Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
............................................................................................................................................................................ CURRENT...
...Thousands more will die if our President has his way...
...Thousands of Nicaraguans have already been killed for the crime of supporting their own government...
...He counted wrong...
...tighter controls on what people may see, hear, and read...
...it is a good equation...
...the people of this country are conditioned from birth to have an intense fear and loathing of anything labeled "communist...
...April 3, 1979] Scientifically formulated norms and regulations on radiation safety are respected in the USSR when nuclear power stations are being designed, constructed and operated...
...I've found something, on my chin...
...your weight remains much the same...
...attack on Libya Monday night showed the world the shallow mental depths of one of the world's most powerful men...
...As Tripoli recovers from its blasts and Reagan savors victory, other events will transpire...
...to groups of American fundamentalist mullahs...
...Every day they tell more lies so they can build more bombs still...
...Delighting in the breaking weather, we stretch our pallid limbs to the sun, our bodies aching with warmth and sensuality...
...And you know, if we have to have a war, let it be man-to-man and fist-to-fist," Donahue said when he arrived at the dinner...
...Progressive The esteemed Bill Lueders composes his singular "Letter to a New Arrival" in largo doloroso, insufferable doloroso: Cradling you in the crook of my arm, I am so happy with you I could cry...
...new assaults on people's privacy...
...We don't want to harm any Libyans...
...May 5, 1986] East Village Eye Neoteric artsiness occasioned by bombs over Tripoli: We East Villagers have poured a lot of time and creative energy into the evocation of a "post-apocalyptic" counterculture...
...The first of many...
...One official of our Government even advanced the notion that members of Congress who refuse to support these killers are in league with communism...
...We may have disappointed, but we have never betrayed each other...
...Qaddafi reduces most political thinking to dumb slogans...
...May 11, 1986] Moscow Radio As valid today in progressive Moscow as on the first day they were uttered—two stupendously reassuring declarations to a grateful Soviet citizenry from the worthy Igor Morokhov, deputy chairman of the atomic energy commission, and from the equally worthy Fedeor Ovchinnikov, deputy minister of power, respectively: Soviet safety norms and technical regulations simply rule out any accident which may lead to an escape of radioactivity...
...What this technology does is make it impossible to be brave...
...Let the ages decide: Aging is like growing...
...It always has...
...Possibly not...
...If Reagan provocates the next attack, he needs to be a bit more careful...
...He (Khadafy) counted on America to be passive," Reagan said...
...But the ghastly events of the past few days show that Gorbachev is as conventional and hidebound as his predecessors...
...The American president regularly presents his most batty ideas (the Evil Empire etc...
...those folks out there living it .. . Leslie: "Gregory and I have been together for 18 years because each one of us thinks of the other first and the self second...
...Each day, we find ourselves walking the same streets we ever did, passing the same buildings and landmarks, sitting in the same restaurants, frequenting the same clubs...
...You can go on for years being the same age...
...Only terrorist-related targets were destroyed, he said...
...I thought about it on the plane...
...There's no doubt that one of the madmen will strike again...
...Qaddafi thinks he is right in most matters, expressing in his words and deeds the true feelings of the people he rules...
...Will this tactic work...
...Pete Hamill, writing in a mental-health newsletter: For most Americans, comparing Reagan to Qaddafi is a form of blasphemy...
...If you drop a bomb on my neighbor-hood, I can't prove that I'm tough...
...What's the matter...
...Since the violence of terrorists is ultimately aimed at the mind and spirit of a nation, the nation can thwart them with a mental and spiritual response...
...You're talking to your sister on the telephone and feeling your chin with your fingertips...
...The fires of passion may be burning low and the eyes may rove at times, but each of us knows what we have in the other and will not take any risk that we might lose it...
...It isn't a gradual, imperceptible process, but happens in leaps and bounds...
...Reagan grins and says, "I'm a contra too...
...For example, it seems certain that Qaddafi has funded terrorism beyond his own borders, perhaps planned it, possibly ordered specific acts, all in the name of a fuzzy-headed political ideology...
...I can say that half of the money assigned for building a nuclear power station is spent on a reliable system of radiation protection which is fully automated to make it absolutely trust-worthy...
...In this sense we are selfish: I want him too much to risk losing him...
...so does Reagan...
...Each morning we drink deeply of the ocean breeze that wafts its way among the tenements...
...In Reagan's view, believing that a dead Jewish carpenter is God is somehow intellectually sound, while embracing the Koran is the mark of a zealot...
...June 1986] Associated Press A lone LaRouchie effects the unlikely rebirth of a macho man: The fist fight in LaGuardia Airport's central terminal broke out Sunday after the man, a supporter of political extremist Lyn-don LaRouche, shouted that Donahue and his wife, actress Marlo Thomas, "ought to be murdered," said Port Authority Police Officer Mitchell Kaufman...
...I'm sorry, little one...
...The U.S...
...It was the tone of an irrational man, not a world leader...
...Every day it becomes more likely that the bombs will be used...
...April 5, 1979] Vogue How aging feminist Germaine Greer became Billy Goat Gruff, or is there a deeper metaphysical point being made here...
...But so has Reagan...
...The President backed him up...
...These norms exclude the possibility of accidents and the emission of radioactive material into the atmosphere...
...You put aside your polishing cloth and ex-amine the thing that has appeared like a bracket joining your chin to your neck...
...And yet for all of Reagan's macho charm, the parallels are unavoidable...
...We enjoy each other's company, are busy in our church, have a nice group of friends like ourselves and will be together as long as we both shall live...
...May 1986] Village Voice Still more independent thought from Prof...
...The expectation when he took office was that the general secretary was a "new" kind of Soviet leader, an open executive whose paramount interest was making things, that is communism, work...
...The message was clear: We have to stop terrorism, and if it takes a bomb or two, so be it...
...I've even wondered, sometimes, whether it was right to bring you into the world...
...Just like that...
...That's a terrible admission, but it's true...
...Presidents and other liars merely need to utter the word to get what they want: more money for weapons and military involvements...
...But already in that air a new flavor is perceptible, intangible as ether, sharp as steel, and pungent as the smoking rafters of Tripoli...
...His criticism of drunkenness, sloth and inefficiency held promise of an era of common sense...
...It's possible, of course, that . . . he recognizes in Qaddafi some funhouse mirror image of himself—the dark double of Dostoyevski and Kafka and Carlos Fuentes—and hates him for it...
...Then, you scream...
...I am 61 and he is 59...
...We cannot be married because we are both men...
...Politicians give in because they tend to be spineless oafs...
...Every day they build more bombs...
...Our elaborate charade of "deconstruction" has turned to a nightmare, our ironic catch-phrases transmuted from semiotic limbo into the gritty immediacy of yesterday's banner headline...
...We have no secrets in this field...
...Donahue responded, the two began shouting and the fight began, Kaufman said...
...April 23, 1986] 52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986...
...But then I think of all the other reasons to cry for you—reasons that have nothing to do with happiness...
...A wattle, in fact...
...Immediately after the attack, President Reagan addressed the people of the United States to rationalize his attack on terrorism...
...You're polishing a mirror table and you realize your neck has gone...
...asks your sister...
...You never think of yourself as too old to learn the latest craze, can't wait to off with the old and on with the new...
...less money for schools and the needy...
...Then, crunch...
...April 16, 1986] Washington Post For Miss Mary McGrory, one more fallen Kremlin idol, and "the expectation" had been so rosy!—whose expectation, bonehead?: As of now, we have learned more about Mikhail Gorbachev than about the nuclear accident still unfolding in his country...
...For example, Qaddafi is often described, with accuracy, as a religious fanatic, but some people think the same of Reagan—and for good reasons...
...Your face doesn't change much...
...We have reveled in "Weimarian" decadence, and romanticized the "post-industrial" moonscape of our ruined tenements and shattered streets...
...April 29, 1986] Daily Nebraskan The lead editorial of a great college daily shows just how conservative the students of this great Republic really are: It appears that we are dealing with more than one madman...
...CURRENT WISDOM...
...Suddenly and without warning we stand shivering in the icy dawn of a new era, one which Vito Bruno dubbed so prophetically the Year of the Real Deal...
...When you were born, the President of your country was engaged in a propaganda campaign to provide military aid to a group of surly mercenaries, called contras, bent on overthrowing the elected government of another country, Nicaragua...
...May 1, 1986] Chicago 'Ilibune A modern love song sung by those who in this day of rude maladies dare not exchange bodily fluids: Dispatches from some of...
...The incident occurred as Donahue and Thomas were at the airport to catch a flight to Boston where Thomas received an award Sunday night for her work against nuclear arms...
...He rattles on about "traditional" Christian beliefs, as if they were shared by most of the people of the whole wide world instead of a rather puny fraction...
...May 1986] New Yorker The ratiocinations of an editorial writer with a terminal case of New Yorker Kultur: Both nonviolent resisters and terrorists address themselves to civilians—whom the former help and the latter kill...
...But it is for just this reason that a nation can effectively oppose terrorism without necessarily exterminating it...
...Will you even get to live to be as old as I am now, Jesse...
...And spooky...
...A bristle, dear," says your sister...
...It remains to be seen where all this will end...
...But now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost...
Vol. 19 • July 1986 • No. 7
