Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
seCURRENT WISDOM Humanist A poetic outburst in an otherwise unexceptional essay, "Beyond the Ten Commandments: Formulating a Humanistic Ethic to Supersede Christianity," by Lester...
...We're the bully on the block, and we're walking down the block with a bloody nose...
...Robert Dautch Carpinteria, Calif And John of Edmonton, in a revela- to ry frame of mind: Inyour September 7 issue a letter you published written by Lenni Brenner (Berkeley, Calif...
...It speaks to a populist worldview the Democrats have often relied on to wrestpower from the Republicans...
...November 1988] Village Voice Campaign '88 as interpreted for the morons in VV's vast audienceby one of VV' many practicing psycho- analysts: In 1988, the Democrats have their image- making apparatus trained on the good ol' boy and his less sectarian counterpart, the white ethnic male...
...On most domestic issues, Bush has nothing useful to say...
...She has been addressing anti-abortion meetings in Canada and holds the view that abortion should never bepracticed even when the mother's life is inperil...
...Whether they mean to be or not, when someone calls apublic man a "wimp" its effect is to delegitimate feminist-humanist values...
...17) about Dukakis' mental health indicates your perverse desire to get Bush elected so you'll have more to complain about...
...Wimpery is bad enough in show business but in politics the accusation can , be fatal...
...We're old Muhammad Ali knocking the shit out of Woody Allen...
...This is not the case at all, and your readers should be aware of it...
...He offers no solution to the lack of affordable housing, the scandal of health insurance or the decline of well- paying jobs for vast numbers of Ameri- cans...
...But the only thing that really bothers me is the millions ofpeople whose very lives may depend on the outcome of the elec- tins—but who aren't allowed to vote at all...
...One might have thought that thirty-five years after McCarthyism spilled its venom this kind of attack would , have no force...
...The County Department of Animal Control is sponsoring support group meetings for those people who are having a difficult time coping with the loss of a pet...
...September 8, 1988] Mother Jones Swiftian flights and Voltairian leaps from the literary Miss Barbara Ehren- reich, satirist: Of course, our American electoral system isn'tperfect—what is?—and there are all kinds ofproposals for reform...
...indeed, with Bush's experience as head of the CIA and with the cast of former CIA characters surrounding him, U.S...
...Bush's first device was thepainfully inane issue of the Pledge of Allegiance...
...June 1988] Ms...
...So bam, bam, bam...
...He supports every weapons system Pentagon contractors have managed to concoct and he shows no , realization that the arms race can and must be halted...
...Beyond "wimp" lies the unspeakable—the possibility that a pro- spective world leader might be a lily-livered pansy...
...November 1988.1 Progressive Still more reasons for Bush/Quayle in '88 from an inflamed editorialist at a leading regressive monthly: George Bush wants to make the election a simple choice between Left and Right...
...o I'm thinking, of the three million , of course Nicaraguans, and the endangered residents of various U.S...
...The improbably named Letty Cottin Pogrebin unburdens herself of still more morbid ratiocinations: As thepresidential election campaign heats up for the home stretch, watch out for "the wimp factor" and its hidden agenda...
...In the in- terest of fairness, and to save yourself ex- cruciating thought, you might just want to do the same...
...They are very preoccu pied with a hyperindividualism, they are likely to be more fearful of intimacy and closeness, and they're liable to develop what Ill a male psychology of male dominance—wanting to make themselves different from women and better than women...
...In California, he intentionally eats boycotted grapes to show that he is squarely opposed to unions...
...What she really is is a dangerous religious fanatic...
...The support group meeting will be held at the County Animal Shelter, 4500 West Ox Road in Fairfax on Wednesday, September 21, beginning at 7:30 p.m...
...enemy and client states scat- tered throughout the world...
...Some peo- ple think we ought to restore the two-party system meaning that Bentsen would have , to run as a Republican and Dukakis would have to run as a L- . There are even a few radicals who think we ought to extend the franchise to the poor, the tired, and so forth...
...Boys who are raisedprimarily by a mother tend to define their sense of self as separate, as different, as distant...
...seCURRENT WISDOM Humanist A poetic outburst in an otherwise unexceptional essay, "Beyond the Ten Commandments: Formulating a Humanistic Ethic to Supersede Christianity," by Lester Mondale: Since the beginnings of recorded time, a few rare persons—the Buddhas, Tolstoys, Gandhis, Schweitzers—have reacted with gut, as well as ethical, revulsion to egos forever at it contesting and denigrating egos to the predominance of the individious...
...Ron won because he knew how toplay butch...
...We are the most , glorious people who ever lived, nobody like us, right...
...We are better suited by head and heart and gut for a more finely sensitive order of coexistence...
...Your petty editorial (ITT, Aug...
...And he has lived up to his share of the bargain: He has proved himself to be as scarily right-wing as his mentor, Ronald Reagan...
...The world's laughing at us, so we've got to beat somebody...
...These support groups will be managed by a professional grief and bereavement counselor...
...Even Jesse Jackson is trying to help Dukakis in spite of everything...
...At campaign stop after campaign stop, he brandishes his support of the death penalty—even as he proclaims "the sancti- ty of life" for unborn fetuses...
...Instead of addressing these urgent concerns, he is content simply to label Dukakis a liberal...
...We're accustomed to asking not what's right or wrong, but only, "Are we winning...
...In order to lure him from the Republicans, with their implicit promise to keep women and minorities down, the Democrats are fielding a man called Duke, with its John Wane vibe of entrenched Y malepower...
...Wimp" suggests "sissy" or "fag- got," which arouses the mega-monster, homophobia, which in turn scares people away from caring behaviors they might otherwisepractice and admire...
...NC: For daughters, being taken care of by a mother nearly exclusively tends to give them a sense of self that is more connected to otherpeople, more flexible ego boundaries...
...She further is of the opinion that women who have abortions and the doctorsperforming them should be jailed...
...contains a reference to Mother Teresa, with the clear indication that she is someparagon of virtue, some saintly woman of peace...
...November 1988] In These Times The venerable Dr...
...But Bush has made it a winner: Civil liberties are somehow un-American in George Bush's lexicon, and for reasons that can only be construed as frightening, the American people seem to be buying the slander...
...So, come on...
...Wrapping himself like a mummy in the Stars and Stripes, he has shown an uncanny instinct for the ugly and the intolerant...
...And we cheered because we beat somebody...
...Call it butch liberalism:progressive (in matters of race and class) but alsopatriotic andpatriarchal...
...meddling and manipulation abroad are likely to expand in a Bush Adminis- tration...
...Once that grew old, heplayed another 1950s card, branding Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU...
...Portraying Walter Mondale as a "San Fran- cisco Democrat," with all that label con- notes about a city that succumbed to queers, enabled Reagan to appeal to an America buffeted by sexual anxiety...
...Hepromises no change from Reagan's interventionist policies in the Third World...
...Thus, wihout being a literal accusa- tion of homosexuality is heard as an , wimp attack on the candidate's manliness, his strength, his ability to tough it out against other countries, minority groups, women...
...Help out a little more, please...
...Profoundly injured, they have protested the idea that the jungle is the natural order of intermingling psyches...
...August 23, 1988] In These Times A glance at the epistolary page of a leading lunatic sheet turns up two future Democratic presidential nominees, to wit: Robert of Carpinteria, at the end of his patience: If you don't stop harassing Dukakis in every issue, we're going to end up with the CIA (Bush) in the White House for four more years...
...What lesson have we learned...
...John G. Packer Edmonton, Alberta [October 19-25, 1988] Esquire Studs Terkel, a leading proponent of anal history, still practicing his dread- ful art: We are winners right...
...November/December 1988] Weekly Agenda (Fairfax County, Virginia) Another visionary role for government, devised this time by the Eleanor Roosevelts of booming Fairfax County: The death of a pet is a special kind of loss, and pet owners can help themselves and others by sharing their feelings with those who are experiencing the same sorrow...
...We kicked the shit out of Grenada...
...September 1988] Mother Jones Interviewed in probing, searching Mother Jones, the feminist gogue Miss Nancy Chodorow reveals how much she has learned about the Birds & Bees: MJ: Your thesis is that "traditional"pamnt- in g isn't particularly good for daughter or son...
...August 31, 1988] 58 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988...
...We humans were created, they have said, for a more healthful, secure, sustaining, joyously abundant mingling, one with another...
...Alexander Crock-burn lapses into a rare recognition of the sacred on the occasion of the death of a dangerous anti-Communist: Appropriately enough, Bush took the opportunity in his introduction of Dan Quayle to the world to mourn the passage of his friend Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, president of Pakistan, whose life came blessedly to an end in an air crash in mid-August...
...So no matter how cretinous the candidates are, no mat- ter how insulting the campaign, I grit my teeth and vote the way the Nicaraguans, etc., would if they were given a say...
...Except for his limited day-care proposal and his silly savings idea, he has ignored the bread-and- butter issues that confront Americans in their daily lives...
...Well, in the Vietnam War, we didn't win against the little guys in black pajamas...
...That's what it comes to...
...Can you summarize why...
...In theparty's scenario, Ronald Reagan did not win because the middle class bean to see g programs that benefitted the poor as a threat to its fragile economic status...
...It creates in women a kind ofpsychological need for being in primary relationships...
Vol. 21 • December 1988 • No. 12
