Correspondence
CURRENT WISDOM Newsweek Reflections of an historical and metaphysical nature from a Newsweek reader and world citizen: Certainly the stories of the returnees about their treatment will cause...
...how it would be if they met their parents, and what would happen if they met a member of the opposite sex...
...This is because while "having fun," children are supposed to learn the sex-role basics: Boys must be competitors and girls cheerleaders, boys must be fleet of foot, girls full of grace, et cetera, et cetera and not vice versa...
...I don't like the 'isms' of any kind...
...the United States especially chose to ignore their inhumane treatment...
...after reading Mr...
...Even the tarbaby dummy wears a tattered hat...
...Rent control laws, coupled with housing maintenance provisions, code enforcement, and the like, can then, make sense...
...The national crisis just ended should have, at the very least, compelled us as a nation to face up to and learn from the hatred foreign peoples feel for our far-flung economic empire...
...Many of the Shah's prisoners did not survive, and they never received the coverage the hostages have...
...And if landlords disinvest, there must be backup ways of converting rental housing into cooperative forms of ownership...
...pronounced judgment on John Lindsay, and there will not be another like it until somebody does a job on Lowell Weicker...
...There has not been a more articulate political obituary since William Buckley, Jr...
...D.D...
...Look to the fault-lines beneath the vague editorial rumbles after Reagan's display of bad manners in telling the truth about the Soviets at his first press conference, or check the op-ed columns written -by local luminaries on the nobility of the Sandinista...
...February 9, 1981] The Nation A magisterial bull in the autobiographical mode from Mr...
...Johnson sawed the ship in half, sent half toward the Scylla of Vietnam and the other half toward the Charybdis of the Great Society...
...If this should take place in the form of cash, then a whole battery of legislation and regulation must follow to keep it from being sucked back out by landlords as extra profits...
...Personally, I compliment Iran on its ability, in its first shaky year of freedom, to make a complete fool of one of the world's most powerful nations...
...Can a man marry his collie...
...Johnson was not but he played the fool to satisfy the liberals he wished to befriend...
...Common sense told us from the beginning that the use of military force would rescue only a highly inflated sense of national kidnapping, force is rarely a feasible option...
...Ross to allow that Communist disinformation and Lenin's "useful idiots" may constitute a "big deal" for Western consciousness...
...Luther notes, "I come from a big family with lots of close ties...
...But one day the girls find out what is going on inside the club...
...The "dream" became a reality...
...I don't eat farm animals at my home, but if I were at someone's home and they served beef I would eat it...
...My own nominee for the position is Thomas Jefferson...
...Following Mr...
...Johnson had the knowledge but he wanted to be liked...
...That's sad...
...March 1981] The New York Times Proof that the Toronto vice squad has grown fat and lazy: It could have been the ultimate antisexist exercise, although its purpose was more modest than that...
...Carlson W. Yost Texas A&M University As a new subscriber to The American Spectator I was made happy today by reading your editorial "Jimmy: At the End of the Revels" (February 1981...
...What is going on inside is this: the fourth-grade boys are sitting around, giggling and telling dirty jokes...
...The animal cartoon characters are treated just as badly, all having either tattered hats or coon dialects-or both-just like the human coon characters...
...Johnson positively wooed their fickle hands...
...Therefore, I think you should nominate LBJ as worst president...
...I embrace many things...
...Relax and close your eyes," said their guide, Dorothy Sucher, a psychotherapist who practices in Washington, D.C...
...Carter did approve of the ravings of Galbraith, Schlesinger, and Nader...
...Well, for a time, the fourth-grade boys succeed in making their female classmates mad and little sisters sad...
...The job has already been done, and by none other than WFB, who devoted his January 16 column to interring Senator Wei cker...
...Perhaps Mr...
...In almost those words, coaches and psychologists worry about the boy-ego and sacrifice the girl-ego to it...
...Podhoretz's line of thought, we ought to expect films to be as predictable as each "Barbara Cart-land Romance...
...of the Soviets in Czechoslovakia, the Vietcong in Indochina, Brezhnev at Helsinki, the Cubans in Africa, and Russian "advisors" in Afghanistan...
...United States of America...
...And if it is after the Civil War, why isn't there a single indication-in the scenery, in the dialogue or at least in the characterization of the blacks-that slavery is over...
...Then they were asked to imagine what it would be like to encounter a child...
...From "Song of the South" and "Beulah Land" back to 1915s "Birth of a Nation," the message has been clear: When it comes time for the entertainment of America and the profit of Hollywood, the black image has no standing, not even under the revered Disney name...
...The Spike is nuts-and-bolts stuff, very un-chic...
...America...
...Barbara Mikulski, patriot and progressive: Entertainers of America...
...Should Bishop Paul Moore admit cows into the clergy...
...That it has not is a real national tragedy...
...Johnson's misfeasance created the opportunity for the miniscule Carter to be elected...
...My generation may become the first to fight and die to make the world safe for polyester...
...Surely Vietnam was crazy enough to keep us at peace for decades...
...But I hope it will not be forgotten that only since the ousting and death of the Shah-a longtime friend of this nation - have the Iranian people themselves tasted freedom, unknown.to them for decades...
...This is the one crucial bylaw of every male club...
...Podhor-etz would rather view Monster from the Surf than The Grand Illusion...
...Says Jacques, an only child, "We know a lot of people, aged 20 to 50, who want to remain single and who are non-sharers...
...Jacques admits he gives in first if something is important to Luther...
...They were family therapists and marriage counselors, and the consciousness-raising exercise they were performing was titled "Crossing the Border Between the Sexes...
...How many bloodbaths would it take for Mr...
...Not just because girls are invading the last male preserve of team sports, but because girls were the cushion that stopped a boy from hitting bottom: No matter how bad one was at games and sports, girls could always be counted on to be worse...
...Luther says he has learned to anticipate, avoid, and give in where Jacques's feelings are concerned...
...This also holds true for great works of art...
...Another said that it was a joy to realize that she could aggressively initiate a flirtation: "I felt I didn't have to passively wait for a man to do it-I was the man," she said...
...They warn, says James Michener, of a "heavy psychological cost" if boys compete with girls...
...She asked them all to visualize how they would feel, how they would think and how they might move as members of the opposite sex...
...Andrew W. Brown Chicago, Illinois...
...February 13, 1981] The Nation Reproachful once again, the worthy Nation surveys our recent harassment of revolutionary Iran and reveals Emperor Jimmy in all his terrifying splendor: If we belabor the thesis of American empire, it is only because there is nothing more dangerous in this nuclear age than such an empire behaving childishly out of national frustration and pique disguised as national honor and pride...
...John R. Dunlap San Jose, California The Carter Obituary (com...
...If it is the period before the Civil War, how could Uncle Remus, dejected at one point, leave the plantation on his own to live in Atlanta...
...Another said that he was equally reluctant in making the attempt, "but when I finally did," he said, "I felt that I sure was having a whole lot more fun...
...In his column he assumes (and incorrectly at that) that an "audience can enjoy only that which it knows...
...January 27, 1981] The Los Angeles Times The grim state of kultur under the California sun, as unmasked by Mr...
...Your Feb...
...In fact, I would be glad to eat happy beef and happy chicken...
...A sampling "There is a rumor going about, and this very night I shall get down on my knees to pray that it is true, that a private meeting before the hearings with Senator Weicker, at which meeting Mr...
...De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum...
...A white girl's muddied dress turning miraculously clean after an especially powerful Uncle Remus tale...
...Another said, "I just felt so, well-tall...
...Carter was abysmally ignorant of history...
...Now, for the sake of oil, "honor" and the "balance of power," we are ready to begin again...
...This seeming to be the case, I suggest The American Spectator find a film critic who can understand art more sophisticated than television soap operas...
...The slaves returning from the fields, singing in perfect harmony about how fortunate they are to be on the plantation...
...Nineteen women and four men sat in a circle in a hotel conference room in Toronto, and began to undergo what their leader called a "guided fantasy...
...CURRENT WISDOM Newsweek Reflections of an historical and metaphysical nature from a Newsweek reader and world citizen: Certainly the stories of the returnees about their treatment will cause outrage here...
...It's not clear when the story takes place...
...In a take-off on the coon-scared-of-the-ghost bit, Toby having to pinch Johnny to confirm that he is real...
...Jacques and Luther split all-their expenses, (from a combined income of around $65,000) and see themselves as independent but together...
...To expose a ruthless, born-again, hypocriticalliability such as the Georgia peanut is, in my mind, an act of sincere and courageous patriotism...
...Being serious about your work," says Luther, "brings results...
...Theodore L. Humes Phoenix, Arizona But stay ! Mr...
...Let Mr...
...He simply wants animals to have some of the rights of man-the right to move about and socialize with their fellow pigs or calves, or whatever . . . And asking if I'm a vegetarian is like asking if I'm a Christian...
...If we are to accept film as an art form (which it is), then we must explore and we must expect to be challenged...
...Then he dove overboard and left his successor-Nixon qr Humphrey-to the media sharks...
...Read on...
...We are so proud of Elvis Presley, he kiiew this was the land of opportunity, and he set an example to "reach the American dream...
...Johnson had acquired navigational tools and skills in the Congress -he chose to handicap himself with a black hood called "All things to all men...
...Yes, I am and no, I'm not...
...January 2, 1981] sense of irony-but it's undoubtedly a pattern that obscured the true intentions of Mao in the 1940s and of Castro in the 1950s...
...Toby, the black child assigned to be Johnny's companion and protector, gushing about how Uncle Remus' stories are the best in "all the United States of Georgia...
...Ingalls Roselle, Illinois But Is It Art...
...Using the power of patient suggestion, she summoned her charges' imaginations in the quiet room...
...Can we somehow lower that retirement from seventy thousand a year to around fifty dollars a week...
...I have not seen The Competition (although I have seen Raging Bull and found it a very fine film...
...December 14, 1980] New York True love, illuminated by two American romantics, in the philosophical pages of one of America's most sophisticated journals of urban enlightenment: Neither Jacques Sammes, 51, nor Luther Travis, 50, thinks he could live with or love someone who wasn't good at his work...
...By your own guidelines, LyndonJohnson ought to be accorded the laurels...
...Podhoretz's column, I'm not sure I want to see it...
...Some women spoke about their feelings of power: "I was King Kong," said one, smiling, "and it was great...
...But in the tradition of, say, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, The Spike is also a splendid muckraker, with its dreary form well suited to its corrupt subject matter...
...When the imagining was over, the participants opened their eyes and began to talk about their experiences...
...Throughout most of those 442 days-until, finally, serious, secret negotiations were joined -our Government engaged in transparent posturing and truculcnce...
...Men have problems with female athletes largely because of the must-win mentality of "masculinity": Boys are better so how can a girl be best...
...How, you ask, can Bre'r Rabbit stories told to children be harmful...
...Ron Finney, a professional minoritarian: Lately, black leaders across the country have been expressing dire fears of troubled times ahead...
...History, too, is laid low in the service of fun and coonin...
...it needs an informed workhorse, not a clever aesthete, for an effective reviewer: for a John Updike or a Philip Roth, give me Ross's Rundown...
...and all that, but I am constrained to write you-even as I finish reading page 36-to comment on that brilliant political obituary of the Scamp (February 1981...
...An Teunis San Francisco, Calif...
...February 16, 1981] The Chicago Tribune Dr...
...Letty Cottin Pogrebin, heaves up another hopeful, albeit crackpot, lucubration on castration, masculini-zation, and the further propagandizing of American youth, this time beyond the classroom and onto the playground: If sexism is to be brought to an end in the years ahead, changing the ways our children play is a first and essential step...
...The staff at Newsweek should be proud- almost as proud as we Americans on that memorable day...
...Ross apply his high standards to a more elevated topic...
...Jeff Tracht-man, "a senior in politics at New York University," available only in The Nation, for one hundred and fifteen years a journal of bulls and bull: I was a small child in the 1960s and breathed a premature sigh of relief when it seemed as if my generation might fall between wars...
...Carter did encourage the precious and opportunistic...
...Ross's implication that people who ask such questions are "paranoid...
...suddenly hang a notice on some door or other that rules: NO GIRLS ALLOWED...
...December 2, 1980] Newsweek And yet another indication of the high-grade intellect that reads the dilettante's delicatessen, this time a reader full of helium: What a magnificent piece of journalism...
...February 9, 1981] The Progressive Once again The Progressive shows its knack for capturing the spirit of the age: There is in fact no way that America's inner-city housing blight can be alleviated without a massive redistribution of income in society...
...Patricia Ann Emanuele Nationwide Holiday Campaign for "Elvis Presley The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning sage Miss Ellen Goodman hands down another universal truth about those members of humankind too hung up on macho to shave their legs or underarms: BOSTON-In every female life there is an inevitable confrontation with something called The Secret All-Male Club...
...HowardN...
...if the form is truly alienating, the material will be as well...
...They point to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, challenges to civil-rights legislation, mysterious killings, the Reagan presidency, joblessness and inflation...
...The entertainer...
...Fox is an expert in this field: Michael Fox, a .mild-mannered scientist with a sagging mustache, is quite reasonable about his approach to animal rights...
...2 special issue, "A Day to Remember," rates as one of the finest examples of inspired writing, editing, photography and layout I have ever seen...
...George B. Eichorn Detroit, Mich...
...SongoftheSouth" is a live-act ion film interspersed with animated scenes from the classic "Uncle Remus" stories, narrated by a live Uncle Remus...
...For the first time in the history of the world, a bill has been introduced to congress for an entertainer . . . That's history...
...Weicker announced that he intended at all costs to learn what had been the conversations erased in the 181/2 minute gap, General Haig said: 'To tell you the truth, Senator, we were all talking about what an SOB you are...
...Reagan's transition to the helm...
...For most of us, the big moment comes in fourth grade when the boys who can say no more about the opposite sex than "Girls are yucky...
...The entertainment industry is saluted with an "act of congress...
...But that is another song in a different key...
...Pod-horetz finds Louis L'Armour westerns to be more satisfying and culturally important than James Joyce's works...
...Well, they can add Hollywood to the list...
...it issued threats it never intended-or was capable of-carrying out...
...Cheers to Ross's high literary standards, but nerts to his review of The Spike-and to Jim Hougan's in Harper's...
...Should I start drooling to confirm Mr...
...Elvis Aaron Presley . . . he's history...
...February 7, 1981] Miscellaneous From Spotswood, New Jersey (08884) a singular missive proclaims news of our tumescent cultural renaissance and of the high-minded doings of the Hon...
...Carter's errors seem to come from true and obstinate ignorance...
...Stupid dirty jokes...
...I just couldn't visualize it," said one...
...Johnson gave them their pedestals while knowing they were charlatans...
...Carter attempted to ease Mr...
...To write as well as you do is an art...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Elvis Aaron Presley...
...Jacques points out the two have "separate physical and metaphysical lives," as well as separate friends...
...Carter attempted to run the ship of state without compass, maps, or pilot...
...Take a moment to stop and think...
...1 didn't want to visualize it...
...I'm a conscientious omnivore...
...Humes...
...January 17, 1981] The Richmond Times-Dispatch Zoo keepers tremble as one of the foremost journals of the late Confederacy reports on the doings of famed animal liberationist Michael W. Fox, author of Returning to Eden: Animal Rights and Human Responsibility and Understanding Your Dog...
...They take half their meals together, but they think many of the problems that couples have stem from doing too much together...
...The Spike is a dreary novel indeed, written with little grace, inspired by a narrow rationalism, and informed by a preposterous moral ambivalence...
...I would like to register a mild protest against R. Emmett Tyrrell's nomination (February 1981) of Jimmy Carter as "worst president in American history...
...for de Borchgrave & Moss, give me Michael Ledeen's downhome Commentary review...
...The men, however, said they had had some difficulty in performing the exercise...
...I take issue with John Podhoretz's column of alleged "film criticism" in the March 1981 issue...
...House joint resolution #488, introduced to Congress by Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski, from Baltimore, Maryland...
...Another man, who also had got past his initial difficulty with the exercise, said that "it was the first time I ever thought I'd want to be a woman-because I sensed that it would make me feel closer to people...
Vol. 14 • April 1981 • No. 4
