Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Lingua Franca The eminent Prof. Richard Rorty, author of that masterwork of Yuppie Enlightenment, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, apprises the readers of LF of a "favorite work...
...Not one naughty girl can be found, not a Helmsley, a Bobbitt, a McDougal, or a Rodham Clinton...
...After the audience sang "Happy Birthday" to McKellen, DeGeneres reappeared with a second birthday cake which she presented to Heche, who was turning 28...
...This vaporous wheeze was on "character"—it exists, and it does not exist...
...My point is that character is never completely built...
...She is understanding of family needs and commitments...
...JUNE 4,1997] Washington Post Girlish conclusions —feminist scribe Ellen Goodman concludes another idiotic column...
...And so from June 28 to August 31, we will present her suggested movies, plus a few more we contributed that fit the bill: Tootsie, Mrs...
...And unlike her husband, she always found a way to get us back on track...
...Richard Rorty, author of that masterwork of Yuppie Enlightenment, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, apprises the readers of LF of a "favorite work of neglected fiction," conscious as he is of the looming presidential ambitions of Al Gore: Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here (1935...
...G. HOMDEN Reading, BerksStuart [MAY 25,19971 Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) A leading liberal dope fetcher disburses more shocking stuff for the dopes: Regnery's own record should be kept in mind when people read the string of books he has published about the Clintons, books by political pornographers such as R. Emmett Tyrrell...
...Not once did she ever insult another human being...
...Simpson), alleged wife-beaters (Wil Cordero), a stalker (former judge Sol Wachter), an adulterer (Frank Gifford), a dirty-talking blasphemer (the hellish Nixon), and an infamous cigarette smoker sub rosa (Bill Bennett...
...Many Americans exalt American hegemony as "honorable" and "dignified...
...Even when the cameras are off—especially when the cameras are off—she is one of the sweetest and most generous women I've ever met...
...The mean-spiritedness of the conservatives is difficult to fight...
...Also on hand were author Armistead Maupin and his longtime lover Terry Anderson, whom McKellen said nine years ago persuaded him to reveal his own homosexuality, which is the running theme of "Knight Out...
...It is amazing to me that she took the time to look and to take inventory...
...MAY28,1997] The Stuart News/ Port St...
...The Supreme Court ruling on the Jones case is a disappointment to me...
...Regardless of all the accusations directed at this president, he has accomplished much and I am extremely proud of him...
...facing a lawyer of Bennett's skills one at a time with a federal perjury rap hanging over your head is quite another...
...Doubt/re, Some Like It Hot, I Was A Male War Bride...
...After reading all the crap about her, you'd be shocked if you actually spent time with her like I have...
...I've seen some ugly mud-slinging in my day...
...They will stop at nothing to win, and it is for that reason alone I could never support them and I am comforted to know that I am a Democrat...
...currently available from Dutton) is a novelistic treatment of how fascism might come to the United States, helped along by fundamentalist preachers and populist demagogues...
...In the end, we are not just the character actors...
...Joseph Paul Goebbels— though shabbier—the glabrous and fist-faced James Carville makes another effort at his master's specialty, to wit: The Big Lie: For more than four years, Hillary Rod-ham Clinton, a woman second only to my dear momma in saintliness, has been subjected to the most blistering barrage of malicious, mean-spirited, partisan, personal attacks ever launched upon a resident of the White House...
...I'd be in meetings with her when all of us advisors were screaming and interrupting each other and making fools of ourselves...
...Hell, I've slung quite a bit myself...
...JUNE 30, 1997] Salon A strenuous emulator of the late Dr...
...she's always trying to set her staffers up on dates...
...We are the authors...
...Jones claims she can describe distinguishing marks on the president's "private parts" to prove her case...
...JUNE 2, 1997] Film Society of Lincoln Center An auspicious notice from the sex-educated about a sex-sentient nine-year-old, living but brief years from Gay Bowel Syndrome: The first-ever "Kid Curator Contest" has found its winner...
...See, peddling tall tales to reporters is one thing...
...Is there peril for Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones suit...
...Lucie News (Stuart, Florida) The saltant prose and glissading logic of the late William Sloane Coffin, Jr...
...No wonder she's got the lowest staff turnover of anyone in Washington...
...You bet...
...To suggest that the armed forces should decide that their definition of patriotism should override their allegiance to the Crown as represented by the elected Government is tantamount to sedition and I am amazed that your paper could publish such sentiments...
...Not once did she yell...
...Today the humdrum business of ethnocide is spray-painted with uplifting language about "sustainable development," with more menacing words like "resettlement" inconspicuously lurking...
...For Jones to claim harassment, it demeans all women who have been subjected to sexual harassment...
...She is the kind of boss everyone dreams of having...
...But I have never seen anything like this in all my years in hardball politics...
...It is correct that the president not be placed above the rule of law...
...singing from the pulpit of the Riverside Church back in the days when zany clerics could still become national figures—this time the prose and logic come from the empty head of one Flo Andrus in the correspondence page of a great American news organ: As a woman, a feminist and a victim of sexual harassment, I find the Paula Jones case to be extremely disturbing...
...And she cites eight well-known fiends along with their transgressions: alleged murderers (0.J...
...JUNE 21, 1997] The American Spectator • August 1997 85...
...Walking out with a birthday cake lit with candles, sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres, whom McKellen has made a point to praise in recent interviews for coming out as gay, surprised the Tony Award-winning actor, who was turning 58...
...JUNE/JULY 1997] London Sunday Telegraph In the twilight of Tory rule a sensible voice peeps up from good old Reading, Berks, and against the rash alarums of the writer Waugh: I read with disbelief the comments by Auberon Waugh (Comment, May 18...
...There may come a day when a deeply unpopular Government acting against the greater public interest in defiance of national and international law and against the human rights of its citizens may have to be overthrown by a popular uprising backed by the armed forces, but fox-hunting hardly comes into this category...
...The Democrats have a soul...
...Richard Scaife, a man who has donated millions to Republican causes, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have paid for her lawyers by donations from people with an interest in hurting this president...
...JUNE 6,1997] Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Cultist Gene Lyons makes another courageous effort on behalf of his swami in the White House as Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's clock continues to tick: Meanwhile, I'll tell you who's really spittin' and gittin' over the prospect that this lawsuit will go as far as the taking of sworn depositions: the Arkansas state troopers who regaled The American Spectator, the Los Angeles Times and the Democrat-Gazette with scurrilous tales about both Clintons' sex lives, about which I suspect they knew nothing at all...
...Should Jones and the troopers be exposed as liars, public reaction will be strong...
...Jones claims all she wants is her good name back...
...But in politics, a time of great peril is also a time of great opportunity...
...Victoria Kabek came up with the wonderfully original idea of Cross-Dressing for Kids...
...When the father of her press secretary was sick, the first lady called him every single day he was in the hospital...
...He seems to advocate a coup by the army against the elected Government in protest against banning fox-hunting on Ministry of Defense land...
...Life goes on presenting us with new choices, large and small...
...the Mario Cuomo of enlightened Salinas, California: Absent from...all the propaganda glorifying Memorial Day is a tribute to the millions of primarily foreign women, children and other innocents worldwide who have already been butchered and will continue to be butchered trying to defend themselves from nations such as ours that maintain with utter ferocity the freedom of their own and proxy military forces to brutalize foreign lands and peoples in order to further global or merely local imperialism...
...Lewis's scenario could easily be played out in the course of the next decade...
...Join us for a fun, instructive romp—through mistakes, mishaps, and missteps...
...FLO ANDRUS Stuart [JUNE 5, 1997] 84 August 1997 • The American Spectator The Nation Almost a decade after the Marxist-Leninist enterprise bit the dust comrade Alexander Cockburn is still at it: Every age contributes its own dollop of cant to the business of wiping out Indians...
...oh, miss...
...SPRING 1997] Monterey County Herald A saturnine missive from the sadly unaccoladed Paul David Tuff (yes, Tuff...
...I am totally against the present Government and all it stands for, but armed insurrection is not yet a choice to be contemplated...
...he was, however, asking for a delay from this very obvious partisan attack on him...
...MAY 23, 1997] Los Angeles Times History is again made by the true heirs and heiresses of Fatty Arbuckle in the City of Angels: Sir Ian McKellen's "A Knight Out in Los Angeles" turned into celebrity night out in Los Angeles when several of his friends surprised him onstage at the end of his solo show at the Los Angeles Theatre Center Sunday night...
...Jones' lawsuit is misguided, perhaps her suit should be directed to The American Spectator for reporting this story and the men backing the allegations...
...Indeed, there is nothing like a good war—be it a socioeconomic war like that against Cuba or poor Americans, or a military war against our own native population and minority drug users or Asian and Central American peasants, for example—to incite the pathologic "patriotism" of Americans whose twisted morals are edified by the subjugation, demonization, terrorization and elimination of peoples who' merely make the unforgivable mistake of trying to control their own destinies or merely numb the pain their oppressors inflict...
...Following DeGeneres and her girlfriend Anne Heche from their hiding places in the wings were actresses Emma Thompson, Kathy Bates and Annette Bening...
...This thing we call character is always being reformed by the moral decisions we make...
...The feminist fevers persist: Forgive me for lumping murderers, wife beaters and sneaky smokers into one character attack...
...An eloquent nine-year-old fourth-grader from the Upper West Side, Victoria wrote that such a series would help "to teach people to be tolerant of others who are different...
...It makes me want to toss my gumbo...
...She even makes a good yenta...
...After this ruling the right wing will use civil lawsuits as another tool in their political attacks whether they are legitimate or not...
...More than just Paula will end up the punch line of a joke...
...The biggest and most moving surprise for the Shakespearean actor, however, was the entrance (with flowers) of London-based playwright-director Sean Mathias, who had been McKellen's lover for seven years and was with him when Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1991...
...She then prompted the audience, which didn't seem to catch on at first, to also sing "Happy Birthday" to Heche...
Vol. 30 • August 1997 • No. 8
