Deconstructing the Danny Quayle Reader
Oh, COME NOW! . . . For goodness sake! I have found many issues of The American Spectator "hard to get through." I suppose that disqualifies me as a subscriber and you want me to cancel, but...
...Your article offends those who do have the problem and that's indecent of you...
...Andover, Massachusetts What kind of publication is it that has, or thinks it has, a significant portion of its circulation among types for whom infantile ridiculing of the already grossly vilified is attractive...
...Perhaps Vice President Quayle does not have a reading problem...
...He's right—it is hard to get through, unless you have absolutely nothing else to do...
...In the early 1970s he and I were junior members of a conservative supper club in Indiana where we both were the amused victims of the older members' jibes...
...when no one else is up, usually around 5:30 to 6:00 a.m...
...Quayle just may have a point...
...Somehow I think the Vice President should have been able to avoid diminishing the stature of the small number of conservative publications that regularly take on the vast majority of publications antithetical to him and his ideas...
...Now we have all had a few laughs, and we can get back to our mutual goal of protecting American liberty and advancing a little Yank culture...
...Who in the hell do you think you are to attack the Vice President of the United States in such a scurrilous manner...
...Here is what he said in the March 31 Wall Street Journal: "I used to, I've read National Review—some...
...He has made it all the more difficult for us to defend him effectively in the months ahead and to advance our shared principles...
...Before this, our August issue, arrives at your door my old friend Dan Quayle and I shall renew an old friendship...
...If it took four of you to write "A Danny Quayle Reader," even my poodle might qualify for your select group...
...I'm too stupid to Quayle before your wrath...
...Some way or other they went against the grain—my immediate reaction was real—I felt anger and disgust...
...The American Spectator—it's hard to get through The American Spectator...
...Eagerly, I read "A Danny Quayle Reader" in hopes that someone on your staff had, at long last, begun the long process of making amends for the stupidities perpetrated against (not by) Quayle during and since the campaign...
...What does that tell us about these conservatives who are cancelling their subscriptions and agreeing with Vice President Quayle's estimate of his own media...
...Elizabeth Dubbell Sedona, Arizona For the same reason that there are no thirteenth floors in hotels there should have been no thirteenth page in the June issue...
...Not long ago when asked during an interview how he chose Carnes Lord as his adviser on strategic matters, he responded that he had read Carnes in The American Spectator...
...Neither do you, apparently...
...Paul N Eilers Indianapolis, Indiana The article, "A Danny Quayle Reader," is, in my opinion, one of the most offensive things to appear in recent American journalism, to say nothing of the bad manners involved...
...Lou Gauss Ivyland, Pennsylvania R. Emmett Tyrrell...
...Gardner Macartney No...
...The current administration has not done much to earn the loyalty of conservatives, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes them fair game...
...Now we have shown we can turn the jibes on each other, and I know that Dan's aspersions on conservative publications had to be a joke...
...Do not misread this letter—I am not the greatest fan of Vice President Quayle—but when you stack him up against former President Jimmy Carter —Mr...
...And now we have an example of conservatives doing a similar number on one of their own just as meanly and unfairly...
...They are readable and abound with useful information...
...Ralph H. Phelps Evanston, Illinois Since the magazine sells for $2.50 a copy and contains 60 pages (including covers), I think you should send each of your subscribers a refund of four cents, along with an apology and a promise to lay off the comic-book stuff in the future...
...We were going to bombard you with letters of outrage but instead we are going to send the Quayle children letters of love and friendship...
...First off I was upset that for eight long years you let Ronald Reagan get away with anything—things for which you would have condemned any Democrat or Gerald Ford or a Rockefellertype Republican...
...Cheap...
...But the New Republic caught it...
...But I save it to read in the early a.m...
...Garry Myers Manassas Virginia It seems that Vice President Quayle has had the gall to say your magazine is "hard to get through...
...He is an avid liberal who keeps sending me a subscription to the New York Times Book Review—I had intended to retaliate by sending him a subscription to The American Spectator—but your cover and subsequent simplistic parody of Dan Quayle not only rocked my faith in your paper—but quickly changed my mind about any gift subscriptions...
...Lots of rhetoric but very little action...
...Please recall that Dan Quayle has been in the Congress and Senate for ten years or more...
...TAS isn't lightweight reading...
...As Ron Burr, The American Spectator's publisher and also a friend of Vice President Quayle from our Indiana days, remarked: "It is exceedingly difficult to sell advertising to people when we tell them we are read by the administration and its number two says, No, he reads the New Republic...
...It took two jackasses and a couple of dumb midwestern broads combining apparently less than average minds to "beat up" on one, out of context, newspaper report...
...I have known him as a friend since the early 1970s in Indiana...
...Shame on you...
...right...
...Don't read it as much as I used to...
...Janet S. Ward Annapolis, Maryland Allow me to cause you to consider that Mr...
...For Christ's sweet sake anyway, the man is on our side—well, mine anyway...
...Herbert T Johnson Major General, AUS Retired Ferguson, Missouri 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 Frankly I think the picture on the cover and the page 13 were really ill-timed and definitely improper...
...That in a few months of national prominence he mastered their hearts, or that they really do not think very carefully about politics, the bottom line, or general intellectual questions...
...Vice President Dan Quayle has three American Spectator writers high on his staff...
...Kay House Payson, Illinois The reason I am so teed off at you and your staff is that in the April 1988 issue of TAS you published an article on The Center for Defense (DIS)Informationas it is known in my circles—and the way you gandy-danced around that traitor La Rocque and his organization made me sick...
...We know what their classmates must be putting them through...
...His intellectual innocence is disarming and constitutes part of his charm...
...Alas . . . Such moronic flatulence is beneath contempt...
...e., so much good material it's hard to get through...
...Stewart Spencer Charlotte, North Carolina You can dish it out—even assassinate a character—even the Vice President of the United States—but you can't take a little slight remark...
...Jr replies: Never in the twenty-three years of this magazine has it received a larger or more inhospitable response to a piece than our response to Dan Quayle's disparagement of three major conservative publications, The American Spectator, Human Events, and National Review...
...Possibly we should have run Dan's full statement, but we thought that his disparagement of three conservative publications would be sufficient to explain why we were critical of his acumen...
...Barbara Miller Roswell, New Mexico When you all moved to Washington, I was afraid you would be infected by the Beltway virus...
...Cam says: "The humor, particularly The Continuing Crisis and Current Wisdom, is what hooked me on TAS in the first place and, now, I like a lot of the serious stuff, too...
...Actually, the evidence of late is that the Vice President is again reading the conservative intellectual reviews...
...And haven't you folks heard that there is so much reading for those men that none of them could possibly read all the legislation that they are expected to act upon...
...I'll bet you were among the people who leaped to their feet after that master con artist, Wright, made his farewell speech, and wept tears of anguish...
...Clyde G. Hollinger Manheim, Pennsylvania I just cannot fathom what is going on at your publication...
...Cam also has two suggestions for improving TAS: (1) for the Veep, a LARGE-BLOCK-LETTER-TYPE coloring book edition and (2) for Cam, a Ben Stein article every month...
...On the other hand, perhaps he believes that true wisdom resides with the New Republic, the journal that has endorsed his political opposites in every presidential election since the dawn of recorded history and the last four presidential losers...
...I have a friend in San Diego who is a judge appointed by Jerry Brown...
...I used to read Human Events...
...And I think that is what you all are guilty of...
...T Johnson St...
...He was not a conservative President, except once in a while...
...Alvin Laidley Carmichaels, Pennsylvania I am disappointed and disgusted that The American Spectator, long a favorite of mine, would join the liberal ilk in the continuing smear campaign against Vice President Dan Quayle...
...Then you were among the first to endorse George Bush when you should have been endorsing Jack Kemp...
...We need more like him in high places because he is typical and representative of 200,000,000 other Americans equally guiltless of literacy...
...Bill Schnirring New York, New York I'm totally ashamed of each and every one of you...
...Moreover, his criticism of these conservative publications is inaccurate...
...Donald Towle Bristol, New Hampshire I agree with Dan Quayle...
...It is this last line we left out...
...In his offensive statement he also groveled before the New Republic...
...Quayles comment was refreshingly honest...
...Ergo, he thinks that maybe Danny would try harder "to get through TAS" if Marilyn would take the time to point out (and explain) the funny stuff to him...
...And the New Republic [his voice brightening...
...Clearly the decision to go with this business was made at the highest levels of management of this monthly review...
...I suppose that disqualifies me as a subscriber and you want me to cancel, but I'm not going to...
...The Vice President is, according to the ever-astute Bob Novak, sustaining the conservative point of view effectively in his dealings on Capitol Hill...
...I do not know...
...Within days its business office sent that vice presidential yawp to all our mutual advertisers...
...q THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 27...
...Do you really expect him to read The American Spectator from cover to cover...
...Don't flatter yourselves that it is such heady stuff that only rocket scientists can understand it...
...Andrew Kurylko New Providence, New Jersey The difference for you people in the Eastern Establishment is that Freedom of the Press brings with it a sense of responsibility, while License of the Press allows irresponsibility...
...John M Ware Norfolk, Virginia My 17-year-old son, Cameron, disagrees with Danny that ". . it's hard to get through The American Spectator...
...Furthermore, the numbers are growing by 2.3 million a year says the Librarian of Congress...
...Your pretentious and condescending intellections make reading your magazine a laborious task...
...But when the Vice President of the United States makes a thoughtless remark you turn on him like a wild dog—or better, like a rotten, spoiled child, who has had its last piece of candy taken from him...
...It is a good magazine and I like most of it most of the time...
...Some way or other, I used to laugh at such—but I have found myself more comfortable lately with our Vice President...
...I enjoy reading New Republic articles...
...Clair Irvington, Virginia Mr...
...Glen H. Abplanalp Ridgewood, New Jersey There must be many subscribers to TAS who do not—what is the harm in saying cannot—read the thing from cover to cover, due to the uneven quality of the various pieces, to say nothing of the fact that some subjects covered are simply of no interest to them...
...Your magazine is excellent, but it is long and difficult for busy people to read through...
...I am a retired remedial reading teacher, and have spent some ten years tutoring non-readers of all ages...
...Louis, Missouri It is too bad I received the June issue just when I intended to renew...
...He delivers speeches on world affairs and on economics that could be written by almost any American Spectator writer—and in fact his speechwriter is a past American Spectator writer...
...How hurt they would be if I asked them to read your sarcastic article...
...If I were Dan Quayle, TAS is a luxury that I would deny myself until after retirement...
...Perhaps the bluejay I heard was right ("Cheap...
...Quayle comes out looking like a genius...
...The New Republic in its November 14, 1988, issue asked: "Can journalists keep writing indefinitely that Dan Quayle is a moron, just because he is one...
...The exhibition of small-minded vindictiveness on the cover of your June issue and on page 13 of the same issue is not becoming...
...George Mulligan Santa Barbara, California I loved "Why Danny Can't Read" and the associated cover art...
...But, since he was your very own Ronald Reagan, he was exempt from criticism...
...Rayetta G. Phares Ossining, New York I hereby notify you to cancel my subscription, paid until August 1990, and ask for immediate refund in order that I may forward without delay the total reimbursement to Accuracy in Media...
...As far as I am concerned our June issue of The American Spectator is vitriol under the bridge...
...Such arrogance...
...That is none of our concern either...
...Lucien E. Smartt Washington, D.C...
...If you are not an American Spectator reader, that automatically makes you a dummy...
...Thus as always I wish him well in pursuing prudent politics...
...Where's the proof you're ready to run the country...
...I grant you Quayle hasn't exactly impressed the nation with his intellectual maturity...
...J. Howard Highlands, North Carolina It is puzzling why a conservative magazine which pretends to care about public policy and conservative principles would take such a juvenile approach to a man who is the hope for many conservatives and who happens to be an elected Vice President of these United States...
...Kenneth C Lane Puyallup, Washington I was outraged when some years ago liberal intellectuals took after President Gerald Ford suggesting he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time...
...Something like this only encourages America's enemies...
...Again, so what...
...But those who responded so negatively told us more about these last three matters than about the Vice President's talents...
...The really sad commentary is that the quote used to justify the gross lampoon of the Vice President can be interpreted in a positive way re TASi...
...Christine W Franklin Dallas, Texas Some 60 million people in this country cannot read or write, and that is a conservative estimate...
...The inability to read is a devastating condition and we shouldn't be joking about it...
...Shame on you...
...A. W Humphreys Galt, Missouri Our school visiting Washington, D.C...
...Writing for them and reading them is eminently worthwhile, and if Vice President Quayle will read them in the future he may grow in wisdom...
...Name withheld The Dan Quayle mock piece was distasteful and lacked any humor...
...I've had it with the insults to Vice President Quayle...
...But I was dismayed to read elsewhere that some of the stuffier conservatives had taken offense...
...Ludlow King Chevy Chase, Maryland Today, as I heard the gentle call of the bluejay in my yard, I noted that your new issue had the Vice President of the United States on its cover...
...Frankly, my opinion of you and your outfit hit rock bottom with the June issue...
...Virginia T Owen Atwater, Ohio You are not very kind and gentle with the Vice President...
...Robert A. Best Washington, D.C...
...read about the page in The American Spectator ridiculing Vice President Quayle...
...Frankly, I was surprised at my reaction...
...Doris T Landen Cincinnati Ohio While I applaud the courage these "House Hoosiers" (sounds like a domestic cleaning service) displayed in signing their names to the piece, I doubt that their future lies in comedy...
...For over two years now, he's been racing me to the mailbox for his monthly ingestion of TAS humor and information . . . in that order...
...William T St...
...Our response to Vice President Quayle was not from hurt feelings but from a proper respect for the magazine's bottom line, its quality, and for political prudence...
...Vice President Quayle has his virtues...
...And now you have joined the brainless, liberal hordes in attacking Dan Quayle...
...Frank R Conselman Ransom Canyon, Texas Well, now, I have finally had it with TAS...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
