Birdbrains in the Park
Peterson, John S.
JohnS. Peterson BIRDBRAINS IN THE PARK A child-care specialist reports on New York City's antinuke festivities. Untoward genius must die in a corner. I am ready to believe that these young...
...The sergeant, obviously a graduate of sensitivity training, maintained a twinkly Irish deadpan throughout...
...Then, too, most of the performers dated from the days when Gloria Steinem was advising George McGovern to pull up his socks on talk shows, and were, by and large, a squeaky clean lot...
...Pushing forward, I arrived at mid-Lawn just as the marchers came herding in to hunker in a field of silver balloons...
...To believe this--and the mainstream press swallowed it whole--is to believe the moon is made of yogurt...
...And, the June 12th committee was profoundly grateful...
...It should be noted that the rock 'n' roll was ladled out with Machiavellian precision...
...Actually it never came to that...
...Momiay, J n e 14th...
...Abbie of course was pulling the New York Times's leg again...
...Strolling on, I stopped at the "Goldie Oldie" button table to finger a "Punk Dykes For Piece" medallion, and then to watch an aging, ponytailed freak moon over the "Impeach Nixon" and "Sock It To LBJ" collection...
...Although the nuclear death theme was likely to attract a flock of neurotics, in the forefront of the "Freeze" rally were the same McGovernite children who seized the day at the 1968 Democratic Convention and have been with us ever since, running on empty and riding for free...
...In Reagan's, the china plays on the popular idea that he is a rich man's President, a guy who looks out more for his wealthy friends from Beverly Hills than the bindle...
...Ah, the old days...
...But it left behind an enduring symbol: the china as tangible evidence of elitism, of seeming lack of compassion, of Republican politics-as-usual...
...There was scant mention of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, Soviet foreign policy, Soviet human rights at home, or V.I...
...We're losing it, ".the White House official complained, expressing deep concern over the Administration's economic troubles and President Reagan's sinking popularity...
...Yes, the children were all around...
...From here the afternoon fell into a kind of dreamy Dick and Jane groove...
...Watching a jump-suited "affinity" group gather on a hopscotch square near the U.S...
...Only when the lady left did he turn to his squad, roll his eyes, and exclaim, "Oh, I simply must have one of those to go with my Calvin Kleins...
...By Friday afternoon, however, there was no denying that the tribes were gathering...
...Had Andrei Sakharov materialized and advised the crowd to thank God for the American nuclear deterrent (as he had once advised Joan Baez), a majority would have declared him as crazy as Soviet psychiatrists say he is...
...Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter forthe Baltimore Sun...
...A minority would have cheered wildly for three seconds, then dropped it, such being the attention span of the nursery school Left...
...But now, as surely as the china has stayed, the coalition is dissolvi n g - a n d with it the prospect of a political realignment that would catapult a conservative Republican party into permanent majority status...
...These folks hung out all Sunday, breathing deeply and forming themselves into nonviolent " a f f i n i t y " groups...
...All one had to do that weekend was follow the trail of ideological litter from Columbia to the demonstration tables off 84th Street...
...F r e d Barnes LOSING THAT POPULIST TOUCH: RONALD REAGAN'S CRUMBLING COALITION The GOP resumes Republican politics-as-usual...
...Man, those were the days...
...Which was plenty...
...In Carter's case, the jeans signaled that he was a rube not quite up to the task of the presidency...
...They're only six bucks and really great, a T-shirt we can wear all summer...
...One d i d n ' t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew: WAR ON U.S...
...What can we do...
...Now in their late 20s, 30s, and even 40s, how will the Kids survive if the "Freeze" gig fizzles...
...in raping Mother Earth...
...Welcome...
...I got a dozen of these at home on the mantle...
...but it would still be a dying song...
...Or in listening to the chief of the NYC Human Rights Council speak of celebrating our diversity while becoming sensitized to each other's pain...
...In a clearing a few yards away a couple of sixties freaks bounced like monkeys playing imaginary Stratocasters...
...Every third or so speaker would call for a round of applause--"strokes"--for the persons in blue...
...But working stiffs, many of them union members and Catholics, and middle- and low-income whites from the South, and Jews, are deserting Reagan...
...Not long ago, a young congressional aide named David Smick went to the White House to visit a presidential assistant...
...FASCISTS & WARLORDS STOP U.S.-BRITISH WAR ON ARGENTINA FREEDOM COMES ONLY IF YOU TAKE IT John S. Peterson is a New York writer at work on an essay collection entitled "Social Work & Other 70s Fables...
...The answer from Smick, who works for Congressman Jack Kemp, came without hesitation...
...Soon thereafter, spokesperson Orson Welles stepped forward to call the kindergarten together...
...Here in the park's Ramble was a scene savoring of Sproul Plaza, Berkeley '67...
...Then, having apparently done no more than a modicum of political damage, the china controversy died...
...IRISH DRUMS BEAT FOR ALL THE PEOPLE REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST SPARTICIST YOUTH LEAGUE ATTILA THE HAIG REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST PARTY NATIONALIZE BANKS AND INDUSTRY COMMUNIST WORKERS EL SALVADOR IS ALL OF US CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION Yes, although CBS camera crews kept a discreet distance, the Ramble contained every hard Left house pet of the liberal Democratic intelligentsia...
...Lenin's aims for the peace movement ("The ultimate objective of peace is world Communist control...
...stiff from Jersey City...
...In a Montessorian sequel, the June 12th committee spawned a more adventurous band of hobbits, the June 14th committee...
...Approaching Columbia I observed a film crew in a bubble-top Cadillac panning the faces of William Sloane Coffin and other humanist Brahmins--followed by Buddhist drummers and a band of West Siders marching in San Francisco Mime Troupe hand-medowns...
...if so their plaints ought to make a beautiful elegy...
...Walking up Broadway I noted the influx of backpacks and earnest Hobbit-like faces...
...Over the weekend Abbie Hoffman remarked that it was hard to figure the "Freeze" crowd...
...But was it that way...
...H'ray for Orson...
...Both the affluent and the blue-collar were crucial to the Reagan coalition...
...On the other hand, the crowd felt quite comfortable in hearing the President characterized as a "sick t h u g , " and in hearing Russell Means rant about "multinationals in collusion with the U.S...
...Or in listening to Charlotte Brunch, representing the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, call for a reversal of priorities in which medals of honor ~,ould be awarded for man loving man...
...Not that the purchase of the expensive china was an event of intrinsic significance...
...plainly, it wasn't...
...Take all the new china and throw it out a second-story window of the White House," he blurted...
...It was only during Linda Ronstadt's "Heat Wave" when girls began bumping and grinding atop their boyfriends' shoulders that I remembered what rock 'n' roll was all about...
...Shortly after Welles's monologue I watched a staff hobbit attempt to sell a rally T-shirt to a beefy sergeant...
...Rumor had it that they intended to chain themselves to the doors of five United Nations Missions...
...Did the police really enjoy babysitting for a few hundred thousand pampered, middle-aged kids...
...Heading for the Great Lawn, I paused to chat with a pair of not-so-young blue-jeaned women tending an "Uncle Sam Wants You To Have Babies" banner...
...Go get 'era Orson...
...Don't feel lonely, don't feel maimed, Bella Abzug here's gotma keep you sane...
...Consequently, the Monday protest fizzled into a mere "textbook" exercise...
...According to its organizers, the antinuclear rally had no ideological purpose other than" to support the United Nations Session on Disarmament and to call for a freeze on the reduction of all nuclear weapons and a transfer of military budgets to human needs...
...Everyone, that is, except the Symbionese Liberation Army and a contingent from J onestown...
...on the sunny side of the security b l a n k e t . . . " Whatever Welles was driving at, the real security blanket that weekend was the New York City Police Department...
...Given a shot at a free ride and two souvenir citations, most demonstrators I observed rolled belly-up...
...Arriving home I learned that we would be hosting a group of West Virginia communards who were tired of sleeping in a van in Greenwich Village...
...In order that the marchers not skin their knees or in any way hurt themselves, Mayor Koch had don a t e d - a t taxpayer expense--five thousand cops and all the conservative amenities that keep transcendental rock rallies from turning ugly and sad...
...In the mainstream press, every editor would call for Bill Moyersstyle "people" stories o f the lovefest between marchers and cops...
...There was just enough of it to hold the Muppets' attention through the political harangues, and yet not so much as to rev up their engines and destroy the mood of high unction...
...As Daniel Berrigan said, "It was like granola and yogurt--easy...
...The demonstrators would crawl politely through the barricades and wait for the police to ask them just as politely whether they preferred to walk to the bus or perhaps be carried on a stretcher...
...The china points to the dark side of Reaganism in the same way Jimmy Cart e r ' s blue jeans suggested his inadequacies in the White House...
...I am ready to believe that these young radicals are geniuses and birds of paradise, as they evidently feel themselves to be...
...Watch the balloons go, bye bye 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 bombs, buy a Heineken's, chugalug chugaiom...
...See Pete Seeger, see the sky, hear our children's children cry...
...Mission, I almost felt sorry for them...
...He can't, in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 17...
...Fellow Children," he boomed, groping for the appropriate reinforcer...
...they've always been Republicans...
...The oratory was what one would expect of a "gentle, angry p e o p l e . . , singing for our lives...
...Throw out every last piece of it and call in the press to watch the whole show...
...he asked...
...the NYPD had been briefed and had hustled up the barricades the night before...
...S a t ~ d a y , JDe 12th...
...Inquiring after their babies' health, I learned that neither of them had any, and wouldn't, either, until the world got its "head" better together...
...By 5:30 my notebook was filled with all the buzzwords and abusive baby talk it could handle...
...George Santayana F r i d a y , Juae l l t h . Like most workaday New Yorkers I had paid little attention to the plans to turn Central Park into a peacen i k day-care center...
...It was unorthodox but sound advice...
...Or put another way, the china became a metaphor for what has gone wrong with the Reagan Administration, depriving the President of the populist appeal that animated his 1980 campaign and was the foundation of the extraordinary coalition which thrust him into office...
...It created a flap of several days' duration, reinforcing the notion that the President's wife, Nancy, has rich and snobbish tastes and forcing Reagan to spring to her defense at a nationally televised press conference...
...Male authority figures had their uses...
...The well-to-do aren't leaving...
Vol. 15 • September 1982 • No. 9
