Current Wisdom

...Theodore Kaczynski, the distinguished Unabomber and Harvard graduate, should be housed for the rest of his life in a federal facility, presumably safely removed from flammable materials and even fireworks, according to columnist Otis Pike, the only fish ever to serve in the United States House of Representatives: He deserves no death penalty because of the actions of his family in aiding his capture, and because a death sentence would be a cruelty to some decent people without whose help he might still be making bombs...

...The male prisoners in the bus masturbate in front of her...

...Powerful and profound things happen to us in our bed at night, and energy accumulates and hovers above it...

...It's a superior caste identity...

...I would have thought that he would have outgrown his little joke of squashing spiders by now...

...It's not a national identity, a continental identity, or an ethnic identity...

...Since one of the definitions for sadism is "delight in cruelty" and Garfield undoubtedly enjoys bashing spiders, I would think that a specialist in abnormal psychology would have a field day with Garfield (or maybe Jim Davis...

...It's little wonder we've had our asses kicked again and again...

...SPRING 1997] The American Spectator • September 1997 85...

...But these days no one in Arkansas is safe from Starr's harpoon...

...You don't see us attacking Canada," he says...

...JUNE 25, 1997] Washington Post In reviewing a book by one Carl Sferrazza Anthony (sic) on the life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, Miss Sarah Booth Conroy reveals the kind of indignities blithely accepted by one of the giants of the Camelot legend, Robert Strange McNamara, last seen whimpering somewhere in Vietnam, perhaps on a fundraising assignment for Vice President Al Gore: After Jack Kennedy's death, she kept her strong passions about global concerns...

...JUNE 8, 1997] Syracuse University Magazine Prof...

...JULY 28, 1997] Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Journalist Gene Lyons, the Clintons' favorite crying towel, pontificating after another of his three-martini breakfasts: Pity the poor independent counsel...

...Where Stan probes the 18th largest S&L collapse in Arkansas and a passel of down-home con men along with his real target, the Clintons, Walsh, a bit short of 75 at his appointment in 1986, found himself at odds with two presidents, several cabinet members, the CIA, Pentagon and State Department— indeed, virtually the entire Washington political establishment except the press...

...That the rebels take their case to the hallowed ballot box...

...The probabilities are very high that Jesus was an African, and certainly it is known that he spent part of his life in Africa...

...In the romantic version of the prevailing myth favored by our nation's political press, his mission is an heroic one...

...As James Baldwin so aptly put it, "whiteness is a state of mind, not a complexion...

...In a cultural context, Jesus probably would have been black in celebration of black art and literature and music, but would have also been European and Japanese, in a symbolic representation of somebody who sought to bring about a more universal wisdom that would have transcended black-white dichotomies, national identities, and the notion that the only people you look out for are "your own kind...

...Do the right thing, Herald Leader, and dump this tasteless and offensive comic strip...

...But the black-white dichotomy had not been created at that time...

...JUNE 24, 1997] The Progressive From the hills above imperialist Raleigh, North Carolina, Comandante Goff reprimands shameful laggards at The Prog for recent lapses in the world-wide struggle for liberty, fraternity, and free granola for all: I was bowled over by the assertion in your editorial "Peru's Bloody Hero" that "the guerrillas in Peru should not be romanticized...

...When she goes to court she's put in a cage inside a bus with her hands cuffed to a waist chain...

...From a politically progressive point of view, Jesus would have been black in a progressive war against American racism...

...In reading the comic section June 6, I noticed that Jim Davis has yet another installment of gratuitous cruelty...

...Most of the wars the United States engage in are racist," says Harrelson, sitting next to me in a green shirt and bright, bright orange pants in Cannes' new Planet Hollywood, where he's discussing his new film, Welcome to Sarajevo, a very much non-Hollywood production directed by Brit Michael Winterbottom...

...MAY 12, 1997] Lexington Herald Leader ( Lexi ngton, Kentucky) In enlightened Lexington, the poet George Weems, makes yet another effort to cleanse the cartoon pages of all manner of vulgarity, billingsgate, and anti-spider prejudice: Honestly, I really do try to avoid reading "Garfield," but sometimes I get this unhealthy urge to look at it and of course, I end up regretting it...

...MAY 29, 1997] Ann Arbor News Why Mr...

...Three-and-one-half years after the famed Troopergate stories Al becomes a believer, though only apparently because "top Clinton aides" told him...

...Since he so obviously likes it, why doesn't he let us enjoy an installment of Garfield pulling their legs off...

...I hate bursting anyone's delicate little bubble, but with self-imposed rules like this, fascism would prevail in Europe, South Africa would still be under the boot of apartheid, Batista's children would still be entertaining gangsters in Havana, and a slave economy would still hold sway in the South...

...JULY 3, 1997] USA Today Columnist Walter Shapiro pretends he's Gene Lyons: Not since Captain Ahab set out in quest of the white whale has there been a monomaniacal obsession equal to Kenneth Starr's pursuit of Bill Clinton...

...therefore, in the world in which Jesus operated, he would have been neither a white man nor a black man...

...She has to wear red, the color for informants and baby killers, and the inmates scream insults at her...

...Al, there have to be better sources: However, the accounts of top Clinton aides on his use of troopers for liaisons in general and the account of the trooper in this case yield ample reason to believe those broad outlines...

...They got blasted (quite appropriately) in the Courier-Journal...

...I have no doubt about that...

...At night she can't sleep because there's a flashlight shone in her face every twenty minutes...

...STAN GOFF Raleigh, North Carolina [JULY 1997] 84 September 1997 • The American Spectator New York Post During a heroic appearance in Cannes, France, Hollywood sage Woody Harrelson reminds all red-blooded Americans of another country we ought to blast back into the Stone Age—lily-white and Christian though it may be...

...JUNE 27, 1997] Detroit Free Press Speculations of a theological nature from Susan Ager, the Motor City's equivalent of Ellen Goodman: If Jesus were alive today, we might find him on Splash Mountain with a gay group from Abilene, wiping water from his eyes, laughing and singing along, "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay...

...She has every meal in her cell, dead cold...

...What really surprises me is some parent hasn't written this letter before now, especially after what happened with the Louisville Science Center and the infamous burning-bugs-with a magnifying lens billboard...

...In some ways I would say yes and in some ways I would say no...

...In contemporary American society, Jesus would be black, because he would identify with the oppressed, as he did while he was alive...

...and my answer to that is absolutely not, because whiteness is housed in its antithetical relationship to blackness...

...Peru declared war on its own working and poor people, and every one of those "hostages" was a collaborator in that war...

...What a delight that would be...

...Think of the words young girls growing up hear used to describe their bodies— `pussy,' `cunt.' They don't even know that there was a place and a time [Han Dynasty China] where those same body parts were called 'precious cinnabar cleft.' Now, you can laugh and think that's a frivolous piece of information, but it's also quite life-saving...

...JULY 14, 1997] Publishers Weekly From Miss Naomi Wolf, more esotery for sexual sophisticates: As examples of images of female sexuality that are more passive than the demeaning stereotypes of Western popular culture, Promiscuities offers the erotic literature of ancient China, the sacred texts of Hinduism and the teachings of Mohammed...

...Clinton's hotel suite...

...A: For me, black has so many different kinds of meanings...

...She began punching me in the chest and yelling, 'Stop the killing, stop the killing!'" [JULY 14, 1997] Time The increasingly podgy Madonna proffers dreamy thought on a possible solution to future energy crises: I believe that when we sleep, our soul leaves our body to be rejuvenated...

...Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told Anthony that "she exploded about Vietnam...

...Bruce R. Hare, Gogue of African American Studies at Syracuse, demonstrates a truth first demonstrated by the late B. Mussolini — insanity can be amusing: Q: Was Jesus black...

...Those were our sisters and brothers, and they deserve our support and respect...

...I think you need to go back to the text," she suggests firmly, "because I say very clearly in the introduction that these are not ideal societies for women...

...Shame on you for this self-indulgent condemnation of those who were driven into a corner and chose to fight the only way they had left...

...Maybe three hours a week she gets to sit in a cage on the roof of Sybil Brand and see the sky...

...JULY 3, 1997] The Nation Whilst fantasizing on Susan McDougal, ultra-leftist and extreme vegetarian Alexander Cockburn lets falls his first disparagement ever of "male prisoners," excepting, of course, American POWs caught fighting Communists: Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in his favor, maybe Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr can stop his repellent treatment of Susan McDougal, so gross that it amounts to torture...

...And Ahab, at least, had the self-restraint to avoid searching for whales that may have frolicked with Moby Dick...

...Now comparing Whitewater to Iran-Contra is a bit like comparing the National League pennant race to World War II...

...They took hostages, and that's never justifiable...

...This infantile generalization divorced from the cruel realities of Peru buys into every self-defeating premise that monopoly capital has set out for us...

...I'm using their ideology about sex to dislodge our ideology about sex...

...What would the editors advise...

...The discourse on black is a subtext on "Was Jesus white...

...It's okay to attack Iraq, Panama and Vietnam, but you don't see us attacking a white Christian nation...

...JUNE 3o, 1997] Marietta Daily Journal CNN's "Reliable Sources" panelist Martin Schram shows off his own reliability: In 1994, Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson wrote in The American Spectator, an activist-conservative journal, about a day he escorted a "Paula" to Mr...

...Jesus was a revolutionary and a political activist, but people don't care to remember that, any more than they care to remember that George Washington was a revolutionary...

...Wolf bristles when it's noted that China, India and Islamic nations have been, if anything, even more repressive of women's liberty than the West...