Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM The New Republic While lecturing on language the renowned Toni Morrison explains how the Ku Klux Klan rides across her tongue: It must suggest and be provocative at the same time....
...I hoped to bring further honor and fame to an already famous name...
...On the Edge of the Spotlight: Celebrities' Children Speak Out About their Lives by Kathy Cronkite [William Morrow and Company, 1981] The New York Daily News Tonight Garry Wills makes the kind of logical deduction for which he is so venerated amongst adepts of the Struth-ious School of Power Politics: Sure we can win in El Salvador if that means supplying the force to put down rebels...
...I think it is organized...
...It sounds worse than just "extremely bad taste...
...It's terrible to think that a child with five different present tenses comes to school to be faced with those books that are less than his own language...
...It's a love, a passion...
...I knew whatever name I used at the beginning of my career I would have forever, and I wanted it to be my own name, not my ex-husband's...
...If she has any understanding of the words "friendship" or "compassion," she'll drop her grim circus idea of a party...
...But a Softball glove, a gift from her lover, sits among the other mementos from a long life...
...She is having a cake made in the shape of the American Embassy building in Tehran, and things like that...
...I figured they'd just laugh if someone named Cronkite came in and said they were broke and needed help...
...I think it's in extremely bad taste, but she won't listen to me...
...I have a weakness for Cronkite, and I was experiencing severe anticipatory withdrawal pains as I saw him gently leading his eighth and last President across my screen...
...Cronkite never presumed, never postured, never got in the way of the news...
...February 2, 1981] The Indianapolis Star A concerned Americano writes to syndicated sage, Letitia Baldrige, regarding the questionable behavior-istic psychology of an American original: Dear Ms...
...At age 73, Dunker joined a Cambridge woman's softball team, fell in love with the pitcher, and decided she was a lesbian...
...Ronald Reagan himself is a sign of that racism-his whole diversion of funds from social programs to the military budget...
...I think that one way in which the name has helped in my acting career is that because of...
...Should I do anything more about it?-Initials and city withheld...
...I battled with myself, not to mention with various advisers, about which name I was going to use professionally...
...This is a really cruel fallout of racism...
...March 11, 1981...
...Indeed, she's already done some talking on volatile issues...
...She doesn't fit anyone's stereotype of a lesbian...
...And the best fortress of a prince, again according to Machiavelli, is the love of his subjects...
...Talk confidentially to a member of the hostage's family, then relay the reaction to your hostess friend...
...I just don't know how we can face the '80s without him...
...February 1, 1981] The Washington Post A felicitous asseveration on the Atlanta killings from an anonymous "man in the street" delivered over to a grateful newsman at the illustrious Post: I don't think it is a sick person...
...March 3, 1981] The Nation A rare specimen of the abstruse drolleries that move the stone-faced readers of the Nation to lapse into happy hour: As a service to Nation readers, Andrew Houlding, managing editor of the New Haven and Fairfield Advocates, who was last heard from in these pages with a piece on wiretaps (' 'The Wiring of New Haven," June 7, 1980), has compiled a kind of Self-Defense Catalogue for the Bugged Liberal in the Reagan Era...
...And then to be told things about his language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging...
...The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose that language...
...March 21, 1981] New York A revolution grows and gains strength as reported in the lucrative pages of New York, a counterculture arms manual: So why's Mary Tyler Moore being tutored in political science by a Columbia University prof...
...I must admit that the power of the Cronkite name was probably a significant factor in reaching people for interviews, but I find it hard to believe that there are people naive enough to think that I "have it made" in my acting career because of my father...
...He may never know the etymology of Africanisms in his language, not even know that "hip" is a real word or that "the dozens" meant something...
...Room Bug Guard (Tech Research Inc., $345...
...Those who can conquer but not control are just conquering themselves...
...How can a people love us when we profess disregard for their rights, and boast that we are using them to hurt others...
...its familiarity, a director or casting person might be more likely to remember me than if I were Kathy Smith...
...If so, we inherit the hatreds of the people we want to rule...
...He's taken us through some bad times...
...There are certain things I cannot say without recourse to my language...
...And that certainly helps...
...March 9, 1981] The Great Book Series A wild and exciting biographical revelation left for posterity by Kathy, daughter of Walter, while the glorious Cronkite name still has the puissance to fetch a buck: I was nineteen when I was first married, and I kept that name for some years after my divorce because I liked the anonymity it offered...
...February 14, 1981] The Boston Globe Another of the eudaemonic tales of the New Age, this time about that Vesuvius of passion, Elizabeth Den-nison Dunker, erstwhile wife of Heinie Dunker, the investment banker now deceased: Elizabeth Dunker is an elegant 75-year-old woman who wears her silver hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, favors floor-length skirts over slacks and plays the harpsichord...
...Baldrige: I have a friend who is about to give what she is billing as a ' 'Hostage Party'' for a mutual friend, one of the returned hostages who lives in our area...
...Its function is like a preacher's: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself...
...When I first came out to California, I was still using my ex-husband's name...
...She is going to present to each guest a paper "ball and chain" to wear as party favors...
...I want to be careful I know what I'm talking about," said the Ordinary People star...
...The guests will be met by a hostess armed with a "machine gun...
...According to T.R.I.'s catalogue, this little wonder "automatically scans the room for low-powered transmitters" -the kind that are planted in rooms or worn by Abscam operatives under their shirts and that record conversations...
...She is inviting the press "to cover" this unusual event, so she'll gain notoriety herself...
...It is the thing that black people love so much-the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them...
...She's recently appeared in behalf of groups supporting higher welfare payments and opposing abortion curbs, and shared a platform with feminists Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug at a women's rally in Washington...
...Anyone who is worried about being tapped, bugged, or otherwise eavesdropped on will be interested in these devices, all of them actually on the market...
...March 30, 1981] New York Post Flapdoodle from Mary McGrory, besotted on ceremony: Okay, so I fell down on the job...
...You remember him choking up when he sat there, the most reassuring figure on the unbearable scene, reporting the death of John Kennedy...
...Besides, in an odd way I felt that I owed my father that, the pleasure of pride in me if I did make it...
...I watched Walter Cronkite interview Ronald Reagan, and I paid more attention to him than to the President...
...The blatant racism that we suffer in America is just another level of the killing of black children in Atlanta...
...Because she's prepping to take a more active role in the women's movement...
...The Room Bug Guard will silently tip you off if that mysterious stranger conjuring up the treasures of Araby is wired...
...I don't think Reagan has any concern in seeing that racial violence be stopped...
...It was very handy to have a legitimate alias, not to have to answer The Question all the time...
...Do we...
...I also used to use it when I was broke, for example, and going to the free clinic...
...When your silent beeper goes off, you might start reading him an entire issue of The American Spectator or similarly stupefying fare until he beats a retreat...
...But, after that, who rules, and how...
Vol. 14 • May 1981 • No. 5
