Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM ............................................................................................................................................................................ Great...
...To me, it looked like a hooded Ku Klux Klansman with blinking red eyes...
...His one-liners are vintage Hollywood: "We didn't aim to kill anybody...
...in politics, position-taking is a more legitimate and primary activity...
...from Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Beacon Press, 1986.] Philadelphia Daily News With the winds blowing through his ears Edward John Hudak explicates the mysteries of ideology: [Senator John] East found comfort in the conservative philosophy, because it provided easy and simplified answers to complex and difficult problems...
...His standing in the right-wing community provided him with a sense of security which his physical disability threatened each day to take away from him...
...I have no alienation envy...
...in short, someone who thinks I'd look terrific in a string bikini...
...At one point, as a large screen monitor showed scenes of blacks being beaten in South Africa, a boy on my right looked over and exclaimed, "Go get 'em...
...We believe, however, that we are part of the problem and, as a family, we have decided to confront the situation by conserving our own use of energy...
...Alicia Suskin Ostriker takes time out from her career as a check-out girl at the Lavonia, New Jersey Safeway to pen a book about her girlfriends' pretty verse: During the last two decades, American women poets have been writing about their bodies with decreasing embarrassment and increasing enthusiasm...
...They write about eating and sitting on the toilet...
...Louie Dahr Cape Elizabeth [March 16, 1986J THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986 53...
...Michael Kinsley sings the blues: The right to pursue happiness is held to be "self-evident...
...May 1986] New Republic In the lachrymose manner of the neoliberal, whiz kid Dr...
...July 28, 1986] Maine Sunday Telegram A family of New Age patriots takes drastic measures: When my husband and I moved to Cape Elizabeth from New York, we sought a more pastoral existence, free from the turmoil and squalor of the city and the industry surrounding it...
...During one such speech, a brute drinking a Budweiser big boy screamed out, "Shut up and play...
...Fifteen separated from the rest and sat down on the hot sidewalk...
...Here are some of their comments...
...I want to be a sex object, at least some of the time . . . and so do my fast friends...
...I'm ready for a man who has not been and never hopes to be Rolfed, Reiched, EST blessed, or rebirthed...
...As the purpose of the concert was to publicize and raise money for the work of Amnesty International, most of the per-formers made speeches about the importance of freeing political prisoners...
...They write about their faces and hands, their arms, their breasts, their wombs, their menstrual periods...
...One of the Jesuit Volunteers, "Dan Berrigan told us that getting arrested was like a spiritual enema...
...Ignatius tells us, in the discernment of spirits, not to act when confused...
...Joni Mitchell, who heroically tried to play a nice, if mellow, set, wasn't afforded any applause...
...And positions, in New York, are required...
...So one might ask why this strong and intelligent polition [sic] decided to check-out...
...Necks and throats, knees and teeth...
...May 1986] Washington Post Columnist Courtland Milloy testifies that he, for one, was not fooled by the Fourth of July brainwash: It is not easy to fight a patriotic tingling, but if you're black in America you get more than your share of help...
...Men like John East do not want to lose control of their lives after struggling long and hard to adjust to a physical disability...
...Sure...
...That's why if a per-son, or two people, or three people and a billy goat find a way to be happy that strikes most other people as peculiar, or even revolting, that's hardly reason enough for the government to thwart them...
...Yoko Ono was soundly booed for her rendition of "Imagine...
...someone who drops me off before he parks the car...
...June 25, 1986] New Woman Treason: Well, I, for one, am tired of being nothing more than a cheap intellectual object...
...R&B is as much a part of American heritage as our Founding Fathers...
...What New York most threatens me with, in the end, is what I can only call a crippling feeling of contemporaneity...
...In addition, we have each agreed—our teen-age daughters included—to limit the use of hair dryers to five minutes per day (with some exceptions for special occasions...
...We already rely principally on solar and wood heat but we will no longer use our swimming pool other than in the summer months...
...To continue his analogy, I don't feel constipated...
...They write about the sensations of making love...
...Maybe these kids weren't representative of most of the others...
...He should tell that to a judge...
...Barbara Chutroo, of the Catholic Worker, "Arrest would be a learning experience, but there will be other times...
...This is not paranoia...
...When the police told them they would not be arrested unless they held a sign they had a long discussion about what to do...
...Unless it is lawful for the President to use military bombers in an attempt to assassinate a foreign leader and to kill and mutilate scores of human beings sleeping innocently in their homes thousands of miles and many days from any claimed actof provocation, of which they probably were never aware, then Ronald Reagan must be impeached and tried for high crimes and misdemeanors...
...Summer 1986] New York Post Even in the hallowed precincts of rock 'n' roll, Reaganism stirs and rears its ugly head: Amnesty International's benefit concert may have been "another proud day for rock 'n' roll" (Brian Chin, June 16), but it was a considerably less lofty occasion for rock 'n' roll fans...
...For example, when I saw the Washington Monument illuminated by fireworks, the last thing that came to mind was George Washington...
...After an hour and a quarter of a "good session of discernment," the whole group accepted the suggestion of Peter Cicchino, SJ, "Let's just pray, sing and leave...
...Let me tell you what I, a member of the unwashed audience, witnessed at Giants Stadium...
...July 6, 1986] Esquire From contributing editor Guy Martin, another analytical rubato for the modern dolt: Martin was a young cadet in a southern military school when he first listened to the music of Ray Charles: "For many of us, Ray and the other bluesmen were a sudden left turn—hip black musicians who we listened to in a futile attempt to be cool ourselves...
...His crew got a good laugh out of that...
...If I do serious work, it will be slowly, softly, according to my intention only, for the pleasure of those with the same intention and for a glimpse at things that do not pass, and alone...
...He perhaps believed that his thyroid condition would plummet him from the summit of power and prestige to the depths of helplessness...
...His rigid conservative beliefs did not allow him to integrate a sense of flexibility into his consciousness...
...We urge all Maine people to do the same...
...From our experience so far, I feel all cleared out...
...Serious work has always been done precisely in the opposite feeling, by writers and artists who felt out of their time and out of their place, and it is not Romantic sentimentality to say so...
...The President seems to be proud of what he ordered and of the "heroes" who carried it out...
...Another teen yelled, "Shut the f--- up...
...Those are not the traits of a New Yorker...
...It's hard to be happy...
...During a final song, a bright fellow in back of me said, "Kill the bitch...
...someone who sends me totally tasteless bunches of flowers with obscene cards that make me blush...
...Clearly, there was no consensus on whether to hold a sign or not...
...But at least we were on the right track...
...I could have been in a bad section...
...We purchased an entirely new set of energy-efficient appliances: stove, refrigerator, freezer, microwave oven, VCR, washer and dryer...
...Jack Seery, SJ, of Boston, "St...
...I mean position-taking about culture...
...July 8, 1986] New Criterion The inscrutable Leon Wieseltier trips headlong into the immensities: In New York there is simply too much to have positions about...
...It will be interesting to see whether the elected representatives of the American people, all of whom will proclaim the virtues of our Constitution during its bicentennial year, will dare to do their duty...
...Equally self-evident—as every member of the Supreme Court surely knows from personal experience—is that the pursuit of happiness is not an easy one...
...I gotta tell you though, that my view was a lot better than the one Brian Chin had from his press box...
...They write about giving birth, giving suck, growing old...
...The reason is no mystery for me...
...That is our situation now...
...The ideas in that music are just as strong, and just as American as those you find in the Constitution...
...It clears your mind and spirit...
...I am alienated quite enough...
...We prayed, we sang, we gave out leaflets and held signs...
...Great Books Series Mrs...
...And I have watched too many brilliant people squander their minds on position-taking...
...We have done what we planned to do...
...We are now terribly troubled by the proposed nuclear disposal site...
...July 5/12, 1986] Catholic Review (Baltimore) Epic events at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue while the godless Reagan snoozed in the Oval Office: After a time of study and prayer, we paraded 24 blocks to the White House...
...Whether one believes she deserves such a response or not, it isn't exactly good form to come down so hard on John Lennon's widow...
...And two young men in front who weren't yet born when Peter, Paul and Mary wrote "Puff, the Magic Dragon" had a grand time referring to Mary Travers as "an old sow...
...Martin Nisenholtz Manhattan [June 23, 1986] Nation Ramsey Clark, ideological frotteur, makes that one bold proposal that is the hallmark of the left-wing rigorist: Reagan's raid, called a surgical strike, killed at least twice as many Libyans in one night as all Americans killed by terrorists world-wide in 1985...
...How about a man who does not quiz me on Andre Gide or my stance on Central America...
...They're only trying to find an answer to the question we're all trying to answer in our own ways...
Vol. 19 • September 1986 • No. 9
