Editorials/The Formidable Miss Tutwiler/The Hart Bull
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
E D I T O R I A L S THE FORMIDABLE MISS TUTWILER L i k e millions of other Americans I do not know Margaret Tutwiler, but from last month's news reports I get the impression that she is a...
...Such is the colossal probity and persuasiveness of Miss Tutwiler that a magisterial word or two intoned by her to Congressman Albosta's panel was all that was required to reveal William J. Casey as a procurer of those stolen goods and possibly even an occasion of sin for young James A. Baker 3d...
...Hart in this interview sounds like a bright little boy full of good intentions and wonder...
...The United States, he solemnizes, must "deal country by country . . . . I don't think we ought to automatically assume that a self-determined Marxist government is something we can't stand...
...Doubtless for those Yuppies who supported him early in Campaign '84 it was a grim moment...
...In 1981 Doubleday published her book, From Housewife to Heretic, thus confirming my suspicion that "heretic" has in our time become a term of approval...
...It attested, in my opinion, to a local superfluity of tax dollars: a cluster of cumbersome concrete structures, mostly with vertically inscribed signs containing the word " r e s o u r c e s " somewhere in the title...
...Baker says he got them from Casey...
...Sonia that day was wearing a red Tshirt and sipping a soda as she admired her Jackson Pollock-like handiwork...
...Hart...
...A few months later Sonia ran for charlady, I mean chairlady, of NOW, but narrowly lost, to my disappointment Now she 'came to the podium--a slight figure wearing a cerise jacket over a mauve top, black trousers, and a button on her lapel reading, "Listen to a Woman for a Change...
...The speaker was Sonia Johnson, presidential candidate of the Citizens Party...
...She told us how "moved" she had been when Mary Daly, whom she evidently regarded as her superior, "recognized and approved of what I was doing...
...That would be the right...
...Daly's poetry not only exposed the "motives and machinations of the masters," but helped us "remember our deep ontological wildness...
...I gather that she was once a Catholic and perhaps still does consider herself to be one...
...Casey believes that all this is pishposh and malevolent...
...Thus a modicum of anti-Americanism is permissible, but we must draw the line at "totalitarian...
...Apropos of such sneaky business he noted that "After being involved in seven presidential campaigns, I know that's dynamite...
...He 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 was insistent that we end military assistance to El Salvador "immediately...
...and later that summer I spotted her on Constitution Avenue, when she and a group of like-minded heretics were squirting blood and red paint on the pillars of the National Archives Building...
...it's certainly not democratic...
...Certainly she had a mighty impact on Congressman Donald J. Albosta and his Democratic colleagues who have been working so hard to uncover the origins of those Carter briefing papers that happened into the hands of James A. Baker 3d while he prepared candidate Reagan for his 1980 debate...
...Yet allow me to reassure them...
...I have in hand a remarkable document, a page of nearly incomprehensible flummeries from the February 28, 1982 Washington Post...
...In olden times we called it double talk...
...Nonetheless Miss Tutwiler has spoken, and though she is described in the Albosta Report as a "loyal Baker aide" her words in suppori of Baker's story and in opposition to Casey's have put Casey in the soup with men such as O'Neill and Albosta, who incidentally is a member of the Sugar Beet Growers Association and a man who knows how to look beneath the surface of things...
...Extremes of the right and the left all over Latin America...
...queries the interviewer...
...Now full of years and honors he is the head of the Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Then, with Old Glory snapping in the breeze, he sounded like a Commander in Chief from pre-Yuppie America: "As President I will not hesitate to use force when vital American interests are threatened...
...From here the interview goes rapidly in the direction of baby talk...
...No, not so far as 1 know...
...There was a warm-up speaker called Mary Daly, who would be reading from her new book, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy...
...He was poetic about how all disagreements between nations can be resolved by negotiations or a check from the U.S...
...The very next sentence of his Texas A & M Manifesto was meant just for you: "But I will not hazard American lives where our purpose is unclear, our goals are unattainable, or negotiation has been left untried...
...O'Neill's Democrats, and the Hon...
...When it was first made Casey strode into the offices of the New York Times and rather breathtakingly declared that for him to have trafficked in those unsavory documents would have been "totally uncharacteristic and quite incredible...
...magazine, she became "instantly internationally famous" in 1979 when she was excommunicated from the Mormon Church for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment...
...E D I T O R I A L S THE FORMIDABLE MISS TUTWILER L i k e millions of other Americans I do not know Margaret Tutwiler, but from last month's news reports I get the impression that she is a formidable woman...
...She THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 9...
...The Carter briefing books "could have destroyed the campaign...
...Journalists should approach him circumspectly and with a talisman near their hearts...
...Soon the candidate of new ideas is discussing big ideas...
...All it contains is Baker's allegation, and all that Miss Tutwiler and a few others have done is pass on what Baker told them...
...There is the real Gary Hart...
...THE HART BULL Last April, Gary Hart, the candidate of Yuppie America, found himself at one of the most he-man universities in America, Texas A & M. There he let off a fierce blast against poor Walter Mondale, accusing him of complicity in the "weak," "inept," and "uncertain" administration of Jimmy Carter...
...When asked " t o what extent does the United States go to resist the formation of a Marxist government" particularly in the Western Hemisphere, his good intentions swell...
...Then she set off resolutely down the street with her little cluster of supportive wimmin, to continue her by Tom Bethell protest at the Department of Injustice--J...
...Hart was securely to the left of Walter Mondale on foreign policy...
...as she had written in her book...
...Casey has steadfastly denied Baker's assertion...
...Sonia Johnson you may know about...
...Learned colleagues, such as the political scientist Dr...
...Paraguay," comes the brave reply...
...Yuppies of our great Northeast, tonight you can return with a smile to your unisex gyms, your healthfood shops, your drug therapy centers...
...In fact, the poster advertising the event had Daly's name in lettering larger than Johnson's...
...asks a Post writer...
...In last month's burlesque the entire focus of media attention was on the mysterious acquisition of the papers...
...There in imperishable print your hero is ensnared sounding like a ten-year-old who either does not know the answers to the questions asked or is afraid to say...
...put it: "No one could have seemed less likely than Sonia Johnson to become a famous activist, much less a heretic...
...Miss Tutwiler was identifi6d in Congressman Albosta's two-volume report as the "credible witness" who "corroborated" White House Chief of Staff Baker's assertion that he received the Carter papers from Casey...
...Like...
...Your champion was mere'Y discharging more humbug for the credulous...
...My guess is that he does not know the answers...
...In 1982 she publicly fasted for 37 days in the corridors of the Illinois legislature, protesting the legislators' manful refusal to ratify ERA...
...Daly is called an "associate professor of theology at Boston College," and a "Revolting Hag...
...His report concludes that the "better evidence" is that Casey lied and that the Attorney General must needs appoint an independent prosecutor to get on with the political high jinks of harassing Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign director...
...Believe me, my Yuppie friends, and let no geopolitical hassling divert you from your scramble toward upward mobility and a BMW...
...He glides through controversies and scandals like a spectral figure, though one that smiles suavely...
...This is the real Gary Hart...
...I had not realized that such a place existed, although it is little more than a mile from where I live...
...highly secret but still apparently quite useful Central Intelligence Agency...
...In April's New York primary, the Hon...
...I couldn't help wondering if some of the wimmin who came striding down the aisles in bib-overalls were enrolled in the karate course advertised outside...
...On the cover of her earlier book Gyn/Ecoiogy Ms...
...The Report does not establish who in the Carter campaign stole the briefing papers...
...Here then was more of that odd empty gasconade brought into our political oratory in the midby R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Hart is bold: "Sure...
...It contains the U.S...
...Asked for an example of a totalitarian regime somewhere the Hon...
...I t ' s not a government I'd want to live under...
...Quoth the orator of the Texas A & M Manifesto: " I don't k now...
...It does not even establish precisely what these materials were...
...Well, Cuba is not totalitarian and it's not democratic...
...Casey is often the target of charges from the Hon...
...Casey, whose public career goes back many decades, was head of the Reagan campaign in 1980...
...Yet now that Miss Tutwiler has spoken the Speaker of the House is all for still more investigations, and apparently he favors Casey's retirement...
...In 1980, their candidate was Barry Commoner, who was on the ballot in 30 states and received 236,148 votes...
...but back to the Hon...
...This fellow Baker's numinous powers surpass even Miss Tutwiler's...
...Treasury...
...In the hallway outside tables were set up and women were selling feminist literature--for example, Marianne Wax's Let's Take Back Our Space: "Female" and "'Male" Body Language As a Result of Patriarchal Structures (with 2037 photographs...
...Congressman Albosta's Report proves no misconduct on the part of Casey...
...What about the left...
...At that point a team of charladies, armed with bristly brushes and Ajax, emerged from the Archives Building to clean up the mess...
...Baker admits he had them and used them, yet somehow in the media Casey appears as the villain...
...H'e did not mean it...
...All told there may have been 300 of Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...According to Ms...
...Having read my Marx and enjoyed my Yankee freedoms, I am certain that a Marxist ~overnment is quite intolerable to me...
...He was vague about where beyond our borders we might ever use force...
...O'Neill fears that with this most recent charge grave "damage" has been done to Casey's "credibility...
...Somewhere underground 1 found a luxurious auditorium...
...Edgar's old hangout...
...O'Neill doubted that Albosta's Post Office and Civil Service subcommittee had jurisdiction...
...True, last year when Congressman Albosta announced his plan to investigate how Carter debate materials reached Republican headquarters, the Hon...
...Karl O'Lessker, tell me that he knows the answers but believes it indiscreet to utter them within earshot of his natural, and quite isolationist, constituency...
...The location was the University of the District of Columbia...
...I said i'd like to kill him," she replied...
...Casey's friends in the Administration are very irate, and not only with their Democratic antagonists...
...Next he is asked if Nicaragua is totalitarian...
...And Cuba...
...us gathered in the auditorium at the appointed hour--perhaps ten men, and almost no blacks of either sex...
...And so Sonia was honored to present her t o u s . The Daly Woman had short grizzly hair and wore a horizontal striped rugger-bugger jersey...
...The Post's interviewer probes deeper: " I f Cuba is not a totalitarian government, what is...
...Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and various other malechauvinist documents...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S CITIZEN HAGS L a s t month I went down the road to hear a campaign speech--my first and I trust last this season...
...I try to keep up with Sonia's antics because they are so odd and so interesting...
...I approached cautiously and asked her: "Did you say you would like to strangle God...
...die 1970s by such masters of the art as Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown...
...Casey also signed an affidavit to this effect...
...If you saw her coming down the sidewalk at you, you might well decide to step aside...
...All that it does establish is that Baker had this stolen property, copied it, and made use of it...
...Was my "space" a tiny bit threatened...
...In Washington today James A. Baker 3d is a man clothed in magic...
...Nonetheless last month House Speaker O'Neill suggested it might be time for President Reagan to replace him...
...When asked if Cuba is more or less democratic than the USSR or if perhaps it is inaccurate even to describe the land of the KGB as totalitarian, the candidate of ideas ducks the question, says "totalitarian is probably a word that I should not have used," and maunders on about the futility of using military force to protect American interests "even in our hemisphere...
...Whatever the truth might be, the Hon...
...Casey says he did not and that not.one of his six deputies in the campaign had ever heard of them...
...1 decided against buying it...
...She is in any event one of my favorite people...
...As Ms...
...He says that "our interest lies in seeing (that) the entire region is not totalitarian or totally anti-American...
Vol. 17 • July 1984 • No. 7
