Capitol Ideas / Feeding Off Capitalism
Bethell, Tom
rolled back into his head so that only the whites showed. The indignity committed against Lieutenant Lange was less spectacular. Blood-spattered and near death, he was shown in a frontal...
...Not running, not jogging, but walking is your most efficient form of exercise and the only one you can safely follow all the years of your life...
...There may bc some from which I might greatly benefit and would otherwise miss...
...Richard B. Shekelle, Ph.D...
...Hans Selye, M.D., Ph.D., D.Se., F.R.S: (C): "IT'S NOT THE AMOUNT OF STRESS YOU HAVE, IT'S HOW YOU RESPOND TO IT . . . Adaptability is probably the most distinctive characteristic of life_9 Joseph T. Coyle, M.D...
...Blood-spattered and near death, he was shown in a frontal photograph...
...I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it...
...In fact, they are crass to the point of being primitive...
...The irony, o f course, is that CCNV thinks it is repairing some o f the damage done by the capitalist system, when only capitalism could possibly produce the food surplus that makes CCNV's free soup kitchen a possibility (in conjunction with its free and often idealistic labor...
...If an American pilot were pulled from a downed airplane with his pants blown off and his genitals showing would they dutifully display that unedifying image on page one...
...I told the authorities I was "media," wondering if they would ask to see my I.D...
...Many are very docile poseurs, easily manipulated by the enemies of freedom...
...Meese points out," he told me...
...and Conrad Proctor, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.S.: ON A DIET TO TREAT MENIERE'S...
...New insights into what is NOT a natural accompaniment of a g i n g . . , the causes of mental impairment . . . and ALL that now can be done to combat it...
...I noticed the women in the line were respectable-looking-good shoes, purses, and overcoats, for example--but the men clearly were winos...
...May we suggest that you get the benefits of this new research for yourself...
...Was he beaten...
...We were surrounded by government offices, their bright lights gleaming out at us in the cold dusk...
...Only International Money Order or check on U.S...
...HOw major advances both in pinpointing causes - - and treating them - - now can benefit close to 90% of the affected...
...She took her D.C...
...Nor need we swallow the flumdiddle about the camera presenting the reality of war...
...ON SENILITY _ 9 ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE...
...Obviously there are large numbers of Americans who would like to know a lot more about an AP photographer whose repute is so high in Syrian eyes that he is trusted to go about taking pictures behind their lines...
...Individual reports (baCk issues) $3.00 per copy...
...They marched in, showed I.D.'s, and emerged with a pack of cheese apiece...
...How about showing him as his brains are being blown out...
...I was told this church has a she-minister, is in a black part of Washington (on the fringe of the ghetto), and has lots of white-liberal volunteer activity...
...The New York Times kept things more in proportion...
...A predictable sequence of "indignat i o n " stories came out in the Washington Post...
...In truth, however, Mitch Snyder and his co-workers are ameliorating some o f the terrible damage done by the welfare system itself...
...We know, of course, that a Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for Literature as well...
...Imagine an American journalist duly querying "the people" on what precisely they would like to know...
...Some amazing facts about your body you need to know if you want to understand yourself (and other people) better_9 Robert J. Krane, M.D.: ON THE BRIGHT NEW OUTLOOK FOR IMPOTENCE...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 9...
...One had her pocketbook out...
...He told me that he had been in the service but had stayed o f f unemployment--a point o f pride_9 I asked him if he was eligible for Food Stamps, but he said it " t o o k too long_9 One way and another there were too many hassles, he implied...
...Bruce Proctor, M.D., F.A.C.S...
...When the colleagues tell us that they are giving us the news the truth is that they are giving us what strikes them as newsworthy--according to their tastes...
...Subscribe to Executive Health Report...
...The husband may make $65 a week," he said...
...He added that in many of the cases he sees, "the male 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 ego is not just submerged, it is destroyed...
...Well, because they want to get food...
...This turned out to be what the White House had dubbed "Care and Share Day," I read in the paper...
...a wholesomelooking fellow in jogging attire displayed him like a trophy from the hunt...
...There was a time when out of respect for the dead we pulled a covering over the corpse...
...Apparently there is an AP paparazzo who knows...
...As for Ed Meese, he was right when he said that men go to soup kitchens because the food is free, but that is only the most obvious part o f the story...
...Funds) a year in the U.S.A...
...Two more women came to the door and I asked them what they had to do to get cheese (by now the honey had run out...
...What people aside from friends and admirers of the Syrian dictatorship want to see American servicemen humiliated...
...more like four minutes than four hours...
...Please use the coupon below under our special money-back guarantee...
...What are their standards...
...I went inside the door to observe the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 7 distribution, but I was firmly ordered to the back of the line by an efficientlooking woman...
...fifteen of them, to be precise...
...President Franklin Roosevelt was always photographed from the waist up...
...and its possessions, Canada and Mexico...
...Then a wild wino male came stumbling into the church and was sent away by the volunteer food distributors, who were sitting behind tables with clipboards...
...If you sit at a desk all day . . . How to avoid a POT-BELLY and DOUBLECHIN or get rid of them for good...
...She was kind to the men, who were allowed to go through the line as many times as they wanted...
...Another woman actually drove up in a taxi while I was there, but I suppose the driver might have been her husband: She sat next to him...
...My first stop was St...
...Of course these are mere bromides, bespeaking no journalistic standards whatsoever...
...All other countries $36 (air mail only...
...It presents just as much as the cameraman either wants or is allowed to show...
...AND THE CHOLINERGIC LINK...
...I can believe him...
...But then, many of our journalists are.not intrepid at all...
...The welfare regs demand a fixed address before Food Stamps can be issued, she said, and almost all these men were "homeless...
...Subscribe now under this unusual introductory offer: ( 1 ) Your choice of any three of the reports listed below ($3.00 each) FREE ! ( 2 ) If you are not satisfied with your first issue, your money will be promptly refunded...
...I felt like George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London...
...My sense is that for the richest nation in the world to make people stand in line is downright sinful...
...A sign on the door said: "Eligibility criteria: Food Stamp recipients, Medicare recipients, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Public Assistance recipients, Social Security recipients, Exhausted Benefits persons, the unemployed...
...But his statement is tremendously ridiculous, when you consider that people have to stand in line for four hours...
...Note their high qualifications...
...Other groups would view events quite differently...
...The evidence now is yes-even starting in middle age...
...For some reason, however, the Washington Post and other media seemed to be having a hard time actually producing a hungry person...
...perform a useful function...
...checks, no bossy women to cope with, no forms to fill out, no questions asked at all...
...think that they have money...
...You think others are going hungry voluntarily...
...Roger J. Williams, Ph.D., D.Se.: ON YOUR STARTLING BIOCHEMICAL INDIVIDUALITY...
...Firm/Name (Please print clearly) Street & No./Route Suite or Apt.__ City, State, Country Z i p _ SPEC the Community for Creative NonViolence whose leading light, Mitch Snyder (forever sleeping on grates and hunger-striking against the names o f submarines) told me that afternoon that "enough food is produced and discarded each day to feed 50 million additional people in America...
...Linus Paullng, Ph.D.: ON VITAMIN C and infectious diseases...
...No American who saw last month's picture would not want to know about that...
...Relieving the incapacitating inner ear disorder . . . with its prostrating vertigo, nausea, ear ringing, and hearing loss...
...Thus, the Administration once again demonstrated its (close your eyes and guess the next word) insensitivity to the poor...
...So you are either together and starving or on welfare and separated...
...The members of our Editorial Advisory Board are among the world's most distinguished authorities on preventive medicine, Their wise advice can help you not only live longer but enjoy those extra years...
...9 The TRUTH about the RIGHT DIET and EXERCISE to lose weight safely and stay slender for life...
...All the food was donated...
...Was he just called in once the Syrians had prepared a proper spectacle...
...updated) Lot B. Page, M.D.: ON MAKING SENSE OF SALT AND YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE...
...Much of illness . . . and even many biologic changes thought due to aging . . . may really be due to simple disuse_9 Herbert A. deVries, Ph.D.: ON EXERCISE FOR RELIEVING ANXIETY AND TENSION...
...Where do the colleagues draw the line...
...The equally important attraction is that there are no hassles, no I.D...
...It is free, as Mr...
...Now many top research scientists are concentrating their efforts on preventive medicine _9 . . how to keep well people well...
...When I went out there was a brokendown fellow sitting in a chair beside a pay phone...
...So on Day Eight I omitted to shave, donned my scarf and rumpled raincoat, and set out to explore for myself...
...Nevertheless, let the record show that December's cause-of-the-month began when a wire service reporter engaged presidential counselor Edwin Meese III in the following colloquy: "Why do people go to soup kitchens on holidays...
...Let the colleagues infiltrate their fearless foreign correspondents across occupied Lebanon to uncover the cause of our flyer's befuddled state...
...They never do...
...An authoritative report on how much salt may matter to you if excessive . . . and how much good moderation can do...
...Also there were wrapped bologna sandwiches, some crumbled but perfectly edible dessert, and finally someone stuck an orange in your pocket...
...The system undermines every effort to maintain a family intact," Dennis admitted...
...It would be the most thoroughly documented death since John Kennedy's...
...Oh, you mean that they can afford it and then they still g o . . . " Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...What emerges from these polls is a bovine herd of 1972 McGovernites who have never smartened up...
...As Joe Sobran recently wrote: " I f one person in America had starved over the last 20 years, you, reader, would know his name...
...They seemed to be more interested in snagging Meese in another "gaffe," photographing him sitting down at a well-set table, and so on...
...A line of people, all black, were waiting at the church door...
...The stew was fine, especially if you were hungry, which I was...
...This turned out to be a free distribution of U.S...
...The colleagues are serenely isolated from the people, a point political scientists Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter have demonstrated by carefully polling them in their media sanctum sanctorums...
...Some did so ten times, she said...
...and C. C. Tangney, Ph.D.: ON DIETARY VITAMIN A . . . Beta-Carotene . . . and Lung Cancer Prevention, An authoritative report on our deadliest malignancy . . . the possible anti-lung cancer effect of some foods . . . and what, wisely, to put on your plate...
...He was trembling all over...
...The media would see to that...
...Once again the Administration was making the mistake of playing the game of Policy according to the rules established by its adversaries...
...We returned to his office and I asked him about George Gilder's key idea about welfare: It is not that the regulations force the man to leave the home before wife and children can receive welfare, thus breaking up families (which in any event is no longer true: the regs have been changed), but that a great many men can't really function at all if they don't have a provider role to play in life...
...There were no women in l i n e - - presumably they were dining on cheese The men didn't talk to one another and honey in their Section 8, and that was a relief_9 The wait was government-provided apartments...
...His breath turned to steam...
...On Day One Washington Post reporter David Hoffman claimed, not believably, that Meese had "created a major political controversy" ("Meese Sparks a Firestorm"), and by Day Two the Post had two reporters on the case, Margaret Engel and Edward Sargent ("Meese's Hunger Remarks Stir More Outrage Among Groups...
...They do not recognize freedom's enemies nor freedom's friends, for their sense of reality was formed by the ideological (continued on page 44) The media Hive shifts the focus of its attack on the Reagan Administration so rapidly and so unpredictably that by the time you read this it may be as passe as "Debategate...
...By the end of the week the Washington Post seemed to be maintaining its indignation level fairly well, but there was an obvious reluctance On the part of reporters to set out for the soup kitchens...
...But he contrived to blame "the system" rather than the welfare system...
...Apparently he had no I.D...
...Or does he...
...As Rothman and Lichter have shown, the colleagues' tastes are exceptional as an archbishop's tastes are exceptional...
...You can't support a family on that...
...They said he had been through the line once already...
...Please study the reports listed here and circle your three choices: Walter M. Bortz II, M.D.: ON DISEASE . . . AGING . . . AND DISUSE...
...Authoritative new insights into how physical activity - - surprisingly modest activity - - can be at least as effective as tranquilizers and far safer...
...As long as it got your pitcher on it," she said, pulling at her coat and edging away from me slightly...
...Now I do not want to distress the colleagues who react to criticism as a schoolmarm reacts to mice in her desk drawer, but the journalists who featured these pictures in their newspapers have no taste and for that matter no sense...
...Linus Pauling, Ph.D.: ON GOOD NUTRITION FOR THE GOOD LIFE . . . in which the two-time Nobel Laureate informs you of his personal approach _9 . . and his own intake of many vitamins . . . and why - - for your own possible guidance - - that intake differs so markedly from conventional recommendations...
...EXECUTIVE HEALTH, Piekfair Bldg., Box 589, Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067 Gentlemen: Enclosed is my check for $_____ for a year's subscription to Executive Health to start with this month's issue_9 I have circled the three $3.00 reports I am to receive free...
...But that people are not being cared for, or that people are going hungry involuntarily, that's why the President has appointed this task force on food assistance to find out if that is true and if so why...
...That was by bruvva, my bruvva was the one had the green hat on, Robin...
...Insights from a burgeoning new medical field_9 Roy L. Walford, M.D.: ON RETAI~DING AGING BY NUTRITION...
...The people's right to know, indeed...
...A few volunteers were carving up bell peppers, onions, carrots, and a sizable rack of lamb...
...I'm Robert, sound the same . . . . " It was getting cold...
...She told me that she had worked at a university library, but enjoyed this much more, although she received no salary...
...Were FDR presiding over our government from his wheelchair today doubtless the paparazzi.would be shooting all manner of daring and tasteless shots of his crippled condition and rationalizing such crassness with incantations about the people's right to know, verisimilitude, and other self-serving arcana...
...In practice, to get a five-pound block of cheese (the church had received 600 such blocks that morning) all you had to do was produce an I.D...
...She believed that their problem was that there weren't enough jobs to go around...
...I was bustled downstairs to an office, where I met a rotund, 33-year-old man named Dennis Bethea, formerly with the Peace Corps, now director of the Samaritan Ministry, "a volunteerbased social service program," he said...
...It smelled so good that Dennis joked about having a barbecue sometime...
...It is understood that if I am not satisfied with my first issue, my money will be refunded_9 In addition, send me a list of some 100 other reports of yours still in print...
...Do as so many thousands of executives do...
...Did he take pictures of how Lieutenant Goodman was rendered comatose...
...At the bottom of the economic ladder, the cash value of the total array of government services is more than an unskilled laborer can earn...
...Against the wall o f the building were a hundred broken bottles...
...Executive Health Report is not sold on newsstands but only by private subscription at $30 (U.S...
...On Day Three, I went to the Safeway to see if they carried any books (they do have a sizable book section) on how to fatten up on the least amount of money, but all I could find were dieting books...
...That is payment enough...
...bank acceptable...
...Department of Agriculture food--five-pound packs of cheese and containers of honey...
...and Myrln Borysenko, Ph.D.: ON PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY: HOW THE MIND INFLUENCES HEALTH AND DISEASE . . . AND HOW TO MAKE THE INFLUENCE BENEFICIAL...
...The truth is they have no standards...
...Well, I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily...
...Wendy, who was running the kitchen, seemed to know many o f the men, who came back every day, she said...
...You could see the bureaucrats languidly closing their filing cabinets and getting ready to go home...
...Are they doing well by you . . . can they do more for you...
...Medical men have long concentrated upon sick people and how to get them well _9 . . not upon well people and how to keep them well...
...At least I would find it an important news story...
...New research findings ON WALKING _9 . . nature's own amazing "anti-age antibiotic...
...I went downtown to the soup kitchen and stood in line outside with the other men...
...You d o n ' t even have to say thank you...
...So were the others, evidently--about 150 men and maybe four women...
...So the state's overgenerous provision demoralizes these men by undermining their provider role, rendering them incapable of holding down jobs and turning them eventually into winos who shout at cars...
...Two quite well-dressed women were driven to the church by a third in a Chrysler Cordoba...
...You picked up a plate and plastic cutlery and they heaped on the lamb stew I had seen them cooking that morning...
...This soup kitchen was run by Have you ever asked yourself, "What keeps well people well...
...driver's license from its plastic container, alongside several other neatly housed, orderly plastic cards...
...Joan Borysenku, Ph.D...
...But they didn't...
...ON THE B VITAMINS...
...Next to me was a black male, good-looking and still no grey in his beard, who was wearing for bravado one o f those baseball-style Navy caps with scrambled egg on the peak...
...He took me into a kitchen where a stew was being prepared for that evening's soup line, to be served downtown...
...Can it be done...
...But that turned out to be beyond the abilities of several of the dilapidated men in the line...
...My impression is that the private sector welfare operations run by the Community for Creative Non-Violence (they neither receive nor seek any government or foundation money, pay no taxes, and shun all government forms), and by other such private organizations, indeed do...
...I think we have a system in this country that virtually everyone is taken care of by one program or another, that is who is truly in need, and a lot of people on the margin...
...You can just arrive, eat the food, and then go out into the night...
...Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church on 16th Street...
...He went outside again and started to shout at passing cars: "Didn't get nothin man, said I went in before...
...There were Ed Meese-Washington Post clips on a bulletin board...
Vol. 17 • February 1984 • No. 2
