Current Wisdom

...let us raise a new cry...

...And I weep for the hungry children who will not learn and who will remain savage, and if taught, taught only further savagery by a plutocracy of Neanderthals...

...I weep for the weak and sensitive who have no place in this brutal scheme obscenely hatched by crude Sunbelt millionaires, hillbilly preachers, Old South senators, all of them determined to snuff out the democracy they have always despised deep in their polyester souls...

...Following are excerpts from some of Hsieh's answers: He took only three showers during the whole 12 months...

...The vision of unspoiled paradise is gone to ashes...

...Thus, the American troops picked it up during their incursions into Vietnamese culture and brought it back stateside...

...Let us look, not at the Soviet Union, but at Skid Row...

...The explanation goes as follows: A few years after the war in Vietnam was called off, the disease began rearing its blistered head with more than the usual frequency on the home front...

...In psychological terms, the appealing connection between rockets and men's own bodies is obvious...

...Let us look at what we must do...

...The answer, we did...

...Then ask which country deploys its arms and its soldiers in 2,000 bases around the world...

...December 2, 1982] Rolling Stone The trouble with the guys as seen by the gals and reported by Mr...

...November 10, 1982] Unitarian Universalist World (Supplement) A stupefying ratiocination culled from a sermon by Dr...

...women, whose bound feet are being nailed to a pedestal of gilt far removed from masculine sight...

...And today we must name them...

...CURRENT WISDOM Village Voice An artsy-craftsy achievement of the first water as reported in the culture pages of the incomparable Village Voice: Having just spent an amazingly tenacious full year living continuously outdoors in New York City, Chinese artist Tehching Hsieh finally strolled in from the streets...

...The tribunal, which will be held in New York City on Nov...

...Now the plague has come as cynics foretold...

...Let us say that we are coming, that change is coming...

...Any money needed was gotten from subletting his loft plus a little help from parents...

...The only time he broke his vow was when police arrested him for assault and put him in jail for 15 hours last May...

...I shall have a sleeping bag...

...Who built the first hydrogen bomb...

...Like Communism, herpes is spread through association...

...August 19, 1982] The News-Times The thought of Walter Cronkite, fashioned into exquisite prose by Mr...

...13 and 14, will document incidents of black oppression and seek at least $400 billion in reparations from the United States government and major financial institutions, according to Salankey...

...It was one of many statements that rang with the authenticity of honest passion...

...For stepping aside from the swirl, for choosing a course that might disappoint some and for following his own principled path, Ted Kennedy has become a candidate for greatness...

...Michael Swift singing in the correspondence section of Danbury, Connecticut's famed News-Times: Now Reagan has come...

...September 29, 1982] The Boston Globe Another of the mysterious episodes of Camelot: Teddy vamooses from the 1984 race and the venerable Globe lands him in the Greatness Sweepstakes: "I'm honored to serve the people of Massachusetts...

...October 5, 1982] The Nation Miss Amy Wilentz begins another of the esoteric rambles that render the Nation such a goof-ball delight: The causes of epidemics are often hotly disputed, but there has been little disagreement about the cause of the recent outbreak of venereal herpes: sexual promiscuity...

...After a few minutes indoors the Taiwan conceptualist, who previously gained notoriety for staying in an Ilx9x8-foot cage for one year (1978-79), and before that for an event in which he punched a time clock every hour for one year (1980-81), emerged to pose again for photographers and answer additional queries...

...Asked whether he abstained from sex for a full year, Hsieh started to motion with his hands in a way that seemed to indicate a "no...

...Herpes simplex virus #2, the little devil that causes genital herpes, was rampant in Southeast Asia at the time of the war...

...They are Imperialism, and they are Capitalism...

...Certain chefs in several Chinatown restaurants understood what he was doing and served him outside their kitchen door...

...Cruel men heartlessly rule over the trembling, frightened masses...

...October 2, 1982] The Daily Californian More gloomy news served up by a prophet who has been taking it on the chops for 6000 years: "Africans in America have no choice but to ask for reparations," said Barbados revolutionary leader Piankhy Ladepoo Salankey on campus Monday...

...I weep for this country and its vanished nobility of spirit...

...Let us ask questions...

...Who built and used the first atomic weapon...

...Not everyone he encountered was friendly, which resulted in four or five fights...

...It makes the Holocaust look like child's play," he said...

...This is not a mock trial, it's very real...

...gays, soon to be extinguished in the All-American version of Old World death camps...

...Salankey said he considers the destruction of African culture to be the greatest crime in human civilization...

...Michael Swift Brookfield Center [September 18, 1982] Harvard Magazine Particles of an irenic yawp that appeared in the venerable Harvard Magazine, possibly during a printers' strike: The cry Dedicated to Jonathan Schell No pulsations of passionate rhetoric suffice in this time in this time this time we stammer in stammering dread or parched, utter silence from mouths gaping to "Aayy...

...Immediately after the tribunal, a committee will be set up to distribute any reparations, Salankey said...

...I weep for America and her people: the black, now completely without hope, suffocating in the barb-wired ghettos...

...this time when in dense fog groping groping or simply standing by mere luck balanced still on the swaying aerial catwalk of survival we've approached the last the last choice: shall we we and our kindred we and the sibling lives, animal, vegetable, we've lorded it over, the powers we've taken in thrall, waters, earths, airs, shall they shall we by our own hand undo our being, their being, erase is and was [September-October 1982...

...Severe cold affected his dreams so that on a few occasions he thought he had given up and gone inside only to wake up and find he hadn't...

...And their day is done...

...But I've heard one theory explaining its origins that seems to fit better with the spate of fearful, wild-eyed publicity the disease has been receiving, most notably in the August 2 cover story of Time magazine...

...September 15, 1982] The Christian Century The sadly unaccoladed Dr...

...Ask which country deploys most of its armedforces along its own borders, and the answer is the Soviet Union...

...Men do surfer castration anxieties...

...His well-publicized performance piece began at 2 p.m., September 26, 1981, when he vowed "I shall not go into a building, subway, train, car, airplane, ship, cave, tent...

...The signal for such a theology is Tom Driver's reflective getting in touch with his body while sitting in the bathtub...

...The answer is we do...

...Donald L. Berry, professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate University, unveils the theological desiderata for post-macho America: What we need is a proper "theology of the finite...

...A child's pure dream of America is annihilated...

...The answer must be the Soviet Union...

...This story flows right into Time's article, in which the disease becomes the latest Red scare...

...William Greider: Little boys like to play with guns and so do grown-up men...

...Then he stopped and said, "I do not wish to answer this question...

...Joseph Herzberg, a Washington psychiatrist who studies the psychology of politics, explained the Pentagon's importance to men: "Men are very anxious about their bodies and the integrity of their bodies, their body strength...

...The poor and humble are left naked in the mean streets while oily fat monsters in Palm Beach and Palm Springs salute their aging, but still virulent toy soldier with vintage wines...

...Now the plague has come to these shores...

...The first part of any ceremony of exorcism is to name the demons...

...Let us say, "Let the Russians come, let the Mexicans come, let the Salvadorans come, and let us live in peace together...

...That translates into the desire for a strong defense...

...not at El Salvador, but at County Hospital...

...the aged, left to languish in seedy, lonely city rooms away from the insulated luxury of suburbia...

...Salankey's stop in Berkeley was part of a tour to bring attention to upcoming International Tribunal on Reparations for Black People in the U.S...

...Philip Zwer-ling, sublime and preposterous at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles: Who are the demons...

...Ask who, today, feels surrounded by 365 hostile military bases along its borders...

...Only sick once (a cold between spring and summer), he was, however, very uncomfortable on particularly low sub-freezing nights...

...Let us not be distracted any more by theories of foreign devils...