Capitol Ideas / Letter from Martha's Vineyard
Bethell, Tom
"Capitol Ideas / Letter from Martha's Vineyard" genius, hence not smart enough maintain double digit inflation plus 7.8 percent unemployment. Then, too, he will charge that Reagan is strictly nineteenth century, hence...
...I'm not sure whether that is a significant development or not...
...inquires Gale Huntington in a local guide book...
...Oh yes, Anthony Lewis...
...But everyone keeps mentioning it, so I thought I'd pass it on...
...I suspect, that there is so little cohesion at the center of U.S...
...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington editor...
...The hamburger people, perceiving a good market, wanted to open a new outlet in Vineyard Haven...
...They know too much," a visitor hinted, undoubtedly in reference to nearby Chappaquiddick...
...We're CETA funded," she said...
...But Lillian Hellman thought otherwise...
...Looked at this way, Kennedy supporters are right not to be concerned about the prospect of a Reagan victory...
...I guess energy conservation is one of the ways the upper classes go on welfare these days...
...The truth is...
...But today the summer population swells to about 70,000, mainly because, in the words of Art Buchwald, the Vineyard "is the 'in' island at the present...
...But what the townies want, and what the townies get, can be two very different things, depending on the proclivities of the gownies...
...I f Reagan sneezes or orders a roll of Turns in public, our virtuous President will immediately make available Bethesda Naval Hospital...
...The consensus seems to be that the rat pack as presently constituted is led by Lillian Hellman, the wellknown Stalinist writer...
...The Energy Department or the Labor Department will come up with the money and it spares you the humiliation of going down to the welfare office...
...What this shows is -that these people are quite content to see Ronald Reagan elected in November...
...My plan of course was to beat the spike by telling all to Messrs...
...The island seems to be alive with passive solar talk, windmill demonstrations, glass recycling projects...
...The townies wanted it," a visitor recalled...
...Lest we forget, whaling was energy production...
...Kennedy then came out, drove off for a solitary Kennedyesque beach stroll before turning in, and didn't know the young lady was in the back at all . . . . Just thought I'd pass it on...
...Edward Kennedy has been knocked out of the presidential race, the Vineyard summer visitors have switched over pretty solidly to John Anderson...
...Bill Styron thought otherwise...
...Or so I am informed...
...Disputing this, however, George Gilder tells me that, unless Reagan gets his act together, Anderdon is actually going to be elected president, and I hereby put his August prediction on the record, just in case it turns out to be true...
...I suppose oil wildcatting would be the modern equivalent...
...Out of the question, of course, to go off and find work on one of those offshore oil r i g s . . , roughnecking . . . the modern-day whaling...
...I went one day to the fair at West Tisbury, and one of the first booths I came to was occupied by the Energy Resource Group of Martha's Vineyard, "created in 1976 by a group of island residents concerned with the lack of accessible information about energy conservation and alternatives...
...has the support ot the oil tycoons plus the Ku Klux Klan...
...Maybe there was a right and a wrong way to throw them away or scrunch them up or something...
...I could put it next to my Vote for Anderson sticker...
...That would require too much energy, which as we all know is in short supply in America these days...
...This was in connection with the Great McDonald's Hamburger Episode of a few years back...
...I asked the girl where the money came from...
...Buchwald would hardly build a house on Martha's Vineyard if he was going to be here all on his lonesome...
...A girl in cutoff blue jeans handed me a bumpersticker: Support Vineyard Recycling...
...Captain Ahab, where are you now ~hat we need you...
...Assuming this dire prediction to be false, however, and assuming that many Kennedy people really don't object much to a Reagan presidency, it is worth asking why they feel this way...
...I dutifully went sight.seeing at the fateful spot, and heard the following rat-pack explanation of the tragedy...
...I w a s n ' t quite sure what the point was...
...But today's enervated upper classes do not aspire to anything more than energy conservation...
...Those of us who have been going there over the years never planned it that way As a matter of fact, many people fell in love with the island because it wasn't "in...
...Then, too, he will charge that Reagan is strictly nineteenth century, hence not sophisticated enough to deal with the collapse of Iran, the invasion of Afghanistan, tumult in Central America, Soviet proxies in Africa, and the hostages--that last unpleasantness being Carter's greatest triumph...
...And someone called John Belushi (if you know who he is, I don't) bought Robert McNamara's house...
...Beverly Sills, James Reston, Mike Wallace, William Styron, John Updike, and other lovelies too numerous to mention...
...Our President will remind us that Reagan is old and no jogger...
...I was stationed 20 feet out to sea at the time, listening to some hair-raising conversation between liberal journalists (who come here en masse on vacation these days) and their guttural-voiced, behind-the-iron curtain sources...
...political life at present that political goals can more easily be advanced in opposition than in office...
...Perhaps he could make a better living as an officer on a merchant vessel or as a pilot, but only by whaling was there a chance for a young man from the vineyard to become really wealthy . . . . Many Vineyard whalemen reached command while still in their early twenties...
...Better in some ways to be in opposition, in this weak-kneed, energy-conservation period of U.S...
...6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980...
...There will be innuendos too dreadful and lascivious for a sinner like myself even to imagine...
...Now that Sen...
...history, If re-elected President Carter will no doubt fare no b e t t e r than Richard Nixon did in his second term, the Vineyard gownies will surely find a pretext to tear him limb from limb, with almost as much relish as they would Ronald Reagan...
...One can already hear the drumbeat of hostility from Congress, the wailing obbligato from the press, the crescendo of criticism, building up to a lovely crisis...
...We sailed, fished, clammed, and tended our lobster pots oblivious to the goings-on in such Gucci-ridden places as Southampton, East Hampton, Newport, Bar Harbor and Malibu...
...But that of course is just the way the rat pack likes it --somewhat resembling an UnderTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1980 5 developed Country and deserving, therefore, of foreign aid in due course (from Washington...
...One fears for a President Reagan, should he be elected...
...The island--somewhat larger than you might i m a g i n e - - s t r i k e s me as being overgrown with scrub, fir trees, small oaks, and masses of prickly vegetation of every description...
...Subsidiary members include Walter Cronkite (who was recently turned away curtly by a local head waiter for being seven minutes late for his reservation--a true story, everyone swears...
...D o n ' t believe the p o l l s ! " Gilder warns...
...Growing tired of all the earnest political conversation in the cottage that night, Mary Jo Kopechne slipped out for a snooze on the back seat of Kennedy's car...
...At one point I heard the year-round Vineyarders, who are said to be mostly for Ronald Reagan, described as the "townies...
...But apart from.that he hasn't quite got the socio-dynamics right...
...One thinks back inevitably to the days of whaling, to those dangerous three- and four-year voyages...
...In short, too much Ecology and not enough Energy...
...Farmland has reverted to forest...
...And unless I am much mistaken, Scotty Reston's Vineyard Gazette, with a cause to champion at last, thundered against the proposed franchise...
...De Borchgrave and Moss, but Muffle spotted me at my listening post and came smartly to the rescue...
...acted in mediocre movies and carried a gun...
...I predict that Campaign '80 will be far dirtier than Campaign '66 Let it, too, have a happy ending...
...Ergo, no McDonald's...
...The point is that the fashionable folk are quite happy to up and abandon Gucci-ridden East Hampton provided there's a whole rat pack of them ready to migrate at approximately the same time...
...The humorist continues: Local residents question whether Buchwald ever tended a lobster pot, or so much as clammed, o n the island...
...Why did so many Vineyard men go whaling...
...Yoget back to politics, as briefly as possible in this political season, it is worth considering this business of Kennedy supporters backing Anderson (as I'm sure many of them will...
...The regular Vineyard residents, on the other hand, never were too enthusiastic about Kennedy...
...The year-round population of this 100-square mile island off Cape Cod is only 9000 or so--much smaller, I believe, than in its glory days of whaling in the first half of the nineteenth century...
...But somehow not Tom Wicker...
...A man could make a living, and sometimes a good living, at sheep raising or fishing...
...genius, hence not smart enough m maintain double digit inflation plus 7.8 p e r c e n t unemployment...
...Nearby, there was a pitiful little display of aluminum cans, bottle tops, and whatnot...
...and hails from Hollywood, California, where carnality is the norm and divorce is rampant...
...Such tiny horizons...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S . . • . . . . . . . - . . . . ; . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . ` ` . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . ` ` . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ` . . . . . . ` . . . . . . . LETTER FROM MARTHA'S VINEYARD b y Tom B e t h e l l C } n the third day I was stung by a jellyfish named Bitsie or Muffle, trailing an Anderson sticker from a tentacle...
Vol. 13 • October 1980 • No. 10
