Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Diplomatic Note (Unclassified) Volupt dithyramb from the desert louse: Now as we are on the eve of the year 1983, of the Christian era, without a Christ to reprimand those who...
...He's a person we should all be able to admire in today's world...
...How much does it need to abandon dancing halls, bars and immoral acts on every new year's eve...
...At this time we "ordinary" middle-class Americans are beginning to feel the consequences of who we are...
...We're going to have to bite the bullet of truth...
...therefore, it is moving rapidly toward the destruction of itself and most other life forms on earth...
...With all its creative brilliance, it is deeply hateful of life and committed to death...
...He has challenged the assumptions of the Democrats and the welfare state, which was useful, but he has imposed his own ideology of his old age, which has not been very successful...
...We have to face our own individual, and collective, responsibility for what is happening—our greed, brutality, indifference, militarism, racism, sexism, blindness—then arise from the shock of recognition to create something better...
...But that was the repressive fifties when even the most daring of us hid behind our towels, and others were so insecure about adolescent changes (or the lack of them) that they went through group showers with their underwear on, or wore gym suits under their clothes so they never undressed at all...
...And truly, it deserves to die...
...February 20, 1983] Ms...
...How much the world needs Christ once again today...
...But those of us who love life must work for this result by some means other than nuclear, bacteriological or chemical holocaust, and for the creation of a more viable way...
...district court in Michigan...
...For me, high school gym class came the closest...
...Make it clear that these losses would take place at the eruption of a nuclear war...
...but we are not yet looking straight into the mirror...
...Benjamin T. Hopkins, an avid Mother Jones reader and certainly a promising candidate for the very next opening on the New York Times editorial board: I am a male WASP who attended and succeeded at Choate (preparatory) School, Yale College, Yale Law School and Princeton Graduate School...
...And the way to do that is to remind his master of how good life can be...
...he couldn't be anything else...
...I just knew he had to be real...
...Do we really want to go on with these old men—the Reagans, the Tip O'Neills, the Cranstons—and the old conflicts between the parties, the regions, the races, management and labor—or do we want to look to younger men who see the possibilities of a different world in terms of cooperation rather than confrontation...
...We must understand that we are very far from the teachings of Christ and very close to the teachings of Satan...
...Thanks to a few days at an old-fashioned spa in the company of 90 or so other women, all trying to get a little healthier, I discovered a simple, visceral consciousness-raising that ought to be combined with the more verbal kind...
...Gloria Steinem, the Irving Kristol of feminism, asks another characteristically arcane question that only our Taki could answer promptly: How long has it been since you spent a few days in the intimate company of women...
...The booklet's aim is to alert dogs—and through them, their owners—not to let the world come to that...
...January 10, 1983] The Baltimore Sunday Sun From historic Baltimore, yet one more scientific manual from the disciples of Chicken Little: Nuclear war...
...Nonetheless, sports for women, still "unfeminine," were anti-intellectual besides...
...Mike Curb, finance chairman of the Republican National Committee: This morning, when I looked over our 1983 Membership list and saw you'd sent our Committee a generous contribution of $2.00, I couldn't help thinking, "where would we be without you...
...We're so fortunate to have him as a neighbor...
...Once again, let me thank you, on behalf of the National Committee, President Reagan, and all our Republican officeholders and candidates, for your generosity...
...they'll also fall on dogs (and cats and giraffes and alligators and cockroaches and cockatoos...
...dressing and undressing, talking, showering, resting—the kind of casual togetherness that seems more common to locker rooms for men...
...Colonel Moammer Al Gadhafi A Diplomatic note for President Ronald Reagan from the Permanent Mission of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jama-hiriya (sic) to the United Nations...
...April 1982] U.S...
...Like many basic experiences of which women are deprived, it is both strengthening (because it brings self-acceptance) and angering (why didn't I know this before...
...March 10,1983] Mother Jones A comprehensive analysis of the mess we are in from Mr...
...Rogers' Neighborhood" when I have the chance...
...Benjamin T. Hopkins Chestertown, Maryland [December 1982...
...News & World Report The illustrious U.S...
...Slowly but surely, however, my lifelong habit of looking, listening, feeling and thinking as honestly as possible has led me to see that white, male-dominated, western European culture is the most destructive phenomenon in the known history of our planet...
...Rogers Is What He Is" (Calendar, Dec...
...Meanwhile, everything we have put into motion continues to endanger us more each day...
...I am convinced that with your continued support of our Party and our programs, we will be able to win a stunning victory in the 1984 campaign...
...December 23, 1982] The International Herald Tribune Another victim of American idealism, Senator Mark Andrews, pumps bilge for all the world to see: People abroad "are much more impressed by the fact that Americans can produce enough food to feed ourselves" with a considerable amount left over "than by the fact that we've got a man on the moon or that we can blow the world up 10 times over with atomic weapons," he said...
...Eager to sensitize the public to the terrors of nuclear war, Jerry Kurtz and Pat Gilliam, a local husband-wife team, have just written and published an illustrated booklet (only 20 pages) called "Nuclear War Manual for Dogs...
...Now we can worry about it with our . dogs...
...For us older kids he gives us a chance to keep in touch with who we really are...
...The court also says that inmates have no constitutional right of privacy that prohibits their being viewed by correctional officers of the opposite sex...
...It chides the state prisons department for "stereotypical sexual characterization" in concluding that it is more odious for a woman than a man to view male inmates in the nude or performing toilet functions...
...In order to go to the places of worship to pray to ask forgiveness and to reflect upon the divine law at least during this particular night...
...These powers are led by Satan indeed, their book is not the holy book but the theory of Malthus...
...district court of the Wolverine State vouchsafes glad tidings for Peeping Toms and naturalists willing to labor in the Republic's pens: Prisons may not exclude women from employment in jobs involving contact with male inmates, rules a U.S...
...I do know that the conceit of man and his straying from the right path today is stronger than my outcry...
...You have been such a special friend to our Party...
...By the time we got to college, I suppose we must have been more grown-up and open...
...So I found myself recently, belatedly, having a basic, human, comforting experience that should happen to us all much earlier...
...Yes, if and when the bombs fall, they won't fall just on humans...
...CURRENT WISDOM Diplomatic Note (Unclassified) Volupt dithyramb from the desert louse: Now as we are on the eve of the year 1983, of the Christian era, without a Christ to reprimand those who have forgotten God, those who are conceited, those who are transgressors of the divine law...
...Curtis A. Page Sepulveda [December 26, 1982] Republican National Committee The stupendous munificence of Paul Vivian, philanthropist and political activist, is again solemnized in a heartfelt letter from Mr...
...Get your human sensitive to the loss of movies, sex, chocolate-chocolate-chip ice cream, retirement for parents and the privileges of adulthood for kids, TV, profits, etc...
...He is a master at being human, a teacher of plain, simple, honest truth, and most of all he gives you the chance to be you...
...The great and rich powers spend fortunes for manufacturing nuclear weapons, for developing intercontinental missiles and outer space programs and for propaganda and psychological warfare at a time when all the peoples of the earth are suffering the serious consequences of disease, starvation, malnutrition and the exorbitantly soaring prices...
...Reagan has performed a valiant service to the country...
...On this occasion, I am offering the world these words only, but the holy book at its beginning says "At the Beginning the word was...
...Therefore we have but to reproach one another for our sins and to reprimand ourselves for such a transgression...
...March—write your politician— organize—bark—sing—mix it up—get in there...
...We are badly in need to reiterate the teachings of Christ where we shall find him saying hands off Palestine—the grace be upon him—and hands off all oppressed, colonized or persecuted peoples...
...January 26, 1983] The New York Times The ancient James Reston rumbles for youth and against aged pols, a nostrum apparently inapplicable to senescent pundits: The problem in the next few years is to concentrate on the young men who are coming rather than the old men who are going...
...That gave us two good reasons to avoid most of the situations in which casual nudity among women was acceptable, and thus to go right on concealing the imperfect bodies on which we secretly thought our worth depended...
...Gradually, there was less embarrassment about appendectomy scars, stretch marks, cesarean incisions, and the like...
...The end of the world...
...We've experienced it with the lone survivor in "On the Beach...
...January 3, 1983] The Los Angeles Times A modern Liberal speaks his mind, goddammit: GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY My heart was really tickled by Lee Margulies' article, "Mr...
...I am a 24-year-old kid, and I watch "Mr...
...Man's best friend is urged to stop scratching his fleas, give up his total trust in human omniscience and get his master off his butt in some action to prevent war...
...we've contemplated it with Jonathan Schell in "The Fate of the Earth," and we've agonized over it with the Physicians for Social Responsibility...
...And I'm a better person for the rest of the day...
Vol. 16 • May 1983 • No. 5
