Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Washington Journalism Review The New Age Tammanyite's worldview, as averred by Mr. Jann Wenner, chief aviatrix of Rolling Stone: "The only person I know who claims P. J. O'Rourke...
...It is time to buy new pencil cases, to label the subject dividers, to fill out . . . [zzzzz...
...But he couldn't take this away...
...Oh, excuse me, they both make the beds...
...I am a 16-yearold woman who is proud to be growing up in a world where women are finally getting part of their deserved share in business, education, politics, and even in the family...
...I mean, he just wants to be a Republican because no one else is...
...Stacy Mates Pittsburgh, Pa...
...John Elvin, resident historian of the Good Times, chronicles one more high-toned yawp from Liberalism's rightful heir to Demosthenes, The Rev...
...June 1988] Gourmet Gov...
...No more of the purely ritualistic R hode-Is land-casts- its-21-votesfor-the-next-president-of-the-United-States politics that were such a fine, easy-listening irrelevance all summer long...
...In the 1970s, apart from treaties constraining the nuclear arms race, we had some notable successes in working together—the elimination of smallpox worldwide, efforts to prevent South African nuclear weapons development, the Apollo-Soyuz joint manned spaceflight...
...in joint exploration of Mars, culminating in the first landing of human beings—Soviets and Americans—on another planet...
...Again, thank you...
...Carl Sagan speaks his mind and the minds of thousands of other six-yearolds: Let us learn from one another...
...She never worries about becoming pregnant or getting a sexually transmitted disease...
...In the correspondence asylum of the venerated Ms., sweet sixteen sounds off: What has happened to Ms...
...Kitty and I have spent many happy hours in Nantucket, and I feel qualified to state that Terry Weeks and Lans Christensen have done an admirable job of presenting the spirit of that island...
...No more dumb, delightful arguments over the correct proportions of gin and lime juice in a gimlet...
...Let us begin with a few joint projects of great scope and vision—in relief of starvation, especially in nations such as Ethiopia, which are victimized by superpower rivalry...
...Ferraro after a debate, or calling me a Chicago hustler, [or] cursing about his declaration for Quayle...
...When I eagerly opened the March issue, the first thing I saw was an article profiling a sexist, nuclear family where the husband works and the wife stays home and cleans...
...That's because the excitement wasn't just about the Mets or baseball...
...Jann Wenner, chief aviatrix of Rolling Stone: "The only person I know who claims P. J. O'Rourke is conservative is P. J.," says Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner...
...in fusion physics to provide a safe energy source for the future...
...remain that magazine...
...There is plenty of humor, satire, baseball and sex...
...This is our conclusion after years of studying the media...
...He claims to be, I mean, he tries to be, but secretly, down deep, I don't see him as a conservative...
...Robert B. Reich unloads his vision of the Reagan years, moments—one would think—before taking the Hemlock: But, the paradox...
...I would like to see us compete in cooperativeness...
...To my shock, the article promoted this kind of lifestyle...
...Capitalism and socialism have been mutually borrowing methods and doctrine in largely unacknowledged plagiarisms for a century...
...Usually when people curse like that, it reflects a kind of constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth...
...Young women such as myself need a true women's magazine, one that will help us to grow up as enlightened people prepared to improve the world for women and everyone else...
...Why the foreign policy debacles—the disaster of the Marines in Lebanon, the Bit burg folly, the foolishness of the "disinformation" campaign, the Iran-contra fiasco, the humiliation by Noriega...
...I am also proud that I have grown up reading my mother's Ms.—but now I am not so sure...
...JJ: Jesse Jackson mentioned on a recent C-Span talk show that George Bush "has this habit of name calling and cursing, whether he's cursing Mrs...
...June 1988] Washington Post Author William Styron laments intellectual conditions nowadays, under the Reagan lash: "In the Reagan era, one of the shocking and lamentable facts is that very few intellectuals or writers actually violently protested our role in Nicaragua," he says...
...July 4, 1988] New York Times Cinematic drama as envisaged by a New Age Puritan amuck in Princeton: To the Editor: Something fundamental has been left out of the new literate movies such as "Bull Durham...
...Please, Ms...
...May 5, 1988]Progressive Professor Noam Chomsky adduces irrefragable evidence that, as all other extant evidence has suggested for years, he is a true nut case: It is a primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the Government and the private sector...
...Why the unprecedented budget deficits, culminating in the $500 billion we now owe the rest of the world...
...Ten cases of a "harmless but frightening condition" called "exploding head syndrome" are reported by a British neurologist in last week's edition of the medical journal The Lancet...
...September 5, 1988] The Campus (City University of New York) A classroom pronunciamento from the learned Dr...
...Even the administration's claimed successes, like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, seem to depend less on any carefully conceived strategy than on events and personalities over which the White House has no control, and on luck...
...So many likable and respectable American things had been pickled in his soppiness, so many things had been taken away from us...
...I think that for some of us there may have been something else working on the emotions...
...in identifying and defusing long-term environmental catastrophes that are products of our technology...
...Evelyn Geddes Princeton, N.J., Aug...
...The problem strikes during sleep...
...Let Ms...
...Men got nutty who aren't ordinarily obsessed with this stuff...
...September...
...April 15, 1988] Spy And the laughs keep coming—fey Spy magazine introduces another fey issue of its no-holds-barred literary feast with a fey introduction to the month of September, after which there appears a tasteful advertisement for "contemporary" furniture and dozens more for all the amenities requisite to the Yuppie rigors: Yikes...
...May 1988] Esquire Trying his hand at being an American Gibbon, Philip Roth fights back the tears: That year with the Mets was very, very crazy...
...I'd like to see that wiped off the face of the earth...
...At the height of his power and fame, Reagan had become the embodiment of Americanness...
...Why the seemingly endless series of scandals, improprieties, forced resignations...
...September 1988] New Republic The haplessly dour Dr...
...You have to understand when I'm talking about people—just value systems...
...No More Leisurely Friday lunch hours drifting into weekends, no more bobbing up Monday mornings sunburned and an hour late...
...How come we see this role model for teen-agers going to the baseball games, taking the pitcher to her bed but never taking her birth-control pills after breakfast or encouraging the use of condoms in the bedroom...
...I hope "Christmas in Nantucket" will inspire people from all over the country to participate in the Nantucket Christmas stroll and to experience first-hand a very special place in a very special Commonwealth...
...August 9, 1988]Ms...
...February 7, 1988] 58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1988...
...Anxiety season again...
...Yet these people do not vote and the mother admits that she was "initially disappointed to hear 'it's a girl.' " Is this the type of family life a young feminist like myself should be looking forward to...
...Most of the cases occur in healthy middle aged or elderly people, mainly women, with no other neurological problems or symptoms...
...Michael ("Beware of Greeks wearing lifts") Dukakis thanks Gourmet for the baklava: Thank you so much for sending me a copy of Gourmet's "Christmas in Nantucket [December, 1987...
...It's wonderful...
...Isn't it time that movie producers gave young people sexually responsible heroes and heroines who know how to avoid having unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases...
...The whole era has been poisoned by a sense of lassitude that has prevented any kind of moral indignation from taking hold...
...23, 1988 [September 4, 1988] Washington Post The dismaying condition of Beatrice Webb's great grandchildren as reported in the infallible Post of Washington: Nothing serious, mind you—just a somewhat disconcerting sense that your head is exploding...
...Leonard Jeffries, Jr...
...September 1988] Washington Times Dr...
...I'm an optimistic American, and I don't believe things are destroyed for good by any presidency, but Reagan had tried to co-opt everything called American and had pretty well contaminated the country with his kitsch...
...of the Fuliginous Studies Department of the City University of New York: "If I had my way," said the professor, "I'd wipe them off the face of the earth...
...Perhaps it is an obvious point—but the common assumption seems to be that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth...
...The beautiful, passionate heroine says that "there's never been a baseball player slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career...
...Neither the U.S...
...nor the Soviet Union has a monopoly on truth and virtue...
...We can now do much better...
...And he ought to stop that kind of talk...
...Michael S. Dukakis, Governor State House Boston, Massachusetts [April 1988] Parade Dr...
...I mean, I mean, the white value system...
...How could such a beautifully designed policy process have generated the remarkable stream of blunders that has marred the Reagan administration during the past seven years...
Vol. 21 • November 1988 • No. 11
