Correspondence
on a hot dock. The paralyzing wistfulness seized me. What's going on here? I thought I had left such scenes behind years ago. I mentioned lighting. In truth, there is hardly a saloon in the...
...Today, thanks to Smith, the Department of Justice is attacking crime in a significantly more concerted manner than at any time in recent years...
...As he does with smith, so Bethell does with Reynolds: He fails to ask what the man has actually done...
...The Day After' could not have been done three years ago," he concedes...
...And like Bethell, I believe there is, as he calls it, an ideological "war in progress...
...His wife, Diane, injects, "The point is that the other side was being presented out of proportion alr e a d y . . , with police shows and so o n . . . I mean it's been very well documented0including by the Presidential Commission--that women were considered second-class citizens on t e l e v i s i o n . . . These insidious attitudes were beit/g very well represented on television and that's what we were bringing our children up o n . . . we wanted to present the other side...
...Like Tom Bethell, I am a ionservative and a contributor to this magazine...
...The Department is aggressively committed to the principle of nondiscrimination...
...Moreover, Bethell fails to observe that in objecting to the demands of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission-this was the context of Bennett's attack on reverse dis= crimination--Bennett was doing as Justice months earlier had done...
...But if Mr...
...I also believe that judging success in this war requires taking a look at what our side is actually doing...
...During the past three years, the Department of Justice has opposed racial employment quotas in Boston, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, and now Birmingham...
...Bethell criticizes the Civil Rights Division within the Department, which is headed by William Bradford Reynolds...
...There is no happiness in that "Hive...
...The resources devoted to criminal law enforcement have dramatically increased since 1981...
...The Parker House in Boston is great in the way classic, old-time hotels are great: heavy wood, polished brass, plate glass, thick oriental rugs, comfortable black leather barstools, an army of waiters and various attendants, and displays of food fit for a Cunarder...
...How many movies have you seen where you gradually build up anger at the bad guy until it's okay to just absolutely massacre, push him o f f a building, send him through a glass window, impale him on s o m e t h i n g . . . We've all been nurtured and grown up on that way of solving problems...
...there are a lot of women producers now in television where there weren't any eight years ago...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 32) intent of Congress...
...In New York City Mr...
...Nevertheless," he says, "there's a lot of interest" in the new heroism...
...This goes for places like 33 Dunster Street, off Harvard Square, which is filled with old oak, books, and anachronisms walking in from The Big Chill talking about relationships, needs, and reassurances...
...9 In faraway Antelope, Oregon the city council has renamed its dump the Adolph Hitler Landfill and Recycling Station and its fire station the Jesus Fire Hall, in an effort to recognize people who have had "a profound impact on mankind...
...Rakesh Shama, will perform yoga while strapped to scientific instruments that measure weightlessness...
...More indicative of its character, however, was a little exchange I happened to witness one fall afternoon...
...Fleishman is emphatic about the point of his work: "My job is not to put messages into entertainment, it's not to insinuate certain political points of view or certain positions--because it kills the show, it ruins the show," he says...
...It won't persuade you...
...herit...
...What beyond that...
...It has opposed a racial set-aside program in Dude County, Florida...
...William French Smith: An Exchange Tom Bethell has written a column that raises the question of whether liberal journalists aren't the only ones who favor fancy to fact...
...But strangely enough, Bethell apparently thinks that under Smith there were "no actual policy goals to aim for--government programs to be developed, changed, or abolished...
...Smith can amend the Exclusionary Rule, so that society at large is no longer punished for the failure of the police to observe correct procedural etiquette, then I for one will cheer him...
...Too much total inflexibility and reliance on force rather than being smart and empathic and understanding of the other pers o n . . , finding something entertaining and brilliant to move people along with," he says...
...It goes for such an esteemed spot as the Golden Dome, a cozy place near the state house filled with pols and journalists and damned few delinquents, and for Clarke's, a place where the preps line up to get in...
...BetheU applauds the appointment of such academics to government positions as Donald Devine to the Office of Personnel Management and William Bennett to the National Endowment for the Humanities...
...That's it...
...People don't think, people go on in their ruts and t h e y ' r e a f r a i d . . . " " I t was phenomenal," Fleishman told another interviewer recently...
...And it was done with comedy...
...gone are the economic theories of the populist Left t h a t focused on the wrong questions...
...In fairness to Mr...
...He seems not to realize that the meaning of "civil rights" has been changed from specified limitations of government power to a rationale for expanding such power, and his acceptance of the need f ~ such "remedies" tacitly legitimizes this change of meaning...
...In truth, there is hardly a saloon in the entire state that knows it is meant to be dark...
...You know, Gloria had forgotten to take her birth control pill and he got mad and she turned around and got mad at him...
...It won't work anymore," he concludes...
...John Neumann, a "brilliant" Harvard undergraduate who had discovered "inner beauty and peace" through the spiritual manuals of a California cult, apparently could stand it no longer ar/d leaped from the Manhattan Criminal Courts building to his death, despite having been an avid jogger...
...In a sentence...
...The networks have to get a sense of when people are ready...
...Harry W. Ryder, the noted physician and authority on the physiology of running, died of the usual heart attack at THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 47...
...There are lots of good things on television now...
...His next efforts in this regard include meetings on ,"children's reactions to the nuclear threat and what is courage," to be hosted by Alex Karras and Susan Clark o f TV's "Webster...
...It cannot solve problems...
...Okay, is it that the Ru~s - sians are terrible, is it that we need a strong defense...
...But where else do we get people to think...
...Jerry Lee Lewis suffered uncontrollable vibrations and was rushed once again to a Memphis hospital...
...Bethell, however, refuses to do this, preferring instead to judge Smith by his perception of Smith as " t h e country club lawyer who earns a ton of money, spends an inexplicable amount of time on the golf courses of Palm Springs, and thinks of Washington as a place where you have an opportunity to drive about in a chauffeur-driven limousine if you have the right White House connections...
...There are a thousand ways to do that," he adds...
...Too much do what I say or I'll kill you...
...Here we were reaching millions...
...On the television we had been watching a movie featuring a pioneer woman leading her children through the wilderness, losing her husband to a cholera epidemic, shooting a grizzly bear, fighting off a pack of ravenous wolves with nothing but an oar, hacking apart a bullmoose with an axe--things like that, all within about a half hour...
...In particular, the Department has sought to discourage expansive readings of the Constitution and federal laws that do violence to the intentions of their authors, and ultimately the will of the American people...
...We did a show on 'All in the Family' where Michael got a vasectomy right on the show and I couldn't believe it...
...A jug-eared old woolhat sitting at the end of the bar asks the bartender, "This might not be that On Golden Pond, would i t ? " The bartender finishes swabbing out a glass, pulls thoughtfully on his cigarette, and replies, "Don't know...
...And what Sagan said in our meeting is that if we destroy them, even in the first strike, that the amount of debris that will go into the air from just a first strike, if we destroy the irredeemably evil Russians there's enough debris to bring on a nuclear winter that will send the earth below freezing for three or four months and kill everything on earth...
...There's lots of movies-of-the-week that have dealt with this issue...
...William French Smith surely deserves to be judged according to what he has done while serving as Attorney General...
...Eastland allows the Justice Department to take credit for the Supreme Court decision in the Grove City and Hillsdale College case...
...And plainly there is more to Smith than money...
...And the Department has taken positions in the federal courts in favor of principles that limit the reach of the judiciary...
...It may be the only way to learn what Coleridge meant by dignity: the absence of ludicrous and debasing associations...
...Bethell correctly notes that Bennett, a.friend of mine, made a "principled attack" on "reverse discrimination...
...But don't let that stop you...
...A civil right !s now a government right to treat Americans as defendants-guilty (e.g...
...It will simply raise your awareness about an issue," he adds...
...We've had a million wars based on that old kind of masculinity and approach to things, which is you kill your opponent, you beat t h e m . . , and we've been nurtured on 80 years of movies and television where it's the John Wayne mentality or Starsky and Hutch or you name it...
...Good mahogany bar, brass rail, apparently the first General Electric air conditioner ever installed in a bar in America, and pornographic tiles in the bathroom...
...RET _9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . THE CONTINUING CRISIS (continued from page 6) that Wang Laboratories Inc...
...Too much macho...
...The Department has recommended for the bench individuals who believe that the courts should read and apply the law, not make it...
...It is hard to imagine how such a Smith as Bethell creates could have been able to achieve the conservative legacy that his successor will in...
...and another meeting hosted by actress Susan Sarandon, also on the subject of the nuclear threat...
...I have been in this town long enough to see that the administration does not always inform and cultivate conservative writers to the degree it should...
...I don't like to drink in a place I can read a book," a friend once said...
...Why not round up the Schedule A lawyers hired by Jimmy Carter, show them the door, and replace them with Republicans...
...Go to the drinking in Massachusetts...
...And I'll tell you something else...
...Smith's deputy, Ed Schmults, and by Ed Meese...
...But plenty of good things have...
...Smith, I gather that he withdrew himself from the decision to continue prosecuting this case because of his connection with the University 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 of California...
...The Justice Department's jurisdiction in the criminal area is slight, as it is in the appointment of federal judges...
...But nonacademics can also help carry the fight...
...There's something wrong," I said to native guide Reed...
...Feminist and liberal disappointment cannot disguise the fact that the verdict in the Hillsdale/Grove City case was a victory for those seeking expanded federal control over our lives...
...You'd go directly against your opponent, you'd challenge on your horse or even in the field with your rifle against somebody else's...
...The goal of antitrust policy in Washington today is not to prop up failing businesses or to attack all others as too big, but to ensure competition and efficiency, and lower prices for everyone...
...As our opponents continue to hammer away at us, it would help if conservatives would take the time to look up from their typewriters and see what the Department has done under Smith, and then join the battle o f ideas where it counts...
...F o r any who wonder how balanced his influence is, Fleishman retorts: " I only have one point and that is that the world will not benefit from nuclear war...
...Indeed, the Department unambiguously opposes busing and racial quotas...
...On the celebrity front, Miss Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the man himself, changed roles when opponents of her famous ancestor rebelled at her portrayal of a victim of his regime in the movie The Assisi Underground...
...Furthermore, the Department of Justice has successfully appealed to the Supreme Court in opposition to the tendency of the federal bureaucracy to expand the civil rights laws beyond the (continued on page 46) 32 THE AMERlCAN SPECTATOR MAY 1984 and as a result met Norman Lear, and later persuaded him to do a show about it...
...In antitrust, the Department now employs sound economic analysis to determine whether a company's actions work to the benefit of consumers...
...In Grove City College v. Bell, a cause c~13bre for feminists, liberals, and the New York Times, the Supreme Court adopted the Department's position that Title IX obligates only the specific program or activity in which federal funding is received, not the entire institution...
...the kind of place with ice in the urinal...
...What's the good side of nuclear war...
...Smith is wealthy, but the rest of the description is a mean piece of fiction...
...All t h i s . . , l i g h t . . . I feel like a mole...
...It's in Brighton, and its only name is BAR, although now I seem to recall a shamrock _9 painted over the door...
...There is more to this conservative legacy, much more...
...Such unspectacular dumps, of course, 'are relatively unknown in the great state...
...Bennett freely points out that he got the idea for opposing the EEOC from Justice, and Justice is pleased to have this most able ally--alas, our only one in the federal government so far...
...I came out of that movie and I thought, 'Gee, that's gonna reduce the nuclear threat a little bit,' which is kind of silIy in a way b u t . . , a great work of art can make you cry and think and re-evaluate your l i f e . . . " he says...
...It was hilarious and loving and wonderful and, my goodness, it just dealt with it...
...It blew my mind," he said...
...Smith has done little or nothing with his Schedule A hiring capacity (this refers to experts, not subject to Civil Service regulations...
...Yet not everything is dismal...
...We will not escape that...
...On antitrust, William French Smith should have communicated his admirable sentiments to the relevant assistant attorney general, J. Paul McGrath, whose initial ban of the LTV-Republic Steel merger discouraged afiother such merger, between U.S...
...so has organized crime, both in its traditional and newer forms, and particularly as both are engaged in drug trafficking...
...Eastland accepts the premise that "remedies" are needed for what he calls "segregation" and "discrimination" in the realm of "civil rights...
...Maybe a few cockroaches will survive...
...He will be on an eightday mission with two Soviet cosmonauts, both, doubtless, heavily armed...
...70, and in Rome Mr...
...Might be...
...He might instead have wondered why the Reagan Justice Department continued to hound these innocent establishments, against which there has not even been a claim of discrimination...
...I t ' s happening," he says...
...Or are Republicans too timid to consider such a thing...
...But why not try it anyway...
...Courage, he notes, "is admitting you have fearmlet's admit we're afraid of the Soviet Union, for i n s t a n c e . . . War used to be courage...
...Smithwick and the Hive" (TAS, March 1984) is Bethell's reckless attack on Ronald Reagan, William French Smith, and the Department of Justice...
...We have something that for a million years we never had...
...Indeed, they have loomed large enough for the Department--and Smith0to attract repeated attacks from the liberal establishmentmfor example, see, almost every other day, the editorial page of the New York Times...
...He cites examples of what he means: "Did you see Terms o f Endearment...
...Violent crime has been a constant target...
...Those were indeed excellent choices...
...I f you deal with something in artistic, universal terms, something brilliant, it will make you think...
...Shows that deal with 'what is courage, what is~ toughness,' are dealing with conflict resolution...
...At the other end of the scale, but no less impressive, is a place it will take a bit of doing to find...
...Also thanks to Smith, the Department of Justice has encouraged debate on one of the most important issues of our timeIthe role of the courts in a democratic republic...
...Finally, I notice that Eastland says nothing about my original complaint that Mr...
...It was just beautiful, it was just wonderful and it got people thinking about that subject...
...Here was an actual saloon concentrating on the essentials...
...And it is this legacyIthis product of the Smith years at the Departmerit of Justice--that must be weighed in any reasonable evaluation...
...Yet throughout Massachusetts the saloons are dreadfully, cheerfully as bright as Mom's kitchen...
...You can do it with facing up to emotions...
...When I saw it, all I could think of was all those nights I had driven miles to talk to maybe 40 Kiwanians about overpopulation...
...Reading Bethell, a conservative might conclude that no good thing couJd be coming out of Civil Rights...
...It seems to me to typify the Republican-in-Washington attitude to be pleasantly surprised at losing less than one might...
...Yet since Smith took office the Justice Department's conservative policies and successes in such areas as crime, antitrust, and civil rights have hardly been hidden under any rocks...
...In the spirit of full disclosure, I have worked for more than a year as a special assistant to William French Smith...
...This is likely to increase the pressure for protectionism, against which the Reagan Administration has shown itself to be a frail reed...
...That's what television can do...
...It can get people to think...
...Also thanks to Smith, the Department of Justice has initiated important policy changes in a number of areas, including antitrust and civil rights...
...Smith has...
...But the idea of our son getting drafted and pressing a button and setting cities on fire and having people looking for morphine at the end of the world--your search for water and morphinemwhat courage is there in that...
...I know there would be a squawk from the Washington Post...
...The place is expensive, but it is also conducive, even soothing...
...Here were men unconcerned with the subtle ironies and recondite meanings, with William James, with the status details of the right shirt...
...Such primitive conditions typify the rookie nature of the drinking in Massachusetts...
...The Supreme Court decision upheld the presumption of guilt, even if it did limit its ruling to the specific program at issue...
...Tom Bethell replies: I would like to believe that everything is wonderful at Justice, but I still have reservations...
...But Bethell fails to point out that Justice, under Smith, made such an attack as early as May 1981...
...It can be no coincidence that the reported rate of crime has declined over the past three years...
...Great movie...
...Luigi Barzini died at 75...
...Norman Fleishman asks, "What's the conservative point of view on the risk of nuclear war...
...That's not really a point of view-that's just an i t e m . . . "Now, if the conservative point-ofview is that the Russians are irredeemably evil, which is sort of what Reagan said in that one speech and it hasn't changed, then there's no answer but to destroy them...
...In civil rights, the Department consistently seeks remedies othei" than busing for school segregation and remedies other than racial quotas for employment discrimination...
...What about you, what about your responsibility?' she said...
...What's the 'other' point of view...
...Getting the networks to go for shows that embody Fleishman's points-of-view is by no means a cinch...
...In fact, the best saloons are as dark as theaters...
...Here were men who knew what they were about, dispensing and downing the exalted product of brewery and distillery...
...Steel and National...
...And two Czechoslovakians have come down with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome_9 eFinally late in the month word came from Moscow that the first Indian in space, Mr...
...or the Eire PU b , a Boston workingman's bar President Reagan once stopped in for a beer--a fact proudly attested to by numerous photographs of the event and a bronze plaque...
...is suing WASH-FM for $10 million because the station used the computer company's name "in a degrading manner," broadcasting a bogus commercial for the company that identified "the word 'Wang' with the male sexual organ...
...of "discrimination") until we prove ourselves innocent by signing compliance documents which subject us to further regulation and scrutiny...
...But they were presumed guilty because they had refused to sign forms assuring that they were not so discriminating...
...It has refused to endorse compulsory busing and successfully encouraged the adoption of magnet schools and other remedies for school segregation...
...There has been no demonstration, or even allegation, that these colleges had discriminated in the administration of federal aid to students...
...This decision was apparently made by Mr...
...We have a way to reach the whole human race and until a few years ago the only people we could reach were people within yelling d i s t a n c e . . . " Enthusiastically he continues, "There were 350 million people at the same instant watching the academy awards on TV and they heard the fellow who wrote Gandhi say we've got to find a way to end violence and solve problems in the nuclear race...
...That Silver Springs, Maryland restaurant ordered by the local tyrants of the Montgomery County Human Relations Commission to end its diabolical "Ladies Night" is offering discounts to patrons of either sex who arrive properly attired on "Skirt and Gown Night...
...Terry Eastland Special Assistant to the Attorney General Washington, D.C...
...How do you get across to people this whole question of the power of resolving conflicts, the enthusiasm to resolve conflicts, the kind of heroism that's based on saving humanity rather than the old kind of heroism of destroying i t . . . there's too much macho...
...whether they'll become Communistic or capitalistic we don't know at this point...
Vol. 17 • May 1984 • No. 5
