Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Washingtonian Professor Leon Wieseltier pauses from his philosophical work to hand down a learned exegesis of a basic text of the eighties: P.S.: Carly Simon...
...In many ways I think that he was like a coal mine canary...
...We were ridiculous...
...It is sung by a religious choir...
...and, perhaps, after her virtuosi have reformed Managua she will dispatch them to Peking, where tough customers are also needed: If the administration is serious about in troducing democracy to Nicaragua, it should dispatch the League of Women Voters to Managua, not the CIA, which is the least democratic of our institutions...
...He died because he could no longer survive...
...When a man who had so much zest for life com mits suicide it certainly signifies the entropy of a nation...
...The '80s killed Abbie...
...Its percussion is sort of primal...
...Lesbian and gay responsibility and education prevent spreading AIDS more than if the virus had attacked any other segment of society...
...According to the family, the birth of the puppies brought tears to their eyes...
...He could even boast a made-to-order campaign slogan: "After the Wright stuff, why not the best...
...Let's order those men a few crates full of Kleenex, then put on our teddies and show them what we really want...
...It's like crossed signals in our bodily fluids...
...Pete Tinsman Elmore, Vt...
...Elgrit B. Russell Middle Smithfield [April 18, 1989] New Woman New Woman's vision of the New Age Marlboro Man, this one named Norman: "Sometimes I think I'd rather experience a good cry than good sex," says Norman...
...At the funeral of their friend, the minister asks, "Where did Alex's hope go...
...Middle-class men viewing The Accused have cheered the film's harrowing gang-rape scene...
...July 1989] Nation A lunatic editorialist at the Nation marshals some suitably goofball facts in support of another of his audience's imminent hysterias: The glaring fact overlooked in the media spasm following the beating and rape of a 28-year-old investment banker in Central Park on April 19 by teen-agers from Harlem is that attitudes sanctioning male aggression against women span race and class...
...This dit ty is more lyrical, and therefore more per nicious...
...I mean, they should've just raped her...
...Creativity, compassion and effectiveness characterize the lesbian and gay community response: the Names Project Quilt, nationwide educational and support programs and resource centers...
...we're allowed to emit sperm, but not tears...
...Judith Thomassen San Diego [May 14, 1989] Washington Post No, she is not pulling our legs—Mary McGrory really believes this...
...After comparing 84 patients who had had one heart attack with a control group that had never had a heart attack, Dutch researchers found that low toenail selenium levels indicated that a person was 4.5 times more likely to have a sudden heart attack...
...Life is so mean...
...Once a galvanizing force behind the Chicago Seven, he had become an anach ronism in the '80s, a victim of the Reagan era: The conservativism, apathy, and com placent youth...
...Rather than blame and persecution, gays deserve gratitude for their sacrifice and struggle, which affords time and information to save "sheer numbers" of American lives...
...Abbie died of a broken heart...
...No dirty tricks, no character assassination, would be allowed...
...February 22-March 1, 1989] San Diego Union More New Age dirges for he who in another age would be marked off as a simple smart aleck: Although I was just a child during the '60s, I sensed the turmoil and upheaval of the times, and no one represents that era more than Abbie Hoffman...
...Well, I cry endless tears too for the millions of unwanted animals who are born each year and for which there are no homes...
...The bartering of integrity for honor ariums and PAC contributions is far too in grained in the congressional system to be remedied merely by taking the comfortable course of promoting majority leader Tom Foley to serve as the next Speaker...
...We anarchists are used to being slandered in the establishment press...
...It chooses to refer to the street of money, to which "dreamers" flock, as the "New Jerusalem...
...We were arrogant...
...No, you won't find Wall Street in the lyrics...
...to see such mal apropos terminology appear in a progres sive publication, however, is very dis appointing...
...City hall has got to be fought tooth and nail, but how now without the great Abbie Hoffman...
...Or, will they be doomed to die because they, too, are unwanted...
...Perhaps the Democrat who best personifies this republic of virtue is former President Jimmy Carter...
...I feel pretty strongly that his greatest gift to this country is not being fully realized...
...June 19891 Dallas Times Herald The party line: AIDS already would have prevailed in America had not gay men borne the brunt of the epidemic...
...A real child of the '60s, she...
...It reminds me of that movie "The Big Chill," when the group of college friends from the '60s come to realize that they had sold out on all of their ideals...
...A poor black man told the Village Voice, whose coverage of the Central Park incident has been outstanding, that "it just don't make no sense, the way they beat her...
...What is their crime...
...They are meticulously neutral...
...Al Medwin Farmingdale Anarchists Farmingdale, NJ Editor's note: The Random House Dic tionary of the English Language, second edition, defines "anarchic" as "not regulated by law: lawless...
...1) was marred by his reference to the "anar chic army prison system...
...His reputation burnished by the elevated tone of his retirement, Carter would actually bring to the task energy, integrity and his legendary distaste for congressional business as usual...
...Disdain for the traditional legislative process a plus...
...Has anybody noticed that "Let the River Run" is the most offensive hymn to greed that these fat years have produced...
...No doubt Millie's puppies are all spoken for...
...But we were right...
...How, then, to right these institutional wrongs, when almost every member of Congress is part of the problem...
...I know it's a cultural phenomenon—we men are supposed to want sex constantly, and were not ever supposed to cry...
...We had fac tional fights...
...It is easy to picture the ad seeking applicants for the job: "Wanted—veteran statesman of high moral fiber to cleanse corruption from Capitol Hill...
...June 5, 19891 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989...
...We were brash...
...CURRENT WISDOM Washingtonian Professor Leon Wieseltier pauses from his philosophical work to hand down a learned exegesis of a basic text of the eighties: P.S.: Carly Simon has won an Oscar for her Working Girl song, to add to her Golden Globe award for the same...
...He was one of a kind and there isn't anyone to take his place...
...Michael H. Jones Dallas [May 30, 1989] Time Evidence of substance abuse in the airy pages of Time: Jim Wright's downfall and Tony Coelho's forced resignation amount to an implicit in dictment of the evanescent ethical standards that have become a way of life on Capitol Hill...
...He tested the boun daries...
...In my opinion, President Bush as the highest official in our country has set a very poor example of kindness to animals by allowing more puppies to be born...
...They are old hands at arranging debates...
...He gave his all to try to save his country, and it failed him miserably...
...No prison on earth can rightly be called "anarchic...
...We were foolish...
...It was not the lack of air that did him in—it is Exxon, the greenhouse warming that National Geographic told us about a few years ago that we are seeing in Kansas today, it is the ozone being eaten away, it is the acid rain that is killing what is still green, it is the crippling debt and the political bankruptcy wallowing in it...
...They understand how the system works...
...One puckish notion would be to take advantage of the odd quirk in the Constitution that theoretically allows the House of Representatives to reach outside its own ranks in selecting the Speaker...
...I really feel vulnerable and a tad insecure since he's gone...
...He dared to step out of line...
...Which argument Simon makes in the purest spirit of bracing, adversarial originality...
...For example, two years ago, in the wake of an incident of sexual harassment and a "Take Back the Night" march, a wolf pack of thirty-five white Princeton men roved through the campus chanting, "We can rape anyone we want...
...May 1989] Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) President George Bush caught flagrante delicto in high crimes and misdemeanors by Elgrit of Middle Smithfield: Editor, The Record: I recently wrote a letter to President Bush and his family about their dog, Millie, who just gave birth to six puppies...
...June 13, 1989] Progressive To the boat people, the drug addicts, the victims of ghastly venereal diseases, and the post-Freudian quacks, Abbie Hoffman offers hope . . . and then he was kaput: Sure we were young...
...I think the question of this generation is where did Abbie's hope go...
...May 29, 19891 Philadelphia Inquirer Notes on the martyred Abbie from another sadly uncelebrated patriot: I got to know Abbie Hoffman quite well after he arrived on the scene in Pennsylvania when he entered that nuclear battle...
...There were excesses...
...The argument of this gem is that there is some thing deep, primeval, sublime, natural, holy about venture capital...
...But I can't help wonder if their descendants, and those who follow them, will be spoken for...
...May 11, 1989] In These Times Hurt feelings and a brave pronunciamento from a devoted reader of this particular lunatic sheet—and note the witty retort: Joe Lockard's otherwise excellent article on the Israeli concentration camp (ITT, Feb...
...They are born unwanted...
...The cry is much more elusive...
...They take no nonsense from anyone...
...Most government and heterosexual response reveals irrational fear, cold-hearted bigotry and violence...
...March 1989] Vegetarian Times Scientific inquiry for forward-lookers and podiphiliacs: TOENAILS—specifically selenium levels in toenails—can indicate ones risk of a heart attack...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
