Editorial
Tyrell, R. Emmett Jr.
The Alternative, Since Yesterday IT HAS n~ZN four years since one Elizabeth Taylor wrote me to the effect that the students of White Pines College were not interested in receiving a...
...Please attach address label from the back cover of your Alternative in the space below...
...As to who is the sweetest, there is a running battle between Joyce Goldberg and Neil Howe, and bearing in mind that the latter is given to cheating in such contests, I give the nod to Miss Goldberg...
...But until then I shall sit back with my cohorts and snicker while New Times whoops it up for itself and for a newly christened journalism that is as old as the art of gossip...
...All others unfortunately must still pay six dollars--at least until our CIA grant slips through...
...These pests proved many old verities, the most salient being man's enduring tendency to become the very ass he had heretofore warned us about...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401 Continental U.S.A...
...The tallest is Jim Grant, a nearly seven-foot-tall retired French horn virtuoso, who anchors himself in size 15 ý89 D shoe...
...Our growth has followed the anfractuous pattern, of evolution which is typical of a normal individual's growth to adulthood...
...Po.mge PAID Indianapolis, Indiana Permit No...
...The Alternative accumulates a vast and one might even say lavish debt, much like the Penn Central...
...Further, most of us ha~e had a bellyful of moral indignation...
...Not only does the area abound with many philosophical bartenders, hordes of nubile cuties, and the cow that jumped over the moon, it also has every species of clown from America writ large...
...Typical of these is a new magazine that recently inflated itself into national prominence through a million-dollar advertising barrage lurid with adjectives like "provocative" and "iconoclastic," and full of assurances that whatever sacred cows still reign in America, they will soon be filled with terror and contrition...
...6.00 [] 1 yr...
...What is mere, thanks to the recent penetrations into these parts of mass communications and the aeroplane, we now have access to all the amenities of New York and Washington plus the colossal 6dvantage of being able to shut them off at will...
...The Alternative Circulation Department R.R...
...It is with...
...11 Box 360 _9 Bloomington, I n d i a n a 47401 Enclosed is...
...Not all of them goose-stepped to the same tune...
...New writers often contact us, and we occasionally ferret a few out for ourselves...
...Eschewing both elitism and demagoguery, The Alternative is a journal for the civilized minority...
...Too much of the stuff makes us rli~y, even sick, but the sickness is our own doing and no reason for discommoding our neighbors...
...The most ignorant is William Kristol, who graduated from Harvard only to reenter that institution as a graduate student...
...If New Times ever debunks the sham pretensions of modern journalism and if it ever does it intelligently or even eloquently, I shall take the oath of silence and off to a monastery with me...
...Ron Burr is the most conservative...
...Pecksniffery, puritanism, and philistinism were revived on a gigantic and wonderful scale hitherto unimagined even by the Women's Christian Temperance Union...
...It should surprise no one that our perfornmnces have been uneven, but I believe our development has been rapid and steady...
...He has tumescent and invincible adenoids, and his sound is very contemporary...
...11, Box 360 Bloomington, Ind...
...The Alternative is a magazine that has rejected the stultifying warmth of security and opted for freedom, the freedom to stand up for civilized society...
...8...
...Our success has been slim, but it has been enough to keep us in paper, ink, pretzels, and beer...
...so I suggested recasting The Alternative, which had been an off-campus antiradical magazine at Indiana University, and presenting it to a national audience...
...15.00 [] 3 yrs...
...If so, The Alternative might be just the magazine you have been looking for...
...In fact he has actually refused to brush his teeth until Brooks Brothers markets toothpaste...
...Whether it was the authority of high culture, the tmiversity, the courts, or whatever, it did not seem to matter...
...If you are a student or faculty member you qualify for a one year subscription to this award-winning journal for the reasonable price of four dollars and fifty cents...
...Most of the young writers who bedazzle our pages today came out of the 1960s with an amused disrelish for radicals, manifestoes, and intellectual slovenliness...
...Some becan~ revolutionaries while others merely opted for hectoring the citizenry with all sorts of idiotic and inconvenient reforms...
...I.~uis Fisher, in the last presidential sweepstakes...
...Our contributors constitute a varied lot, all of whom stand on the comnmn ground of respect for democratic process (especially American democratic process) and appreciation for cultural excellence...
...We behold America, we relish its fullness, we are enchanted by its bouquet...
...By 1970 it had become obvious that there were cells of enlightenment on campuses across the country, notably at Harvard and the University of Chicago...
...f THE ALTERNATIVE _9 R.R...
...We are bankrolled by no labor union, no tycoon, no university, and no government cornucopia...
...Just clip this lmndy order form and send it with the appropriate amount of money to: The Alternative, Circulation Department, c/o The Establishment, R.R...
...11, Box 360 Bloomington, Ind...
...4.50 College [] 2 yrs...
...11.00 [] 2 yrs...
...But the merit of this criticism withers with every issue we publish...
...I do not expect The Alternative to be lionized on college campuses where lecture programs feature windy politicianS, astrologers, and the stars of surgical sex changes...
...Enclosed is my check ($4.50 for students and faculty, $6.00 for others...
...Give me law and order and give me Beethoven, but most importantly give me the freedom to choose...
...Some are Dernocrats and some are Republicans...
...The Alternative grew from an off-campus m~gazine into a national magazine of opinion par/passu with its editors' growth...
...There is no sinister force about the place, not even a small band of Black Handers, but merely a constantly expending circle of writers interested in preserving an intelligent discourse about the educational value of business, politics, the arts, and in fact all the gorgeous elements of Americana...
...Important: allow six weeks for address change...
...Fresh juices and health foods are always stocked in our commissary, but on Saturday evenings we generally indulge ourselves in some light malts and crumpets before breaking into a chorus of the corporation song, "I Am a One Hundred Percent American," Opus 143 of the late William W. Woolcott...
...The Alternativds writers emerged from this pothering milieu...
...Our favorite gathering place is our office, a century-old Hoosier farm house situated on forty acres of lush clay, several miles outside metropolitan Bloomington...
...47401 please attach address label here [] Please renew my subscription for one year...
...These descendants of rationalism, humane sensibility, and democratic process became dervishes of antiintellectualism and authoritarianism...
...We pant after no trendy enthusiasms and peddle no nostrums...
...As Madame Taylor was then dear~ of that illustrious citedet of learning, I. could easily understand the matronly v~gilance for her flock's virtue, and, enjoined by my effortless compassion I replied, "Your name has been sent to the F.B.I...
...It is our boast that any intelligent reader of any era would find us interesting...
...Though we are not one of those voluptuously packaged products that appear on the American scene accompanied by a blast of trumpets and public relations persiflage, I believe we are superior to most of them...
...It has been sung in the presence of many foreign dignitaries including Irving Kristol and William F. Buckley, Jr., none of whom has ever come back...
...Since then it has been an extraordinary literary spree, constant, stupendous, and delightful...
...So The Alternative raises its funds from its readers, and is owned by no mysterious junto--though this is not to say that I would turn up my nose on a reasonable offer...
...Needless to say, New Times is a multimillion-dollar bore, mainly because it is a Taj Mahal to the only sacred cows left, to wit: those mountebank journalists who roll themselves in the antique dust of Lincoln Steffens and compliment themselves on their audacious contemporaneity...
...47401 A d d r e s s ( ' o r r e c t i o n Requested Nonprofit Organization U.S...
...If we were selling in supermarkets or at airport newsstands, I would retire in shame...
...Our most intelligent colleague is Barry Burr, who recently dropped out of (continued on page 35) 4 The Alternative June-September 1974 EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) college to handle the magazine's production...
...Further our circulation has steadily climbed, and the day is coming into view when we will about break even---though I doubt I shall ever share the tax problems of our great President...
...The average age of our staff today is twenty-four, an_d our budget could not match the New Republids budget for coffee...
...The Alternative, Since Yesterday IT HAS n~ZN four years since one Elizabeth Taylor wrote me to the effect that the students of White Pines College were not interested in receiving a subs~ption to The Alternative...
...The rest have threatened me with legal action if I even mention their names...
...But now the liberal audience had fragmented, and many thoughtful liberals found themselves nursing their prejudices with many modern conservatives...
...Name Address _ _ New Renewal Regular Sui~s'cribers: Student and Faculty Members: City [] ! yr...
...11.00 IPlel~se I'rinl) State _ _ Zip Yr...
...The shortest is P.D...
...Then there is the matter of our staff...
...Our season of gestation was the late 1960s, a time when authorities were breaking down all across the Republic...
...But as Congress has yet to be persuaded that we are critical to the public interest, we have had to raise money from friends in general fund-raising appeals...
...I THE ALTERNATIVE c/o The Establishment R.R...
...There was a fever on the land, and swarms of pests rose up where once only nice bright liberals had dwelt...
...y e a r subscription (nine issues p e r year) to THE ALTERNATIVE...
...Always attach address label when writing to us about your subscription...
...Studies End If this is a gift subscription please check here [] and enclose your name and address...
...Let us adjourn to the bar...
...So there you have it, The Alternative magazine from breech birth to present glory---a little magazine of American ideas that tries to think seriously about serious matters, but does not scruple to abominate all that is asinine...
...Popularity is not our goal...
...for a...
...In recent years the political views of the average American have struck me as perfectly acceptable, and if I do not share Radical Chic's disdain for democratic politics, neither do I share its demagoguery over cultural matters...
...8.00 o r Univ...
...them in mind that I have confected this little essay about the nature and origins of a magazine which remains, so far as I can ascertain, the only magazine in the country still capable of giving scandal to college girls...
...Now The Alternative has been assayed as beneath the salt, when compared to such magazines as the New Republic or the Nat~on...
...He is unmarried...
...Obviously, Bloomington, Indiana, and its environs constitute a highly congenial atnmsphere for publishing...
...Tyrrell, twenty-four inches, who spends most of his time in bed, a trait which has become a family hallmark...
...I am undoubtedly the most idealistic, though Von Kannon has also suppQrted many public-spirited endeavors, notably his recent crusade to get the Code of Hammurabi adopted as a replacement to the states' various criminal codes, or what remain of them...
...It became our credo that the test of a civilized individual is how infrequently he inflicts himself upon his fellows...
...Readers have been making scholarly inquiries about them for years, and so I shall take this opportunity to lay down the facts for the historical record...
...Baron Von Kannon is our chorus master...
...We publish liberals and conservatives...
...name address city state date of change: zip The Alternative June-September 1974 35 Are you the sort of person who stands head and shoulders above the crowd...
...For the most part the staff of the old Alternative assented, and after making organizational changes to include our associates in Cambridge, Chicago, New York, and Washington, we blossomed for the first time as a national magazine in the fall of 1970...
...Naturally, in the era of Watergate and the Great Milk Conspiracy, some people are curious about shady operators whose feet protrude beneath the drapes...
...3 yrs...
...Rest assured, The Alternative is the property of no political party, cabal, or moon-struck Jeremiah...
...But I do expect it to be read by what Lionel Trilling defines as "the intelligent public...
...I have been sending such genial notes to readers ever since, and though some like Madome Taylor already knew quite enough about our high-minded endeavor, others have sought to know more about the magazine and the idealistic young people who serve it up every month...
...Print your new address and mail this form to The Alternative...
...Ladies and gentlemen you have my report...
...R. Emmett T y r r e l l , J r . changing your address...
...Joyce is also the most liberal, having voted for the famous tailor...
Vol. 7 • June 1974 • No. 9
