not a weaker Court but one that exercises its proper, judicial power, rather than legislating in violation of the constitutional separation of powers...
...It is doubtful that the Black Death evoked more bawling...
...The whole tale is a travesty, oozing with puerile fantasies...
...In counting on their disrelish for reality he is safe and he will prosper...
...Past Robbins Laureates Theodore White, Peter Schrag, Lillian Hellman, and Robert Coover head the list of invited dignitaries...
...This does not make the program justifiable in policy terms but it does of course make it less outrageous...
...There is no dignity or cleverness left...
...Perhaps in some years I will return to take another look at what changes have taken place in The American Spectator...
...With his father stricken, his older brothers dead, he was accountable to himself...
...Kanner certainly would reject this recipe for a benevolent despotism, or he wouldn't be writing for The American Spectator...
...His values tend toward the Florence Nightingale story, then on to utopia...
...A child could see through it...
...The Kennedy legacy has occasioned more sniffles and sobs than almost any other phenomenon in history...
...Very obviously it has been overwhelmed by hosts of charlatans and idiots...
Vol. 12 • January 1979 • No. 1
