Current Wisdom

...19:21), but we're not at all sure what it means...

...Cordially, Erwin Knoll Editor, The Progressive The Detroit Free Press High quality historiography on George Washington's j u n t a from the enlightened mayor o f Detroit, Coleman Young: Asked about the U.S...

...anff "Everywhere Music Goes," Station Manager Marvin Granggr has signaled what is likely to be the end of public access as a major programming policy at WDET...

...Young said...

...When my exchange copy of The American Spectator arrives, I turn first to the department headed "Current Wisdom...

...One scholar has suggested that I write a sequel to A Thousand Days and title it A Thousand Nights...

...That didn't happen," he said...

...Mark Gerzon, "president o f Mediators Productions, Inc., which specializes in films about critical social issues...

...But many months have gone by without a single mention of our magazine...

...It titillates us to know that Jefferson, F.D.R., Eisenhower, Johnson, and Martin Luther King had (or may have had) mistresses...

...Martha Griffiths, Lieutenant Governor o f Michigan, reveals the depths o f our national moral breakdown: LANSING--Lt...

...All Together Now," a feminist program...

...Bufiuel said he had come to believe that the most crucial issue facing mankind was survival . . . . [He] drank a liter of alcohol each day...

...Where did we go wrong...

...October 19-25, 1983] The Ann Arbor News The Hon...

...But if someone /s reading the Progressive but finds it unworthy of inclusion in "Current Wisdom," we obviously need to undertake a drastic editorial overhaul...

...You know back in 1776, we had a revolution...

...I acquired the habit years ago, when you took pains to include each month at least one--and often two or three--items culled from the Progressive...

...November 1, 1983] The Catholic Worker Another New Age theological effort to prove that Yahweh was not as smart as had heretofore been rumored: One text we hear all too often is "a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (Ex...

...In a prepared statement, the coalition accused station management of incompetence and charged the university and WDET with maintaining "a long-standing policy" of institutional racial and sexuai discrimination, while threatening a class-action suit over community control of the station's license (which is held by the Board of Governors of WSU...

...CONCORD, Mass.--"Dad, what's the biggest kind of bomb?," my 9-year-old son asked me...

...Do you suppose Goebbels ever ran such an operation...

...McGovern's image as a maladroit politician who voices eccentric ideas is so indelible that his candidacy seems to invite new derision--and, perhaps, more personal pain for a good and gallant man...

...In other words, the Klan and the censor in "Porky's I I " are comic-book villains...

...July 31, 1983] The Chicago Tribune A local Matthew Arnold lands a critical blow to the solar plexis o f a celebrated new film: The second half of "Porky's II" involves the boys combating a Moral Majority-type who wants to stop the school's production of selected scenes from Shakespeare and blunting an attack on one of their Seminole Indian friends, who has been beaten by local members of the Klan...

...Young, who met former Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop during the slain leader's spring visit to Detroit, compared the situation on the small Caribbean island to events after the American Revolutionary War...

...And I wondered: At what age should parents expose children to the realities of nuclear war...

...Do let me know, please...

...If no one at The American Spectator has the time or incfination to look at it, I will understand, of course...

...Why not show us a Klan lynching or a book burning or books being taken out of the school library...

...George Washington headed up a j u n t a . . . "There were some in those days, who said they didn't like the way we were running the country, who thought they should have come over here and taken this government over and overthrown George Washington and put the king back in power," Young said...

...Another Voice," agay program...

...To some modest extent, we were even able to raise funds on the strength of your eagerness to reprint from the Progressive...

...Yet, for some reason, we regularly cite the passage, almost at random, to shore up one side or the other--either as proof positive that killers must be killed, or as a primitive idea whose time has passed...

...November 10, 1983] The MetroTimes High culture suffers a tragic blow in g r e a t e r D e t r o i t as r e p o r t e d in " D e t r o i t ' s Weekly Publication o f News and the A r t s " : Public radio in Detroit ain't what it used t~ be...

...How much more provocative the film would be if it took both its sex comedy and its villains seriously...

...With characteristic wit and ambiguity, he enjoyed assuring interviewers, "Thank God I'm an atheist...

...But now we find ourselves going into another country becau~ we don't like its government...

...But a morning's conversation with him at his makeshift campaign headquarters on Connecticut Avenue convinced me that McGovern has his head on straight, and that his presence as the seventh Democratic candidate will be a genuine tonic for that party's uninspiring contest...

...The question divides neighbors, teachers, even couples...

...But, no, that would be too controversial for pablum, such as "Porky's II," in which everything--the good and the evil--has a goofy smile on its face...

...Although stunned by the abrupt manner of the cancellation of their programs, volunteer producers of those shows and their supporters moved quickly to form the Committee for Accountability in Public Radio (CAPR) and call a press conference at Wayne State University...

...invasion of Grenada last week, Young said, " I think we need to think very seriously about whether or not any country or group of countries can go into a sovereign country and overthrow its government because its neighbors don't like that government...

...November 20, 1983] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1984 51...

...November 21, 1983] RoBing Stone David Stockman's good f r i e n d , William Greider, calmly assays a soufflY's attempt to rise twice: Like other old friends and admirers of George McGovern's, I winced reflexively when the big loser of 1972 announced that he would once again be a candidate for president...

...After nearly a lifetime of regarding the class struggle as society's primary problem, Mr...

...This obsession has bred the National Enquirer school of biographers, which includes people like Garry Wills and Ralph Martin, who collect unsubstantiated and unattributed rumors, treat them as if they were indisputable facts, and use them as the basis for a highly speculative character analysis...

...Martha Griffiths has charged abortion opponents with "really supporting incest" even as scores of advocates of abortion alternatives gathered for an international convention...

...As one who worked at the White House throughout the Kennedy years, I can testify that, if anything untoward happened at all, it did not interfere with Kennedy's conduct of the Presidency...

...t'Sound Projections," a music and commentary program of black music and the arts...

...After my wife and I screened the film, for example, she concluded that our son should be forbidden to watch it, as should all children under the age of 12...

...we only see the Indian boy lying on the ground having been beaten, not the attack itself...

...Tonight, with the broadcast of "The Day After," parents will have to decide whether their children should be encouraged, allowed or forbidden to watch the suffering and destruction that the film depicts...

...June 27, 1983] The New York Times On the esteemed New York Times oped page, more self-dramatization from an intellectualoid o f the New Age, namely Mr...

...The New Republic Unassailable testimony o f a reassuring nature from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the portly paladin who stood by the k e y h o l e : Then there is the question of [John F.] Kennedy's pri~ate life...

...It is interesting to hear how Pinchas Lapide, who lives within Mosaic Law, interprets the commandment: "But the original Hebrew expressly says, 'Give an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' The command is clearly addressed to the injuring party who must accomplish reparation in the form of compensation by replacing that which was damaged...

...We live in an age obsessed with sex...

...Right-wing nuts and Klansmen are serious threats to the personal freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution, but I wonder if the boys' attack in "Porky's I I " really is a strong pro-civil liberties statement...

...Actually we don't even see that...

...The censoring minister and Klansmen in "Porky's I I " are all played for broad comic effect...

...Our circulation people tell me they are still sending you the magazine...

...With the recent cancellation of six additional community-access programs-"Indian to Indian...

...21:24 and Deut...

...October 21, 1983] October 21, 1983 The American Spectator P.O...

...In fact, it applies only to two cases, neither of which is murder or any other capital offense...

...Box 1969 Bloomington, IN 47402 Dear Emmett Tyrrell: Please tell me how we have failed you...

...The worst thing we see anyone of these bad guys do is give a black eye to an Indian...

...Every claim by anyone to have slept with John Kennedy is taken as gospel, though if half the claims were true he would have had time for little else...

...It was a comforting monthly affirmation of our effectiveness...

...I concluded that he is old enough to watch it, if be wants to and if we watch and discuss it with him...

...Seminar in Black...

...Sometimes, when a disgruntled subscriber accused us of moving too close to the muddled mainstream of American media, I would cite our prominent presence in "Current Wisdom" as evidence that we had kept the faith...

...I have had occasion before to comment on a certain lack of breadth in your reading...

...August 1983] The New York Times Sepulchral reflections on the longawaited passing o f an obvious fraud from the venerated Times o f New York: [The film director Luis Bufiuel] said he sought to challenge conventional attitudes about society, undermine bourgeois optimism and force audiences to doubt the tenets of the established order...

...Our disagreement typifies the complexity of caring in a nuclear age...

...Needless to say, I am crestfallen...

...I was right about the press reaction-leading cold-war journals like the Washington Post couldn't wait to sneer anew...

...Often I was able to note that no other publication was quoted as frequently as ours...