The Continuing Crisis
T H E C O N T I N U I N G C R I S I S *August swoons, September rises in its place. The faint fading of summer stirs traces of the mellowing year: the first smoky scent of autumn lifted in an...
...Tell it to People for the Venetian Way...
...What man can blame him...
...Bottini ten years ago for $8,000...
...Jonathan Moreland, attending a rock concert by the Cure in Inglewood, left no uncertainty as to his opinion of the British band's musicianship when he stabbed himself repeatedly in the chest and abdomen shortly after the concert opened...
...Bawer's review, I suggest, is very wide of the mark, and far too steeped in psychological pother...
...Easy jokes...
...The faint fading of summer stirs traces of the mellowing year: the first smoky scent of autumn lifted in an evening breeze, the unearthly hue of leaves at sunrise, and, from the West Wing of the White House, the soft trickle of the staff going tinkle into specimen jars...
...William F. Harvey Carl M Gray Professor of Law Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis, Indiana Bruce Bawer replies: Mr...
...From an eight-month-old these are strong words, but Mrs...
...Will he enroll Maureen in an all-black public school...
...Leif Nielsen, director of the zoo...
...Garry Trudeau, mastermind of the bizarre "Doonesbury" cult, will not name his new baby boy Tyler, as he had planned...
...From California comes much news of the kind that maintains that state's position at culture's cutting edge...
...It is great because it repudiates, may I say, "Washington-Cool...
...As to his writing, I question the ability of an individual who in the third column of page 19 quotes in full the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution and less than three inches away in the fourth column on page 19 misquotes it (U.S...
...As reported by Reuters, the dypsomaniacal foursome stole a gallon of what they thought was Russian liquor from an elderly woman, and although the stuff turned out to be antifreeze nobody could tell the difference...
...John Cherne, a TWA spokesman, announced that "the Pampers won't hurt anyone," although nobody noticed him volunteering to clean the place up...
...Presley's underwear from her exhibit after the dainty unmentionables drew what she considered frivolous press coverage...
...they are the enemy because, well, they are the enemy...
...From the art world comes news that a pair of aesthetes with a keen sense of irony stole Picasso's "Weeping Woman" from the Australian National Gallery and threatened to destroy it unless the government increased funding for the arts...
...Augusto Salvadori, Venice's tourism commissioner...
...Blumenthal has lately written lavishly about IPS for the Washington Post without mentioning his earlier relationship with the institution...
...Nelson's precocious action...
...Four days before his death, Mr...
...Jeurgen Hergert topped his own 90-day record for living in a glass enclosure while entertaining a high-strung group of rattlers, puff adders, cobras, and a particularly friendly black mamba...
...Tucker states that "the popular view is that the Warren Court expanded the rights of criminals...
...This refers to the attitude found in Washington characters who in ignorance and with ignoble attitudes send fine men and pilots to their death, and might remember their orders long enough to drink just a little more that evening at the cocktail party, as they ex-plain their decision and spill their food...
...contestant in Panama City's Miss Universe competition, Miss Christy Fletcher, told assembled reporters that she was living proof that "a beautiful girl can have a mind," then seriously undercut her case by adding that her ambition was someday to host a television talk show...
...Kelen Nelson, an eight-monthold gentleman residing in progressive Marin County, has sued his physician on six separate counts relating to the doctor's decision to circumcise the little litigant without so much as a patient-doctor conference...
...Constitution: no fact tried...
...In his suit, Mr...
...William Tucker: retrying cases on the facts...
...An alert TWA pilot made an emergency landing in Wichita, Kansas, when he spied two suspicious packages among his plane's cargo...
...In Iran yet another ancient craft, handed down from father to son over countless generations, was rendered obsolete by capitalism's juggernaut when an enter-prising young Edison announced his invention of an automated device that clips fingers from the hands of unlucky thieves at a pace no human disciplinarian could match...
...We have a very strong feeling it is a hair fetish," ventured Sheriffs Detective Mr...
...This is indeed false and it does need argument...
...As the fascinated scientists huddled over their microscopes, scrutinizing the highly classified presidential piddle, even Reaganites told the jokes: about federal liquidity, the President's willingness to stand up for what he believes, the irony of his attempts to stop government leaks...
...A police bomb squad carefully removed and detonated the packages as a safety precaution, only to discover that they were stuffed with soiled diapers...
...As to philosophy, I would point to page 20 of the August issue, the third column, where Mr...
...In other news from the animal kingdom, Mr...
...In Tilcson, Arizona, an unidentified man wearing only a pair of shorts and one shoe was detained by police and treated for numerous puncture wounds after he spent forty-five minutes howling at the moon and embracing several saguaro cacti, which he had apparently mistaken for a group of nuns...
...but anyone doubting that the Reagan Revolution had entered the autumn of its years needed only to hear of the ludicrous gesture for convincing...
...If Professor Harvey saw Top Gun differently, I suspect he unconsciously carried his own thirty-year-old memories of real-life stress, heroism, and moral purpose to the movie theater with him...
...As for Professor Harvey, I wish that Top Gun had some hints—just a touch—of the fine seriousness, the consciousness of a moral purpose, with which he concludes his letter...
...In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, there were signs that the teetotaling Gorbachev's anti-alcoholism campaign is gathering steam when two policemen and two factory workers took their last drink in Moscow this month...
...About two years of that and about 9,000 accident-free launches and recoveries of jet aircraft, plus the years since then, permitted me to conclude that no motion picture show has ever captured the essence of Naval flight operations aboard an aircraft carrier...
...In a desperation move, the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kansas, has called in Mr...
...It suggests that a Naval fighter pilot must have the arrogance of a William J. Brennan, and the justified confidence of a heart surgeon...
...The distinction is enormous to the knowledgeable...
...Joey Bavaresco, who several years ago constructed the world's largest pump-kin pie, wowed his constituency once again by building a 64-foot-long banana split in Oakland, California...
...Tucker chooses...
...In Louisville, Kentucky, Mr...
...As for the "sex and sack" to which Mr...
...What will the President do next...
...First, his philosophy, and second, his writing...
...His remark that the movie "sure is good at what it does" makes me suspect, how-ever, that we differ on the question of what it is that a general release Holly-wood film like Top Gun is supposed to do...
...Tucker begins with a prejudice that is carried throughout his meanderings and consequently invalidates many of the assumptions which he, like any author, requests his readership to make...
...Navy is crying all the way to the recruiting office...
...7," discovered missing from its downtown plaza in April, had most likely been mistaken for junk and hauled away by philistine construction workers...
...The party ended not long after the first jolly toast...
...As he has done in his earlier article, "Private Prosecutions," as printed in your May issue, Mr...
...As for Mr...
...Alas, it doesn't: the Russians in Top Gun are like video game opponents...
...The tone of Tucker's article then becomes something akin to "Let's get the golldang lawyers and judges outa there, and use some common sense...
...William Bowen, who is blind, pleaded innocent to drunk driving charges on the grounds that his highly intelligent dog, Bud, was in fact driving the car before the arrest...
...Upon entering Las Vegas in uniform, he was besieged by high school-age kids who had recently seen Top Gun...
...Everybody's a critic...
...Whitten and I are in accord: I agree with him that Top Gun is a successful recruiting film and he agrees with me that: it is aesthetically deficient...
...And arty San Jose, California, is still reeling from disclosures by city officials that Mr...
...Despite the sultry summer weather, chilling effects were felt everywhere: while American libertarians continued to shiver over the terrifying recommendations of the Meese commission on pornography, the jackboot fell in far-off Venice, where tourism officials sent letters to all of that city's gondoliers "requesting" that they refrain from singing "0 Sole Mio," "Marechiaro," and other tunes of the Neapolitan per-suasion...
...TUckeritis William Tucker creates two difficulties for me ["Bring Back the Jury" TAS, August 1986...
...The Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Ad-ministrations may be remembered both for utter social disintegration and lots and lots of "Washington-Cool...
...Henry Kissinger's dog...
...What evokes this onanlalia is Bethell's rare lapse into error, and a common error at that...
...By the way, that William Holden film was called The Bridges at Toko-Ri...
...It was as if he'd given up hope for a decent life...
...Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Tucker again misinterprets, misapplies, misuses, and misses the point...
...If the tremendous ability, and strain, are not shown, then they are never known except to those persons who actually do or did participate in Naval flight operations...
...A few weeks ago the son of a friend completed "Red Flag," the Air Force advanced tactical fighter training pro-gram at Nellis AFB, Nevada...
...How can I become a FIGHTER PILOT...
...Winston Churchill was not speaking of the Russians but of the Huns when on May 19, 1943, in a speech to Congress, he said, "The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet...
...Marilyn Milos, director of the Centers, was not surprised at Mr...
...In Corte Madera, the indispensable National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers reported that Mr...
...Trudeau's agents informed him that Tyler is the name of Dr...
...Alva Anding was sentenced by a jealous state judge to two years at hard labor for fibbing about the size of bass he had caught on the lake last year, and who could have predicted that Miss Judith Haimes, the psychic awarded $986,000 when a CAT scan permanently thwarted her remarkable gifts, would have the judgment over-turned by a Philadelphia judge...
...The scissor-wielding "Hair Cutter" of Nor-walk claimed his eighth victim when he slipped up behind Miss Esther Martinez at a bus stop and relieved her of her waist-length locks...
...This may seem to be an insubstantial point, but it is a point upon which hinges the ability of an author to write on the subject Mr...
...Build a tree-house for Ron Jr...
...I couldn't handle it...
...Granted that this is not Grace Kelly and William Holden in The Bridges of Toko-Ri, but that beautiful film teaches only that men will die from "Washington-Cool," as Holden died, and that their women and children alone knew what their husbands and fathers did, and how very good they were as men, pilots, and Americans...
...Will he carry his own bags when he hops off Air Force One...
...And let me assure the reader that "sex and sack" is Harvey's expression, not mine...
...In fact, its enticement to "joining up" has worked to benefit all of the services...
...The U.S...
...At the time Mr...
...Bawer seems to object, it does not detract from the principal meaning ofthe film although its "sex and sack" are not subtle...
...And what about monogrammed hankies and boxer shorts for the Brooks Brothers set...
...And in Basel, Switzer-land, a vigilant policeman was swept away by a whirlpool in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a drowning duck...
...McLean, Virginia The Navy Fights Back Regarding the review of Top Gun by Bruce Bawer ("Shooting Blanks," TAS, August 1986), the U.S...
...The artistic value of the film may be low, but it sure is good at what it does...
...This is not a reactionary initiative but a desire to reaffirm the Venetian musical tradition," said Mr...
...Navy training film, much of which is integrated into public films such as Midway...
...Alan Campbell, an elephant psychologist 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1986 by which I mean, a human psychologist who treats elephants—to have a go at Twinkles, a fickle 6500-pounder...
...The attack capped a prolonged, explicit, and obnoxious pattern of harassment by the female pachyderms—in human terms, something on the order of spending twenty minutes with Miss Eleanor Smeal...
...Not one, and this includes Task Force, with Gary Cooper, Midway, with an assortment of fine actors, and seemingly hundreds of miles of U.S...
...Certainly not Miss Haimes...
...Closer to home, re-cent scientific judgments that high temperatures reduce male fertility have caused Repro-Med Systems, Inc., of Morristown, New Jersey, to contrive an $800 "testicular hypothermia device...
...David Bottini's brilliant "Great Planes Study No...
...The pump circulates cooling fluid through the briefs," causing a contraction, so to speak, of two to six degrees in "testicular temperature...
...The problem is that most of what Tucker froths about is a distillation of a few hundred years of common sense...
...Mr.] Frederik had always been a bit frail," said Mr...
...The Editors To The Editor (Myself...
...The movie Top Gun is outstanding because it permits the non-participant to understand both the ability and the strain in carrier operations, as no other film has ever done...
...Steve Manthorne...
...Finally, the saga of Frederik the elephant came to a poignant close when he was released from his private hell and pronounced dead in the Givskud Lion Park zoo in Jutland, Den-mark...
...in the Rose Garden...
...AF CORRESPONDENCE...
...This is indeed true and does not need argument...
...For it is the urine tests—not tax reform, not summit jabber, not contra aid—that will commend August 1986 to the historians...
...Blumenthal was filing dispatches, however, the magazine was published by the Institute for Policy Studies—an interesting item, in part because Mr...
...Nelson claims for himself the "Constitutional right to his foreskin absent some unusual medical reason to remove it...
...Clarification In Penn Kemble's review last month of Sidney Blumenthal's The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, it was noted that Mr...
...Not even in his bluest funks did Jimmy ever volunteer to make water for the public's benefit—and he had to do it sitting down...
...The New York Times reported that in Lake Concordia, Louisiana, Mr...
...Robert C. Whitten, President Santa Clara Valley Council Navy League of the US...
...Fire his cabinet...
...Top Gun permits all viewers, not just the remaining women and children, to know and understand something about the abilities of the men who as Naval carrier persons fly and sail at the edge of our civilized order, and who are the distinction between the light of a free community, and the nations where it is forever dark...
...Moffett Field California Over 30 years ago, I was a combat qualified Officer of the Deck on an Essex Class aircraft carrier in Task Force 77 in the Pacific...
...Top Gun teaches that if you are not the best, you die...
...The city bought the 1500-pound objet, reductively described as "several steel plates bolted together and painted red, blue, black, and white," from Mr...
...Bawer's notion that the film exploits "ignorant, infantile, and ignoble attitudes toward both personal and international relations," it does exactly the opposite...
...Twinkles has lately been showing signs of moodiness, which will make her even less inclined to take to the couch for ex-tended doses of Freudian claptrap...
...And to think that in Bombay poor Bud might have ended up a necktie...
...He constantly moves (continued on page 52) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1986 9...
...Yes, the film affords elaborate (if glossy) coverage to aircraft carrier operations, fighter plane maneuvers, and the like, but these fine documentary sequences are tucked in between the episodes of an inane story that makes war look like a big game and makes fighter pilots look like cases of arrested development...
...I'd never seen anything like that before," remarked Sister Lorretta Hall, who witnessed the man's heroic exertions...
...Frederik was wantonly humiliated by seven females who were unsatisfied with his performance in conjugal matters: after chasing him into a muddy pond, they watched as he was extricated at last with the aid of a crane...
...was the incessant refrain...
...For a rudderless administration the precedents are end-less...
...To be unable to see the distinction strongly suggests that Mr...
...Tom Bethell's column in our July issue has apparently left me talking to myself, and in public...
...The point being that, arguably, the Warren Court expanded the rights of defendants...
...The Press Trust of India reported from New Delhi that an ingenious local firm has bought a license to collect the 150 dogs who daily give up the ghost on Bombay's boulevards, the idea being that with a little imagination this vast yield of ca-nine epidermis might be fashioned into neckties and handbags that are simply stunning...
...And in Mountain View, Miss Kathy Velvet, curator of the Traveling Elvis Presley Memorabilia Muse-um, removed the late Mr...
...According to the Los Angeles Times, the sporty contraption consists of "very skimpy briefs into which tubes are sewn that connect to a small pump worn around the waist on a belt...
...Notwithstandingthe listlessness in the White House, the entrepreneurial spirit the President unleashed around the globe continues to flourish...
...Blumenthal began his career at In These Times, the "independent socialist newspaper" now published by the Institute for Public Affairs...
...Shrugged she: "I suppose it was inevitable that an American boy would claim a right to his natural body...
...We've got Elvis' wedding ring, his jewelry, his guitar, and his Rolls Royce, and all people were asking about was his underwear," said the exasperated Miss Velvet...
...The extremely reliable Miss Liz Smith reported that Mr...
Vol. 19 • October 1986 • No. 10
