Capitol Ideas/New Orleans Spells No Real News
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS NEW ORLEANS SPELLS NO REAL NEWS by Tom Bethell T he judges were unanimous. The writer managed to smuggle out a tran- the publisher continued. In the cor- with the observation that,...
...President Reagan is the first continued, "that in your new-found en- someone else was...
...It was deserted except for a cluster of dangerous-looking toughs waiting to prey in broad daylight on any tourists unwise enough to enter...
...It's true, of course, that there is not enough convention news to justify the presence of so many journalists...
...If it really is true that there has been a "missing conservative generation" in American political life, as I suspect it is, then it has gone largely unrecognized and it would be worth trying to analyze its causes and meaning...
...We may cancel your membership if you elect not to buy at least one book in any six-month period...
...Through the windows of the Domenici...
...But in the meantime shut up so we can win...
...ington Post's chairman of the board, Democratic side of the aisle, and you version...
...Assistant Attorney General Stephen J. Markman told me last year that the Justice Department experienced difficulty locating in this age group qualified judicial candidates with any real grasp of the conflict of ideas between those who espouse constitutional government and those who support result-oriented government by judicial edict...
...As C-SPAN's successful, gavel-togavel coverage shows, modern electronic technology is increasingly displacing the very anchor types and pretty-face interpreters of events who are so eager to tell us that political conventions are a thing of the past...
...It somehow gained admission to the ex- Superdome, the Washington Post colReagans...
...Plus a 4th at the low Member's price...
...Bush will win if he can persuade the country that he means it...
...Just shut up, gays, women, environmentalists...
...There is still a problem on this score but as a younger generation moves into the party, the problem seems to be slowly disappearing...
...Bradlee) growled...
...Once again, Third World air about it...
...Still, something was wrong (and tax increases will only aggravate it...
...It's new human capital that New Orleans needs more than anything...
...I have grumbled in the past about Republicans as politicians who mainly play golf and are content to let the Democrats set the agenda for them...
...French Quarter rents are dropping, I was told, and the number of its permanent residents has fallen by half in the last decade...
...The Wash- breathe a good deal easier on the At this point there was another di- ary mid-afternoon barstools...
...If anyone has any thoughts on this, please write to me at The American Spectator...
...A Times-Picayune editor told me that she pays no property tax on her $130,000 house...
...The white flight never quits," an old friend from Vieux Carre Courier days said as we drove out to one of those neighborhood restaurants where they serve gumbo, crabs, and catfish...
...One-fourth of the blacks are living at or below the poverty line...
...No matter what area of history you enjoy reading about most, you'll find that The History Book Club offers some of the finest selections being published today...
...Over the past two years the number of employees on the city payroll had been reduced by two thousand, Renwick added...
...abetted this year by a superannuated and redundant Cron-kite) have become little more than an on-camera sneering squad...
...When we can see with our own eyes (on TV channels specially devoted to that purpose) what is taking place on the podium, we really don't need a sneering squad to tell us that this segment of Republican party film was especially devised to arouse patriotism to dangerous levels and therefore should be kept off the living room screen...
...Perhaps it's time for the journalists to hold a convention of their own...
...North Rampart Street, never a thriving thoroughfare, looked incredibly seedy with its weary old saloons and its vacant store fronts...
...Vice President George Bush, by contrast, repudiated higher taxes perhaps more strongly than President Reagan ever did, and it was at this point that the donor classes arrayed in front of him cheered the loudest...
...Send me the four books whose numbers I have listed below Bill me $1 each for the3 choices on the left, and the fourth at the low Member's price用lus shipping and handling...
...Evoking House and Senate chambers, and yes, history was secure...
...The state income tax is (I believe) moderate...
...If you want another book, or no books at all, return the Reply Form by the date specified...
...frequent meetings with General Secre- by eight years of helicopters-in-waiting, perspiring tourists in horse-drawn carAfter the judges' decision became tary Gorbachev, you defused the Cold didn't hear this frightening assessment, riages, liveried Negro doormen with at-known the White House gave permis- War as a potentially divisive issue in the which has been forwarded to the retro- tendant porters galore, and the French sion for a brief, discreet ceremony to fall campaign, you allowed everyone to mingent Reed Irvine...
...Prices generally higher in Canada...
...She also presented them with was said when you came to Washing- elusive event...
...AQ0406NCA THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 11...
...I found it Tom Bethel...
...The History Book Club always offers its members well-made, long-lasting editions...
...Renwick told me that the recently elected governor of Louisiana, "Buddy" Roemer, was planning a special session of the legislature in which taxes would be raised: the property tax exemption would be reduced from $75,000 to $25,000...
...TAKE ANY 3 FOR $1 EACH NO RISK, NO COMMITMENT...
...Graham's daughter, the Inside the cool, cavernous spaces of Katharine Graham, consented to of- showed once again that partisan right-thinking Lally Weymouth, had the Hyatt Regency Hotel, next to the ficiate at the ceremony honoring the politics can stop at the water's edge...
...Ed Renwick said he thought that New Orleans was now about 65 percent black, with ten percent of the city living in public housing...
...It's the news interpreters like John Chancellor who are headed for early retirement...
...The result was that the FDR Democrats stayed in the saddle long after they lost the White House...
...A few days later President Reagan annually to political figures who arrive With great tact, she made it clear that At this a senior Post editor, possibly headed south for the Republican Nain the capital with conservative notions what she meant by this was that the Benjamin Bradlee, threatened to em- tional Convention in New Orleans...
...Thereafter, you're not obligated to order any more books...
...but who nonetheless demonstrate an President had yielded gracefully to barrass everyone with a candid aside to unsuspected capacity for statesman- pressure from the Post...
...and tried to vention in a "Third World city...
...A hundred thousand or so boat people, entering New Orleans rather than leaving it, would do wonders for the city...
...Graham ended the ceremony been that way, or whether it had deteriTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 9 orated since I left...
...Clearly a good many are on welfare, and that may be at the root of the problem...
...Quarter locals seated on their custombe held in the Rose Garden...
...How the Club works...
...But far less significant groups, such as the Shriners and the Pipefitters, seem to find plenty of excuses to hold conventions, and I don't see why the political parties should not convene every four years...
...own pages葉hat you were anecdotal, SOFT ON COMMUNISM...
...The city has in addition suffered from a never-ending brain drain, starting from the time when "jazz went up the river...
...She thought she that someone had left the oven on by and Senators Alan Simpson and Pete "We appreciate, sir," Mrs...
...L Name (Please pant clearly) Address Apt # City State Zip All orders subject to approval...
...There was a good deal of journalistic grumbling about pre-programmed conventions, and questioning whether it is not time that these events went the way of the dinosaurs...
...The award is given for showing "grace under pressure...
...Your HBC Guarantee: If you receive an unwanted "Editors' Choice" because you had less than 10 days to decide, simply return it and pay nothing...
...Both below and above this age range, Markman said, there were plenty of good candidates who understood what the battle was all about...
...Graham was the First Lady, but she found out mistake...
...I didn't watch television while in New Orleans, but those who did tell me that Dan Rather & Co...
...1988 History Book Club, Inc...
...I don't know what caused it, but there seems to have been on the Republican side a whole missing generation用eople now roughlybetween the ages of 45 and 70...
...Boldface is Member's Price...
...But then they are under no obligation to show up...
...ington establishment...
...You may cancel membership at any time by notifying The History Book Club...
...Some of them would do us all a favor by staying on Martha's Vineyard for the summer...
...One possibility is that we are looking here at the long shadow of World War II, whose dominant and formative influence cowed a lot of people into thinking that united we stand, divided we fall, and that policy should be "bipartisan" whenever possible...
...Graham praised the Reagans the Reagans were now "widely regard- Graham Weymouth feud has continington, D.C...
...In the cor- with the observation that, as far as she 1 Strange New Respect Award for script of the proceedings and added ridors of the State Department, in the was concerned, the Reagans' "place in 1988 would go summa cum laude to one or two eyewitness details...
...Democratic Congressman Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania really let the cat out of the bag when he said just before the Republican convention: "We're not going to blow it this time...
...My old apartment building in the French Quarter looked so run-down that Ithought for a moment rent control must have been imposed since I left...
...You'll get everything you want after the election...
...its boarded-up, paint-peeling, roach-infested, dry-rotted, musty old structures which haven't seen a lick of paint or a joule of energy since Jelly Roll Morton left for Chicago about the time of World War I. Across the street stood Louis Armstrong Park, "dedicated April 15, 1980," aspiring to be another Tivoli Gardens but somehow never completed...
...airport van I caught glimpses of vacant chief executive to win the coveted thusiasm for arms control and in your Luckily the Reagans, half deafened lots overgrown with tropical grass, trophy...
...They could elect Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal, Jack Nelson of the Los 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 Angeles Times, and Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post cheerleaders of the Conventional Wisdom Brigade...
...But there is no rent control...
...Instead of the effect that the Reagans had been ship: they prudently succumb to Belt- sticking to his "heartfelt" (but by im- "pushovers" with little stomach for aT moved to Washington from New way pressure, moderate their views, and plication, not-very-well-thought-out) fight...
...A couple of pieces about Nan- 1 Orleans in 1975, and had grown get in step with the permanent Wash- worldview, Reagan had proved to be a cy's china and she came out with her curious about the city in the interim...
...It would be nice if they could come from the Far East, but almost any Communist country will do用rovided above all that the new arrivals are denied access to welfare...
...You'll be able to choose from 150 to 200 books featured each month...
...Save on the best recent history titles...
...ed with a Strange New Respect . . ." ued...
...First price is Publisher's List...
...The streets of New Orleans were far safer when Louis Armstrong still lived in the city (he left in 1922...
...And no book club we know of offers greater savings預s much as 30% off publishers' list prices...
...I refused to accept at face value the explanation that is mechanically offered for New Orleans' ten percent unemployment rate葉he oil price drop of the mid-1980s...
...were safer in fact when I still lived in the city...
...How different things looked today, ing...
...The beauty of C-SPAN is that it can't afford to hire such people...
...Out of the blue she pro- umnist Richard Cohen commented on their well-deserved Strange New Re- ton悠 dare say it was even said in our duced a placard reading "REAGANS the incongruity of a Republican conspect Trophy...
...The History Book Club, Dept...
...N qt 40 Guernsey Street, Box 120012, Stamford, CT 06912-0012 Please enroll me in The History Book Club according to the no-risk, no-commitment terms outlined in the accompanying ad...
...You can save even more by taking advantage of our Introductory Offer...
...It is a subjective assessment, of course, but the Republican delegates struck me as being a fairly sensible bunch, a good cross section of the taxpaying or donor classes, just as the Democrats represent the social engineers and their clients among the recipient classes...
...He told me that the city's nine percent sales tax is "the highest in the United States...
...Previous Strange quick learner: the world was indeed a hands up suing for peace," he (or When I stepped outside Moisant air-New Respect winners have included more complex place than it might have someone who sounded remarkably like port into the waterlogged air it seemed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, seemed in simplistic Sacramento...
...20500...
...And A frustrated White House speech- that you were nothing but an actor, hoist it in the air, but Secret Service indeed New Orleans really did have a prone to gaffes but nonetheless a good agents swiftly intervened...
...At the National Review reception I met Ed Renwick, the director of the In-stitute of Politics at Loyola University...
...About every four weeks (14 times a year), you'll receive our Review and a dated Reply Form...
...New Orleans arouses supply-side suspicions...
...is The American Spec- communicator . . ." it seemed, the Reagans noticed noth- hard to decide whether it had always tator 's Washington correspondent...
...Just shut up...
...But other taxes are not high, he said...
...Select any three books on this page for $1 each when you take a fourth book at the low Member's price用lus shipping and handling...
...If you want the "Editors' Choice," do nothing 葉he book will come automatically...
...Everyone went Nancy and Ronald Reagan, current ad- Camelot memories of John F. Kenne- even in the Washington Post newsroom, home happily, although I gather the dress 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Wash- dy, Mrs...
...A shipping and handling charge is added to each shipment...
...Would Sherlockian investigations at Price Waterhouse reveal the city to be overtaxed...
...New Orleans spells no real news, and not even 15,000 journalists in the city at one time can change that...
Vol. 21 • October 1988 • No. 10
