Editorials/Life Is Imitation/Kinsley Does It Again
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS KINSLEY DOES IT AGAIN A las, Michael Kinsley has stepped taste or no principle. There was the row into another of those ignomin- at Harper's during which he apologized ious...
...There was the row into another of those ignomin- at Harper's during which he apologized ious controversies that have so fre- for calling Clare Boothe Luce a "courquently enlivened his restless career as tesan" in a headline, and the time he editor and pundit...
...Having been through the experience, though, may facilitate [sic] a certain realism about the conflict in question...
...But enough—these are the cerebrations of a lowlife yuppie, deficient in dignity, sophistication, and, well, literacy...
...What has him in hot water is what the article did say...
...Only a naif would be unaware that narcotics are pleasurable...
...Egad, argues the sorely pressed Kinsley, the article's "purpose . . . was to describe what a crack high is like," and bravely to admit that crack is pleasurable...
...He is a Liberal well...
...He is an essayist for Time published one Jefferson Morley's magazine, a fixture on political talk puerile confession to a pleasurable ex-shows...
...In defending convictions he is coy...
...As I say, the piece recommends andrationalizes crack...
...That is one controversy...
...When it comes to crack, politicians and pundits literally do not know what they are talking about," Morley chides...
...Smoke a rock and, for the next 20 minutes, you will likely appreciate sensuous phenomena ranging from MTV to neon lights to oral sex with renewed urgency...
...Kinsley has been suggested that a distinguished lady editor of Harper's and the New writer was a tart of inferior intellect...
...That be legalized and did not say drugs are is why his controversies are so curious...
...Then the venerable pages of the New Republic are transformed intoa Consumer Reports for narcotics connoisseurs: "As you smoke your second rock, it may strike you that the crack high combines the best aspects of marijuana and cocaine...
...Cocaine, in contrast, is a clear high, a stimulant to sociality...
...smoke a joint and space out...
...There is a flaw in Kinsley's brain...
...But having smoked crack, Morley goes on to lay claim to a special authority regarding it...
...There are many foolish and discreditable things this article did not say, but this assertion from Kinsley merely misleads readers...
...Another of the New Breed, which is to say he should be Kinsley's devious defense of is very tricky about what he really his act in a Washington Post column believes in but tireless in his derision of that misrepresents and abuses drug all manifestations of that which is con- czar William Bennett for appraising the servative...
...and he now is departing the perience with crack, which is but one New Republic for daily combat with of the drugs Morley obviously knows Pat Buchanan on CNN...
...Equally contemptible, it failed to balance these affronts with admonitions helpful to the present campaign against drugs...
...To argue so fluently on behalf of Morley one has to have a mind that is tilted toward inaccuracy...
...It is the mark of the New Breed Liberal to have low taste and at best only emaciated principle, but there is one thing more...
...Actually, all vice is pleasurable, else vice would not be pursued...
...0 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 11...
...Yes, They rarely arise over matters of high and it did not say that if you step on principle but rather over matters of low a crack you will break, your mother's 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 back...
...According to Morley, "Crack is a pleasure both powerful and elusive...
...The pleasure of pot is not just a high, but a buzz...
...One can say the same about taking arsenic, but that ought not to deter politicians and pundits from denouncing suicide, and Iknow of no one who is taken more seriously on the topic for having attempted suicide...
...on the more artless forms of residual Being devious is characteristic of Liberalism...
...He also is given to assaults Morley piece as "garbage...
...Later Morley offers that "If all you have in life is [he means are] bad choices, crack may not be the most unpleasant of them...
...at least he is ab- to use crack, did not say crack should sorbed with the morals of others...
...but as to his own Liberal Kinsley's controversies...
...It recommended crack and rationalizes its use...
...Republic off and on for nearly a Now in the New Republic Kinsley has decade...
...not a serious national problem...
...But who needs instruction on that...
...his crack-smoker's confession, Kinsley As a New Breed Liberal he is some- says: "The article did not urge anyone what the moralist...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
