The Continuing Crisis
THE CONTINUING CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . r ,7'...
...9 The FBI finally uncovered a gang of spies that can expect no sympathy from the American left...
...Joseph Mengele...
...After carefully documenting these events, Stevenson then asserts that South Africa is similar to the Soviet Union and its political system...
...We wanted an environment," pronounced a homosexual fortunate enough to serve at the school, "where gay and lesbian kids would not be subjected to immature teenagers...
...One wonders whether Mr...
...But the hypocrisy of others cannot justify conservative hypocrisy...
...But on the other hand, cutting off ties doesn't seem to be the answer, either, for Stevenson asserts that South Africa's "cures lie in greater contact with the West, especially the United States, rather than in isolation...
...On June 2 Pravda reported that there is still no sign of that twenty-eight-car freight train that disappeared on the famed Tomashgorodsky run...
...Monies have finally been voted for the Nicaraguan contras to be used for non-military purposes...
...These and many other questions need to be considered in any truly serious article on the future of South Africa...
...Unless one thinks that the role of such credulous outfits as the Nation magazine can be played by the Chamber of Commerce...
...New York City has even opened a special school for homosexual youth where the assembled geniuses can dress in drag...
...Naude wrote on the New York Times op-ed page that the country would turn to socialism...
...Stevenson's eyes, for the situation is as bleak and grim as ever (and old black men continue to doff their straw hats at passing whites and move aside to let white people pass...
...One lachrymose gay made pilgrimage to the room where he insists he tried to commit suicide...
...Then, after freeing all but forty U.S...
...Animal rights groups found themselves on the defensive when it was revealed that the destructive walking catfish of Southeast Asia is spreading throughout Florida and that the disgusting Cuban Death's Head cockroach is also proliferating...
...Doubtless in the cool of the evening down S~o Paulo way Dr...
...Stevenson pondered the frequent inter-tribal violence in the mines and what that means for the future...
...9 Under the holy writ of Allah the jackals took over a TWA flight ten minutes out of Athens and ordered its crew to fly back and forth across the Mediterranean Sea while they bravely tortured and murdered a trussed U.S...
...Both exited after breaking a "mystery" statement over the heads of the agape wimpletons in their audiences...
...Hollywood is threatening to put the pest, Miss Samantha Smith, into a TV series, "J.G...
...In walking the streets of Johan(continued on page 46) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 5...
...Joseph Shattan Washington, D.C...
...I consider TAS one of the few publications where one can turn for a conservative viewpoint on timely issues, but not so with Mr...
...Mengele~ 9 A wag in Louisville, Kentucky has successfully bamboozled the city's potentates into providing him with a "white-only job environment" by massaging their raised consciences...
...Wearing lavender bulldog pins, these were the worthies of Yale Gay and Lesbian Alumni, or simply Gala...
...9 In S~o Paulo, Brazil, an international team of investigators solved one of the enduring mysteries of World War II when they positively identified the remains of Nazi butcher Dr...
...To do otherwise could be a costly blunder, one which we would most certainly live to regret...
...9 Old Blues, returning for Yale University's annual reunion, found a new alumni group on hand, so to speak...
...What's more, foreign tourists don't often casually cross the Austro-Czech border unaccompanied and unmolested...
...In a Parade magazine interview he remained unbowed and as insensible as ever, whining in conclusion: "Can you imagine what it is like to run for the presidency, lose every state except one, and then see the landslide winner driven from office in disgrace less than two years after six out of 10 voters preferred him over you...
...The United States Senate is engaged in a burlesque with the House of Representatives over the budget...
...John A. Walker and his accomplices did it solely for the money, no vision of New Dawns or the Brotherhood of Man being necessary...
...Stevenson's article suffers from worse ailments than "halfbakedness'-it also borders on the absurd in numerous passages...
...Or his "daring" dash into the black suburb of Soweto (whose entrance he wistfully likens to the border between Vienna and Prague...
...What would be the practical result of a South African system based on oneman, one-vote...
...Nevertheless, he concludes, "I don't find looking back terribly useful"--except, of course, for fugitive recollections of a dessert left unconsumed or of a sweetie's well-turned ankle...
...Finally, Miss Jane Fonda's dog ended up in a common hoosegow, accused of being an accessory to robbery...
...Curiously, I finished his article with just such a "sense of relief...
...Stevenson declaring that "one leaves South Africa with a sense of relief...
...Mass, spontaneous masochism, I'd wager...
...Another bragged about how his Gala contingent, singing the Yale alma mater, had quickly become the largest alumni group in New York City's annual Gay Pride Parade--'People just jumped off the sidewalks and said 'Where have you been all these years?' "There are more arduous ways to become an Ivy Leaguer...
...Then comes the greatest humdinger of them all: Bishop Desmond Tutu is compared with none other than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and even Abraham Lincoln...
...Anthony Harrigan Sewanee, Tennessee Matthew Stevenson's article on South Africa in the latest issue of TAS ends with Mr...
...Stevenson intimates, perhaps he can explain why there are more than 2 million foreign blacks from neighboring southern African nations who have voluntarily entered the country to work...
...It is akin to comparing Fidel Castro to Simon Bolivar...
...Maintenance crews drifted in to take down the stage and still the insufferable gasbag wheezed on, now thanking "New York for the ultimate inspiration...
...Jeff Engilman found himself in a pickle for allegedly drawing vaginas on tackle dummies, and it did him no good to claim that the markings represented "attack points"---circuitous reasoning works only on Capitol Hill, coach...
...Or pull out and watch the fireworks...
...Would the country be transformed into a people's republic similar to Mozambique next door...
...There will be no re-enactment of the Hiss or the Rosenberg saga here...
...He is South Africa's answer to Jesse Jackson, complete with trite refrains and silly epithets...
...On the one hand, the Reagan Administration policy of "constructive engagement" has obviously been a failure in Mr...
...Continue collaborating with the horrible regime...
...Stevenson said in his article was anything new...
...citizens, the beasts secreted their remaining victims in Beirut and began complaining about Israel's breeches of international law...
...According to those who knew him, he remained confirmed in his baleful beliefs to the very end...
...Readers of The American Spectator deserve and expect the most thoughtful analysis of the South African situation, an analysis based on a deep understanding of the country's history and ethnic composition...
...at worst, he is pro-ANC and proMarxist...
...I can stand a lot of rhetoric, and even downright nonsense, but this is going too far...
...June is almost a ghost as this column of record is written and sent on to the National Archives for entombment...
...In Rome the testimony of the Pope's convicted assailant, Mr...
...James D. Van De Graaff Legislative Assistant to Congressman Philip M. Crane Washington, D.C...
...If these animals were sincere they would attack the Israeli army, and if we were a serious people we would catapult them to heaven with an American force large enough to pacify Lebanon for those Lebanese who have had enough of these cowardly hypocrites...
...Phew...
...Rather than imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions against South Africa, I believe that we should continue our present policy of "constructive engagement...
...But such a phenomenon is strangely absent in other "repressive" countries in the world...
...Oh, heavens, what to do...
...Unrepentant to the bone, he lived modestly but furtively with a few dull-witted acquaintances in Brazil until drowning in 1979...
...journalist meeting openly with Anatoly Shcharansky or Andrei Sakharov...
...Apparently we are to be stuck with the sophistries of these true believers until they expire, and many are probably better swimmers than Dr...
...Take, for example, his rather lengthy (and somewhat tedious) description of his meeting with two notorious critics of apartheid and the South African government...
...Tom Fonda, insists that the dog was merely being used by local youths on a crime spree, but it is not to be ruled out that the dog, Taxi, was merely putting into practice ideas about private property that echo and re-echo through the Fonda manse--ideas, that is, about other people's private property.--RET CORRESPONDENCE Fly In, Fly Out I am very disappointed with The American Spectator's decision to publish Matthew Stevenson's article "Old South Africa" in its June issue...
...Stevenson simply doesn't address the principal questions...
...What would happen to the large Indian minority...
...Because South Africa has become a favorite target of the Soviet Union and its allies, and because so many of its critics appear to be indifferent to human rights violations committed by Communist and Third World dictatorships, conservatives have sometimes been reluctant to denounce apartheid...
...Frank Sinatra Communist Cuba capitulated, airing "Come Fly With Me" on June 18, and God knows how many other glorious arias since...
...Prince vowed that he was departing to "climb the ladder...
...But if we never appear seriously concerned about human rights in friendly countries, our policy will seem one-sided and cynical...
...Radio Marti, a new Voice of America station, began daily broadcasts to Cuba with almost immediate benefits...
...Stevenson is even aware of the history of black violence against Indians in Natal Province...
...Culver," unless public indignation can be mobilized...
...Would the new government be able to manage the country and feed its people...
...On April 12, Mr...
...Argh...
...I hope next month I can look forward to the insightful analysis I have come to enjoy...
...Navy diver, terrorized unarmed citizens, and stole their personal belongings...
...He feared for his future but had no regrets about his past, very much like all those New Age Liberals who remain to this day unrepentant...
...And if South Africa is as remarkably similar to a Communist or fascist country as Mr...
...Morever, Mr...
...Usually their reeducation involves the use of torture and mind-altering drugs, and does not include meeting with foreign journalists to disparage the government...
...And America's journalists were there, pen and pads at the ready: "Bittersweet memories," "college years spent apart from the mainstream," "hostility and indifference," on and on the press bawled...
...It was a dormitory bathroom...
...Not only was his essay little more than a soporific travelogue, it was also a simplistic, even ritualistic wringing of the hands that has come to typify the reaction of critics of South Africa...
...But," she went on, "you'll still wonder," she added, "why I have such an effect on you...
...Stevenson's article...
...Can one really die by ambushing unarmed innocents...
...Certainly ex-senator George McGovern has no regrets...
...The South African population statistics are utterly different...
...The freight cars carried crushed rock, a Soviet delicacy relished by opsomaniacs in the nomenklatura~ On the other hand, Pravda did proudly report that the government crackdown on alcoholism was putting a large number of moonshiners out of business, including the infamous "Grandma Sonya," an elderly moonshiness whose d // product had rendered many of the Marxist-Leninists of progressive Yastrebove like unto a United States Senator at vespertime...
...Miss Madonna's was more incontinent...
...All this is not meant to imply that what Mr...
...I recognize that Mr...
...Despite First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's remonstrances against Kapitalist peccancies, corruption continues almost as a way of life in the Socialist Motherland, to say nothing of goofing off...
...Gary Pearl stress, he complained...
...Thus, constructive engagement must not be the answer...
...Would the new South Africa enjoy the state of human rights that prevails in Angola, where 30,000 Cuban troops maintain the regime, or Zimbabwe, where a North Korean-trained brigade performs the same function...
...Kennedy, speaking in the now familiar New Age Liberal's confessional mode, declares his "sincere regrets" about past "times Of indiscretion...
...At best, Tutu is hopelessly naive...
...9 Intellectual rock fans are still sweating pensively over the parting words of Miss Madonna, who ended her 28-city tour before a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden much the way rock singer Prince recently ended his...
...More astounding still, some Americans, particularly pols and journalists, took these protests seriously, speaking in awe of the louts' ardor to die a martyr's death...
...Mengele suffered such daft reminiscences, too...
...But to pick up TAS and read a piece that would seem much more at home in the Washington Post is disturbing, to say the least...
...Homosexuality is now the fons asinorum of American dogoodery...
...They have a searing quality, in the sense of Scottish righteousness, but also a twinkle of benevolence") don't help us understand the depth of problems in South Africa or the difficulty of arriving at solutions...
...Prince's brought to mind Alexander Pope in The Dunciad--'The higher you climb, the more you show your arse'--for Mr...
...Working with blacks in the sanitation department caused Mr...
...One eminento whose ribs remain amply cushioned along with knees and elbows, fingers and ears, is the Senior Senator from Massachusetts...
...But Mr...
...Stevenson never says, and probably hasn't even thought the problem through to that point...
...Matthew Stevenson's article on South Africa was informative and insightful...
...we are all used to reading this type of liberal claptrap in the myriad publications that pollute our newsstands...
...Working in close collaboration with a Philistine endocrinologist, the famed soprano has lost 75 pounds, a reduction that may not damage her tweeter but think of her woofer, to say nothing of the possibility that high notes--once so crystalline and celestial --may now be accompanied by the rattling of ribs...
...Now, perhaps I am mistaken, but I have yet to hear of a U.S...
...His inflammatory rhetoric and speeches bespeak a commitment not to peaceful, evolutionary change, but to violent, revolutionary turmoil and bloodshed...
...The tunnel of horror described by Matthew Stevenson in "Old South Africa" was so unrelentingly foreboding, especially as he describes or alludes to the nature of the Afrikaner, that I feel my experiences in the Republic some three years ago might give balance...
...9 In Van Nuys, California, high school football coach Mr...
...he was 87...
...Presumably, she was referring to money...
...As the Introduction to the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1982 put it, "Friendly governments are often susceptible to quiet diplomacy, and we therefore use it rather than public denunciations...
...THE CONTINUING CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . r ,7' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 A wet and inclement spring passes...
...and two bodies being returned to Italy from the English soccer rebellion arrived in the wrong caskets...
...And what if two years later 1972's "landslide winner" had choked to death on a fish bone...
...Miss Karen Quinlan shook this mortal coil as did Chef Boy-ar-dee...
...Mehmet Ali Agca, continued, revealing information that is bound to cause much rethinking among Christians and perhaps even Jews, for Mr...
...Increased U.S...
...The comparison with America's racial problems is too absurd to comment upon...
...and in Ladies" Home Journal Mr...
...Miss Fonda's illustrious wife, Mr...
...And suddenly all Washington is being taught a lesson in the uses of non-military materials and plain guff by a barbaric group of street punks from old Beirut...
...And just for the record, let's remember that changes are taking place in South Africa, and they will continue...
...Agca is none other than Jesus Christ...
...Has Mr...
...Twelve-year-old transvestites are often victimized by teenagers with a lot of growing up to do and very little experience with the opposite sex...
...9 The fans of Miss Beverly Sills are no longer going to be getting their money's worth...
...Those who question the authorities in the USSR are sent to the Gulag for hard labor or to special psychiatric hospitals for "reeducation...
...After 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 years of banning the songs of Mr...
...According to government investigators, Mr...
...His descriptive passages and his interview with Beyers Naude ("His eyes are what you notice first...
...It is another example of the fly-in-flyout school of reporting on a country with one of the most complex situations of any nation in the world today...
...Ha, ha, ha...
...and what enlightened American can turn a deaf ear to a fellow human being's stress...
...investment will lead to increased influence and leverage, and change can take place gradually...
...When you next see me," she began, "I will have changed," she continued, "into another life form...
...Stevenson has a nice touch as a writer, but he simply doesn't have any familiarity with the country beyond a very brief visit...
Vol. 18 • August 1985 • No. 8
