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.,...
...Students of the species have long recognized that there is a wide vein of mawkishness in the ritualistic liberal...
...Yet Arthur's audience buys...
...But this is a decision of yours which I can only observe and wonder at...
...Perhaps in some years I will return to take another look at what changes have taken place in The American Spectator...
...I am not sure that I can congratulate you on your judgment-with regard to the use of your budget...
...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...
...In addition, the obvious bias which characterizes many of the contributions becomes irritating at best and offensive at worst...
...Ernest van den Haag New York, New York India Bravo...
...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...
...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...
...Not many Hollywood fan magazines would publish absurdity of this strength, and if they did schoolgirls would not buy them...
...Nathan Glazer Cambridge, Massachusetts Saturday Night Fiihrer People say life these days is much like that in Germany between the World Wars...
...Borwick...
...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...
...Unfortunately the writing in The American Spectator does not meet this criteria [sic...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...The award will be presented at a ceremony in Mr...
...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...
...It was excellent, and you will have done something to counter the bad reputation of conservatives among Indians and India-lovers...
...There is no dignity or cleverness left...
...I can only commend your organization for its persistence, energy, and aggressiveness in pursuing clients...
...If we have failed a you, we have failed race...
...You obviously must possess large capital resources to be able to pursue such an aggressive sales policy...
...Its own...
...Kanner certainly would reject this recipe for a benevolent despotism, or he wouldn't be writing for The American Spectator...
...I particularly find Tyrrell's editorials badly written, awkwardly phrased, and somewhat tedious...
...The majority's...
...But Arthur sends up clouds of meaningless poetry, and the ritualistic liberals line up, money in hand...
...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...
...Yet the ritualistic liberals will not complain...
...But most of the time he relies on sentimentalism and his audience's lust for what is untrue...
...Camelot eschews sobriety to be sure, but it also apparently adjudges the ordinary household laugh a profanation...
...Very obviously it has been overwhelmed by hosts of charlatans and idiots...
...What has happened to ritualistic liberalism...
...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...
...Second, I believe Kanner errs in imputing to Berger (in his penultimate paragraph) a wish that the Supreme Court were weaker...
...With his father stricken, his older brothers dead, he was accountable to himself...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Had anyone ever written such blah about Lincoln he would have been hunted down and shot by order of the Lincoln family...
...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...
...Even the late Eleanor would be appalled...
...My sincere and abject apologies to our readers...
...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...
...I continue to seek out journals and magazines in order to keep abreast of the latest thinking...
...Even in the era of the bloody shirt there remained a vestige of dignity...
...The Kennedy legacy has occasioned more sniffles and sobs than almost any other phenomenon in history...
...As winner of the coveted Harold Robbins Award for Worst Book of the Year, Mr...
...The whole tale is a travesty, oozing with puerile fantasies...
...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...
...He could be himself at last...
...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...
...P.J...
...Most are wholly absorbed with fantasies and nitwit crusades...
...Schlesinger will receive Robbins' complete works in handsome, pre-owned, paperbound volumes...
...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...
...This does not make the program justifiable in policy terms but it does of course make it less outrageous...
...It is doubtful that the Black Death evoked more bawling...
...A child could see through it...
...on Stephen Miller's article on India (August/September 1978...
...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...
...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...
...Yet this is the inescapable logic of his position...
...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...
...Dear Dr...
...If I cannot always agree with certain polemical points of view, at least I want them to be expressed in articulate and thoughtful ways...
...a lifer in any prison in the land would boot it from his cell and holler for the chaplain...
...A minority's...
...His values tend toward the Florence Nightingale story, then on to utopia...
...But Berger avoids that trap by reminding the reader repeatedly of Article V, providing for amendment...
...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...
...Karl O Lessker Senior Editor EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) trayals of FDR is gone...
...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...
...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...
...Other times he relies on collective amnesia...
...For most of them, their lives are now spent frenziedly absconding from reality...
...On the other hand, a tap might end the matter by demonstrating King's entire innocence, even to the satisfaction of the FBI...
...He was now head of the family...
...Do you think that we will have a "disco dance-hall putsch...
...Your advertised self-deprecating comments about the poor quality of your writing style are more than accurate...
...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...
Vol. 12 • January 1979 • No. 1
