The Dartmouth Review and the Campus Right
Lindberg, Tod
most powerful ministry. He once again became Greek. (Before his father's election, Andreas had served as economics adviser but had retained his American dt~enship i n o r d e r not t o p a y G r...
...In the October 18 issue, the Review reported that the Gay Students Alliance was "thinking about changing its name to Gays and Lesbians at Dartmouth (GLAD...
...at is to be done about him...
...Mark Twain did in Huck Finn...
...The statement said that the original piece's two authors were Jewish, and that "three of The Review's top five editors are Jewish...
...he called the Review and others, denying any c~nnection with the Alliance...
...Boys will be boys," perhaps, and there will always be sophomoric humor...
...Of course not all blacks talk like that...
...e press has lately made much of a ~ 6 new conse~ative movement" said to be 9 sweeping ~e nation's college campuses...
...Or so the media accounts have run...
...The press sees a movement, and since the press has a great deal to say about the Review, it places the Review at the head...
...But there were losses...
...Dayton's political background was as an antiwar THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1983 21...
...And with a new and perfect pioy, anti-Americanism...
...9 . . And who be mouthin' 'bout us not bein' good read...
...The jabs at the homosexual group have continued in a r e g u l a r f e a t u r e of the newspaper, collections of s h o r t pieces under the heading "The Week in Review...
...Responding to charges in the press of racism, the Review noted that the column "was exaggerated...
...You guys could suffocate...
...In ancient times, face was saved by blaming the gods, blow Uncle Sam has replaced Zeus...
...It issued a statement describing itself as " s t r o n g l y pro-Jewish and proIsraeli," noting that "we believe that Jews have c o n t r i b u t e d c o n s i d e r a b l y to the College's intellectual and cultural life...
...Well, you know, it's like, I say . . . to call a spade a spade...
...Something else happened in the election, though, and it mayhave been more important...
...The cU~ent lot began to appear in 1979, with Counterpoint at the Universi~ of Chicago and the Yale Political Monthly...
...Democrat Mark Dayton, the department store heir who narrowly failed in his bid to unseat Republican Senator David Durenberger of Minnesota, was probably the most thoroughgoing liberal seeking a seat in Congress in the 1982 election...
...This is a hard question to answer...
...You don't lose 26 seats Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore 9 in the House without it meaning something unpleasant for the party that suffers the losses...
...The question now is the pace of the buildup...
...To take the "Grin and Beirut" piece as an example, we might ask what it means to liken this sukkah to the settlements on the West Bank: does the Review suggest that Jews have no place at Dartmouth, and on the West Bank, and thus should withdraw from both...
...The political L dialogue kept its rightward tilt...
...The Review published a piece about the approaching end of the semester at Dartmouth entitled "Final solution...
...The issue in the press has not been so much the substance of the Review's positions on minorities, but rather the tone...
...What then can we say, based on these samples from the Dartmouth Review...
...The Review described the article which "uncloseted" the Alliance officer as "restrained and responsible," arguing that "we t h o u g h t [the names of the officers] were public," like the officers of other student organizations...
...some cover only caius events, some mix that with national affairs, some cover only national affairs...
...In the October 11, 1982 edition, two of the eleven items in this section concerned homosexuals...
...It has been stripped from the national agenda...
...It is true that the comparatively large number of right-of-center student publications represents a new phenomenon...
...Unfortunately, some vandals destroyed the sukkah, and some people on campus linked that to the Review's article...
...Black...
...Virtually every candidate said that military spending should be trimmed, but it was only the inflationadjusted increase in defense bucks they wanted reduced...
...It means pride, but ~e word can also be used when lying to save face...
...This comes from the combination of two things: first, its hard-line conservatism, which serves to define its opponents...
...So good in fact that his father's party split up, accusing the elder Papaadre~3u of nepotism...
...His demagogy has the people convinced that the Great Satan wil...
...It is about time that America chose whether it wants to be kicked around (loved) or respected (feared...
...One of the issues raised in the press was how the Review came by these letters and files...
...Sorry, but what's absurd is this twaddle, Two things happened in the election and one of them was, as Jerry Brown put it, "a mild rebuke" of the President and his economic program...
...The latter was a satire, a mock defense of affirmative action, written in what the Review subsequently' described as "jive," a "mock black dialect...
...about Student Magazine in Colorado, which is 9 although it allows lengthy "responsible opposing viewpoints" in its pages...
...Second, it may encourage a reasonable tone among them all, an outcome that would be desirable...
...c) Where should letters to Jimmy Hoffa be addressed...
...More specifically, the Review objects to student government funding for Dartmouth's Gay Students Alliance, and to the view of homosexuality that the Alliance puts forth...
...Here are some selections from it: 9 . . Dem white mo-fo be sayin' 'ffirmative action ain't no good fo' us, cause it be puttin' down ac-demic standards...
...Democrats were all for it, though they bickered over whether it should be implemented in one immediate swoop or gradually...
...the Review then denounced the faculty...
...Here is its reaction to an appearance at Dartmouth by Lane Kirkland, head of the AFL-CIO: All present failed to ask Kirkland the following pertinent questions: a) Do exorbitant wages in the steel, auto, and construction industries have any correlation to the equally exorbitant unemployment in those industries...
...Should it be five percent a year in real growth, or more...
...b) Does organized labor ever intend to take any positive steps to help the American economy or its union members in any long run sense...
...A buildup of Cadillacs is rumored along the outskirts of West Lebanon, N.H...
...and so on...
...One hears very little detail about the Yale Political Monthly, which is neoconservative and slightly academic...
...Because the black students' organization at Dartmouth is very much in favor of affirmative action, its members-though usually not by name---are often the targets of attacks in the Review...
...rather, its sense of humor places it on the 9f ringe, as even a cursory glance at the others will show...
...this affair prompted the faculty to denounce the Review again...
...Conservatives have won the argument on the military buildup...
...Dat is da fus 'quirement for ' s c u s s i o n on dis, and I would aks (8) da Dartmut c-munity to do da same...
...The New York Times wrongly concluded, on the basis of Democratic victories over a handful of conservative Republicans, that "liberal" is '9 longer a dirty word...
...In a subsequent issue, the Review held that "based on these serious charges of inaccuracy, The Review is compelled to produce its evidence...
...1~ he Dartmouth Review is a weeHy newspaper, in tabloid form, Which covers l~ai events--inc~ding campus sports--and national affairs...
...If none did no one would be upset...
...there is very little brouhaha to report...
...As examples of its tone we find an article--written by an editior of the Review, and satirizing its opponents--by-lined "I.B...
...One of the Review's main subjects has been, and continues to be, homosexuality, i9 which it opposes on moral grounds...
...The Review also opposes o r g a n i z e d labor, primarily on economic grounds...
...but the Review goes much too far, much too often...
...Those who are sympathetic to them~ even to the fringes~would do well to make this point clear, in the first place, the awareness of real diversity may spread to the press more generally...
...In addition, faculty members, either individually or as a group, seem to spend a great deal of time denouncing the Review, and in the most extreme of terms...
...Before his father's election, Andreas had served as economics adviser but had retained his American dt~enship i n o r d e r not t o p a y G r e e k t a x e s. ) A s a minister Andreas had good ideas...
...Whereas once the Right had been the "establishment" m the academy, now the men and women of the Left have come into positions of authority, and thus have become the objects of disaffection...
...The footnote read: "(8) aksmask...
...a column h e a d l i n e d "Black is boring...
...But because many of them have ~ received funding from the same sourc~~e .Institute for Educational Affairs in New York-large disregarded the distinguishing features of each in of the notion of a unified, even well-artic~ated, movement...
...The Review denied any connection and deplored the incident...
...At least one of the officers the Review named had not previously been "out of the closet...
...Yet the press often makes passing mention of them in connection with its reports on the Dartmouth Review...
...But ff the object of the intellect is to mislead and conquer, then Papandreou . . . . be viewed as a danger to all freedom-loving Greeks...
...His gimmick was made easier by something Greeks call filotimo...
...9 . . I not be settin' out to be brutally 'tackin nobody . . . . I'll be honest9 I will tell da truf...
...The small-is-beautiful and no-growth crowds were not heard from---at allz And remember the big issue among Democrats in 1980...
...The item immediately following this report ran as follows, under the headline "In the can": Memo: to GLAD From: The Dartmouth Review Wasn't the closet more comfortable than the trash bag...
...9L "eople say some pretty 9a mazing things about political campaigns...
...The Alliance a, d others alleged that the Review had stole the documents, but they were unable l~ substantiate the charge...
...and second, a certain juvenile sense of humor--in the tradition of Animal House, which was reportedly based on a Dartmouth College fraternity...
...In fact, there seems to be a tendency toward this sort of thing at Dartmouth...
...A spokesman for the Dartmouth Hillel has flatly refused to remove the ceremonial shack without guarantees from President McLaughlin for increased aid for the Judaic Studies Department, and a new Jewish dormitory on the banks of the Connecticut River...
...Some do...
...And we have the following item, under the headline "Bombing out": In light of recent Dartmouth Football disasters, we advise the Ariel Sharon game plan: Lots of bombs9 The Review recently gathered some more national at~emion a f t e r publishing the following short piece...
...It claims a very wide readership at Da~mouth College, and a substantial number of alumni subscribers 1500 or I70,3 of the la~er, depending on where One l~ks in the November 1, 1982 edition, its conce~s are almost exclusively political...
...some are ne...
...Sure, it could have been a lot worse for Reagan and the Republicans...
...If, as Wiifrid Sheed claims, the object ~ ~e mteliect is truth, then Papandreou must be judged as being on an intellectual level with, say, Bokassa, formerly of the Cen~ai A~can Empire...
...Despite the fact that he attacks nepotism yet is a product of that system, that he uses patronage as much as any politician in the past, that he plays his favorites unashamedly, and...
...And then there is Israel, and t h e Jews...
...From these two we can tell what kinds of jokes to expect, and who the butts will be...
...It was nationalhealth insurance...
...some treat of literary and cultural matters, some do not...
...We should wish to be both, but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must ch~se be~een them, it is far safer to be feared than to be loved...
...In addition, the Review has received a great deal of press attention for its treatment of racial matters...
...The diversity among them is in many ways more important than the similarity, and they themselves do not think they are parts of a unified whole...
...Grasping for straws, Mark Tapscott of Conservative Digest said it was " t h e ' t h i r d best performance" by a President's party during a recessiondominated election since the Civil War, On the left, Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway of the Village Voice agreed that Reagan held his own, saying "it seems absurd for Democrats to derive great encouragement from the elections...
...J t Q Q 41 Q 411 ql Q ill 411 o o Q ii ill Fred Barnes THE PARADOX OF CAMPAIGN '82 The Republicans lost but"'liber~" ~ . a dirty word...
...After their collapse Andreas returned ~umphant...
...I can only point out to the wise men in Washington what Old Nick wrote in The Prince in 1532: "From ~is arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved...
...Candidates everywhere, Democrats and Republicans, insisted that they were fiscal conservatives...
...about the Harvard Salient, which is conservative without being altogether hard-line...
...This is because they are by and large reasonable...
...For perhaps above all, the Review 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1983 means to be funny...
...There is also the example of the Dartmouth administrator who attacked and bit a student, after his victim ignored his command to stop distributing copies of the 9 Review...
...and so on...
...it rarely touches upon literature, for example, or the popular culture, and when it d~s, it tends to judge according to political criteria...
...The answer is that "liberal" is still a dirty word...
...E AME~CAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1983 or impulse ought to be resisted...
...But if it's acceptable again, how come so few candidates, even the most liberal of Democrats, were willing to identify themselves as liberals...
...Richard S. Williamson, one of Reagan's ablest aides, told Republican governors that the midterm election had been "a wash...
...and most famous of all, a column headlined "Dis sho' ain't no jive, bro...
...We have the Animal House example, of course...
...The pnncipal evidence of this has been the profusion, in the last few years, of student journals of "'conservative" opinion...
...The Review is not essentially racist, or antiSemitic, or what-have-you, as many of its critics have charged...
...No, surely notmor so the response would ben it is only a joke...
...Moreover, "The precedent for using racial dialect is sound...
...President Reagan showed up in the Rose Garden the day after Republicans dropped 26 House seats and seven governorships to announce that he was all smiles about that outcome...
...My guess is that he will never accept an electoral defeat, and that the hard-core Marxists behind him will eventually try to establish a one-party system...
...1980 brought a handful more, including the best known among them, the Dartmouth Review, which began to publish that June...
...It is against affirmative action, when this means quotas or any kind of preferential treatment, and it opposes Black Studies programs on campus...
...But it is, alas, consistently tasteless...
...It gained national attention in May 1981 when it published an article that named the officers of the Alliance (along with excerpts from some personal letters addressed to the Alliance, although no names were attached to these...
...whether or not these constitute a movement is a different ma~er...
...Papandreou has blamed all of Greece's self-induced d~sters on America, and the Greeks love it...
...This it proceeded to do, reproducing in its pages photographs of documents that bore the student's name in connection with Alliance activities...
...D 0~eoeooo~oa~oegoooooooOoeoooooo Tod Lindberg T DAR TMO UTH S W AND T A young neo~nse~ative journalist r~ses ~me obje~ions...
...Yet the tendency to think of these journals as manifestations of a single enti~ Tod Lindberg, assistant editor of The Public interest, was co-founder of Counterpoint...
...There is in snd becau~ ~iificaliy they areall at least fact substantial diversi~: some are maga- broadly of the Right, the media, including zines, some newspapers...
...and so on...
...that he uses the divisive and intemperate slogans of a reckless extremist, his star is not about to wane...
...Entitled "Grin and Beirut," it appeared under a picture of a sukkah, a ceremonial hut, which some Jewish students at Dartmouth had erected to commemorate a religious holiday: The Zionists have gone too far with the erection of a ceremonial "sukkah" settlement on the W~st Bank of College Hall...
...And to judge by the articles that have appeared in .Newsweek, Time, the New Republic, the Nation, National Review, the New Fork Times, and others (tO say no~ing of television and radio~, the leader of this "move&ent,', or at least its most i~o~ant voice, is the Dartmouth Review...
...It can be argued (erroneously, I think) that Reaga n made the best out of a bad economic situation, that he was able to cut his losses...
...Without either, the Review would not be what it is...
...It is our policy to substantiate all challenged facts reported in our stories...
...Nor is the Review representative of them...
...I be practicly knowin' Roots cova to cova, til' my mind be boogying to da wordsl An' I be watchin' the Jeffersons on TV til I be blue in da face...
...In any case someone obviously took the papers without the Alliance's permission...
...both left and right wings, have by and conservative, some Old Right, some Moral 9 Majodtarian/New Right, some libertarian...
...a piece on Dartmouth's Asian-American Society headlined "Chinks to chains...
...The Colonels ~me soon after...
...But the Review is not the leader among these publications, because few of them are much inclined to follow it...
...The press has long been inclined, quite correctly, to notice and comment upon sensational outbreaks of bad taste on campus: thus the Review's national reputation...
...The number continues to grow, and it seems there are now dozens...
...All were horrified at the budget deficits and in favor of spending Cuts...
...It is exactly its flamboyant tone that distinguishes it from the other conservative campus journals (although now it does have one or two imitators, notably the California Review at the University of California, San Diego...
...No one, including liberal Democrats, was opposed to economic growth...
...Ring Lardner did in Damon Runyon [sic...
...Whereas once the Left had owned the alternative press, now the Right has increasingly been asse~ing itself...
...Sources close to the Review say that the documents, still presumably in the Review's possession, made mention of about thirty other homosexual Dartmouth students, whose names the Review did not publish...
...This year, there was no mention of national health insurance...
...But there is a result here in addition to an intention, and the result in this case is at least of dubious taste...
...But even if there is such a tradition, the Review is no less responsible for what it prints...
...the following week, three of eighteen...
...To understand why- this should be so, one need only look to the pages of the Review itself...
...T~ yellowest press in Europe agrees...
...in fact there is no movement, and so no leader...
...finally be put in his place by An~eas...
Vol. 16 • January 1983 • No. 1
