Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Time In far away Ghana a legendary American statesman finally finds himself: Not all the villages Carter visited were completely satisfied with his help. In one, following the...
...President," said the chief, "will not be happy with a half-measure solution to our problem...
...Through the 1920s and '30s H. L. Mencken savaged the follies of American life...
...We know that you, Mr...
...Huey P. Newton, Ph.D., from three bullets to the head received whilst shaking down the well-armed Mr...
...At a time of sexual indeterminacy, I found myself sexually entertained as never before or since, because I discovered that both men and women, far from being repelled by my equivocal state, were intrigued and even attracted by it...
...Jimmy Carter took a bus to New York where he spent his week helping to restore a wrecked building to house 19 homeless families...
...I try to picture the horror of Wounded Knee...
...Cocaine, in contrast, is a clear high, a stimulant to sociality...
...Because the well is only 40 ft...
...All this, said Draper, "unless we act creatively and rapid[July 3-10, 1989] Washington Post Esoteric Americana from the People's Republic of Oakland, upon the death of Mr...
...The village appreciated that...
...The chief smiled...
...In one, following the usual dancing and singing, the chief rose to speak...
...As if this was not cruel and inhuman enough, my ancestors were made to be property whose lives meant little more than that of a dog...
...Living in Bel Air, a fabulously wealthy Los Angeles suburb...
...I will stand and think of the dark and dismal past of this nation...
...I stand as a sign of respect to all my ancestors who were disgraced, slaughtered like animals and used to make this country what it is today...
...During the last 25 years, he was known, sometimes simultaneously, as an intellectual, community organizer, visionary, bully, police target, family man, cocaine addict, academic with a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz and gun-wielding thug frequently embroiled with Oakland police...
...His style of verbal assault seems slightly embarrassing in today's journalism which is so self-consciously (some would say self-importantly) concerned with "balance...
...deep, it goes dry three months out of the year...
...Upon his return from fighting in World War II he became an alcoholic and later died a lonely death 10 years before I was born...
...I try to visualize what it was like to be herded, akin to cattle, onto small parcels of land and away from homelands...
...Will it happen...
...At the time in the middle of my life when I was passing from one gender to another, I was difficult to identify either as male or female...
...You tell Tom Orloff that, for all the years he went to school, he failed to understand the meaning of the word 'gangster,' " Arrington shouted, to a standing ovation inside the main church hall...
...Newton was an organizer against poverty...
...Now Carter is bounding back...
...Thou should'st etc...
...You tell them that Dr...
...September 11, 19891 New York Times The unoriginal mind of Anthony Lewis turns out this year's first version of the standardized "Mencken...
...Tyrone "Double R" Robinson: By the time he died, Newton had an extraordinarily complicated reputation...
...But there was this one small problem...
...Speaker after speaker today derided prosecutors and news reports that used the word "gangster" in describing Newton's life...
...When he left office, Reagan vanished, except when each get-richer-quicker scheme came to light...
...The villagers cheered...
...I try to picture my grandfather, who was half Japanese and half black...
...I think of the genocide...
...from the United States (where about two million citizens are homeless) is that capitalism has won the economic war over socialism and communism...
...Regardless...
...I might have been one or the other, or both, or neither...
...I would not be teaching black studies at Merritt College today if it were not for the efforts of Dr...
...This nation which condemned Hitler and Nazi Germany for its treachery and murder...
...People contrast him with Reagan, who now rolls around in money like a hog in slop...
...They loathed him far more than his failures in the White House might explain...
...The pleasure of pot is not just a high, but a buzz...
...Little problems such as the greenhouse effect and human poverty should not get us down...
...Thou should'st be living at this hour (With apologies to W. Wordsworth...
...Newton and the Black Panther party...
...August 19891 Observer Magazine Professor Simon Hoggart sends up the standard sempiternal tribute that all progressive writers reserve for a late1970s President they in fact cannot bear: It's hard for foreigners to realize how much and how many Americans despised Jimmy Carter...
...They wanted the people of this city to know that blacks were first in history and had a history to be proud of...
...And when I first saw the enthusiasm that exuded from Huey Newton I was at Castlemont High School and I said, 'I got to get ready.' " [August 28, 19891 Running Times Four months after a gang of semihumans assault a Central Park jogger, the editor of this illustrious New Age review reveals the benefits of his exposure to the departments of economics and sociology at Harvard University: It may be an oversimplification, but I'll bet that if top soccer players, cross country runners, rock climbers, gymnasts, cyclists, kayakers, etc., were given as much media attention as Wade Boggs or Magic Johnson, and if companies like Miller Brewing primed the media pump with advertising support for that media coverage, which would in turn pay for more facilities and coaching, and if investment firms like Salomon Brothers (employers of the Central Park victim) earmarked a portion of their investments for sponsors willing to make that advertising commitment as a way of repaying the country that let them get as rich as they are, a lot more Harlem kids would get their adolescent bonding on sports fields instead of mugging runners in Central Park...
...Finally, I think about my Japanese ancestors...
...July 20, 19891 Sydney Morning Herald What happens when a 1960s kid confronts four men of the cloth down under: Don't worry, be happy—we're all on a winner called capitalism...
...His special targets were the narrow minds, the intolerant certainties of what he called "the booboisie...
...This was the message delivered in Sydney yesterday by four of the world's high priests of capitalism here to extoll the "triumph of democratic capitalism" in a series of conferences beginning at the Hilton Hotel tomorrow...
...October 2, 1989] Stanford Weekly Miss Lyzette Settle, a Stanford senior and "Opinions" editor of the illustrious collegiate weekly, demonstrates why it is very imprudent to sell beer to her at the ballpark immediately after the national anthem has been sung: When I stand for the national anthem, I do not stand to praise America nor do I stand out of a great sense of patriotism or nationalism...
...On the spot, Carter convened a meeting with his advisers and promptly announced that the well would be drilled to 70 ft...
...Mencken is out of fashion now...
...July 11, 19891 New Republic A four-star consumer's report on a popular narcotic in the pages of the morally superior New Republic: As you smoke your second rock, it may strike you that the crack high combines the best aspects of marijuana and cocaine...
...July 10, 1989] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1989 51...
...It has the head rush of marijuana or amyl nitrate with the clarity induced by a noseful of powder cocaine...
...September 19891 Diplomatic World Bulletin A note on progress: The shape of things to come, according to U.N...
...I think about the slaves who were taken from their native Africa and its rich culture...
...Development Program boss William H. Draper 3d in remarks to the agency's governing council: By the year 2000, there will be over a billion illiterates, nearly 750 million without enough to eat, 1.2 billion without safe drinking water, 17 sprawling cities with populations each of more than 10 million, 700 million unemployed, 2 billion people without adequate fuel to cook food and heat homes...
...Crack is both spacey and intense...
...Though I become sad and angered when I think of these things, I will stand when I hear the national anthem...
...Besides, we thought the country had outgrown the primitivism that Mencken deplored...
...do a line and get into some serious play or some pleasurable work...
...But the greatest message of joy from the right-wing columnist Bernard Levin, historian and journalist Paul Johnson from Britain (a country with about 2.3 million people unemployed), scholar and columnist Michael Novak and columnist and author Robert E. Tyrrell, Jr...
...I knew it was only a temporary condition, and while it led to embarrassments now and then, it was often undeniably amusing...
...plaint: Mencken...
...August 10, 19891 Mirabella Years after the sexual renovation of Jan Morris, Miss Morris lovingly recalls her sexual life in a cocoon: As to sex, the original pleasure, I cannot recommend too highly the advantages of androgyny...
...Even liberals used to say, "Reagan is so dreadful, he's almost as bad as Carter...
...As I stand, I remember my Native American ancestors...
...You arrived last year from out of the blue," he said to Carter, "and you gave us a well and a pump...
...I will also think about how I can make the future a brighter one for those who will come after me...
...I doubt it...
...When Cecila Arrington, director of Black Studies at Merritt College, spoke, she directed her angriest line at the Alameda County assistant district attorney who headed most of the Newton prosecutions over the last 12 years...
...This policy of charging different fees reflects our society's chauvinistic assumption that it is a woman's own fault for getting pregnant...
...A people who numbered more than 10 million rejoice now because they are one million in number today...
...We need him more than ever...
...Capitalism has the answer for these hiccups in the system and much, much more...
...And who can forget the giant killer rabbit, which attacked him on a fishing trip...
...August 19891 Cat Fancy Into the purring pages of a right-ofcenter cat-owners' review, the screech of social conscience is heard: I was surprised to read in the June 1989 "Editor's Notebook" about the discrepancy in adoption fees charged for female and male animals at the Pittsfield SPCA...
...By contrast, Carter has been working on projects to house the homeless, against disease and for agricultural development...
...He was a touchstone of awfulness...
...He reveled scornfully in the trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution, describing the onlookers—who believed that God literally created the world in six days—as "gaping primates...
...This summer's congressional follies over the National Endowment for the Arts have shown how wrong we were: wrong in estimating the primitive strain in our society, wrong in regarding Mencken as an anachronism...
...smoke a joint and space out...
Vol. 22 • November 1989 • No. 11
