The Continuing Crisis
THE CONTINUING CRISIS • With June out of the way and the Fourth of July upon us, Americans have been given a vivid sense of precisely what the term "fiery oratory" can mean. It can mean putting...
...Certainly the Bush Administration will agree...
...Most informed observers agree it is fruitless to depict the drug traffickers as either left wingers or right wingers (although, with the possible exception of Carlos Lehder, a political oddball whom the traffickers themselves turned in, most of them prefer to identify themselves with the capitalist ruling class rather than with Marxist rebels...
...Isikoff may be coming around after all...
...David Brock replies: I had planned to apologize to Mr...
...Chicken Koop"), RET appears to criticize Surgeon General Koop for confronting head-on the nation's two leading public health problems: cigarette smoking and AIDS, which for me is tantamount to criticizing him for doing his job...
...Yet he seems to have missed virtually everything else we reported, including most significantly the growing ties between leading cartel traffickers, on the one hand, and conservative land barons and right-wing elements of the Colombian military, on the other...
...Rulon Allred, the chronically ill naturopathic physician...
...Sununu not only "cut" the deficit left by his Democratic predecessor but also balanced his first budget while paying it off...
...Miss Sukhanova, who is fivefootnine, has memorized 243 recipes for boiled cabbage and 209 for mashed potatoes, which she mashes with her own lovely feet...
...It can mean putting a match to the American flag, and a priori to any flag on American soil...
...In Moscow 17-year-old Miss Yulia Sukhanova was crowned Miss USSR after defeating thirty-four other contestants, all of whom apparently lacked the foresight to tattoo the map of Turkey above their right eyebrow...
...Sydney S. Stern, designer of the Ritz Crackers box, died at the age of 99...
...Bangs's organ playing has driven him insane to the point where he sounds very much like the Archbishop of Canterbury—albeit not so vehement...
...One of those "middle-aged radicals" RET alleges to have seen "slouching" around McNair Hall at Georgetown is only 29 —still young enough to be trusted...
...Judge Jimison has ordered Dr...
...In his second budget, he convinced the legislature to use the state's surplus to establish a "rainy day fund" which has been invested by the state treasurer to accumulate income until it is needed to cover some future shortfall in revenue...
...The shortage is particularly acute in the mauve neighborhoods of San Francisco, where sexual minorities have adopted the pricey cotton squares for such ceremonial occasions as Halloween...
...as did the left-wing journalist, Mr...
...Guy S. Paschal, 87, the developer of Airwick, an early neoconservative solution to air pollution...
...on small issues he was even more defective...
...It was unfortunate to see a small portion of our article used to bolster a wobbly case to the contrary...
...law enforcement agencies say they have detected a dramatic surge in drug smuggling flights over Cuban territory, suggesting the country is becoming a major transshipment point for cocaine traffic into the United States...
...The National Association of Diaper Services announced an alarming shortage of cloth diapers nationwide...
...Their concern is justified...
...On June 11 Judge Frank Galati of Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona ruled that five members of the polygamist LeBaron family charged with car theft can offer the jury as a defense their belief that they are justified as members of the Church of the Lamb of God in stealing from nonmembers to "further the kingdom of God...
...That is quite unnecessary, as any student of America's shifting values knows...
...Now, I'm wondering if Mr...
...Inside your magazine is a long, detailed article chronicling the petty and major crimes of these two scoundrels ("The Big Fix," by James Ring Adams...
...Robert Mapplethorpe, deceased...
...Miss Fran Allison, 81, the human component of "Kukla, Fran and 011ie" passed away, along with Mr...
...In Indianapolis, Indiana, Marion County Superior Court Judge Z. Mae Jimison got a good laugh out of courtroom coves when she judged it a "legitimate request" when a 42-year-old gentleman accused of molesting children requested that the court measure his penis, thus affirming his claim that he could not possibly have used such a bulbous device to violate an eight-yearold boy...
...Prior recipients have been President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and Presidents Tito and Ceausescu— though a move is afoot to persuade the Queen to strip the brute Ceausescu of his GCB...
...Think of it, the sight of a vial of water drawn from Lake Erie would ruin the day for one of these nincompoops, yet they perceive the sublime and the beautiful in a depiction of Joe evacuating into the mouth of Pete, which the taxpayer should pay for...
...John S. Lawton The Weirs, New Hampshire Just Doing His Job In his June 1989 article on C. Everett Koop, M.D...
...in reporting one of his more astute observations, I should have noted that his article showed no sign that he understood the implications of his own reporting...
...On June 21 the Supreme Court, by a ruling of five to four, decided that setting a flag afire is actually speech protected by the First Amendment...
...In Manila, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that a giant sea turtle towed five survivors to safety after their boat sank during a tropical storm...
...Sosuke Uno...
...The Hon...
...Ervil LeBaron, founder of the church, who died in 1981 while imprisoned in Utah for murdering Dr...
...Among the photographs were homoerotic masterpieces: rectums, penises, armpits, knees, and a rare photo of a man urinating into another man's mouth...
...The surest way to avoid sexually transmitted AIDS is to avoid sexual encounters with an HIV infected individual and the best way to do that is to abstain from sex or establish a monogamous relationship with a non-infected person...
...On AIDS: no one, including Koop, argues that condoms are better than abstinence or monogamy...
...Why shouldn't the national guardian of public health make a daily Big Deal out of that...
...I have long been fascinated...
...RET CORRESPONDENCE More Mindless Cannibalism I am holding in my hand the March 1989 American Spectator...
...The Bangs, who are in the process of divorcing after twenty-two years of marriage, probably would not live together again even if their home were not a charred hulk, for Mr...
...Mr...
...In Tehran, the Rev...
...The eventual whereabouts of the giant turtle was not reported, but Filipinos are known for making a rather tasty soup out of these ocean-going Good Samaritans...
...All this in a state which has no sales tax or state income tax...
...This is quite a bit more than can be said for his "report" of the event ("Looking for Loons," TAS, June 1989...
...Brock correctly notes our observation that the home of Mario Arango, a Medellin city council member with close ties to the city's drug cartel, is decorated with a portrait of Stalin...
...Mapplethorpe died in March of AIDS...
...Given, however, that the reality does not mesh with the ideal for millions of Americans, it seems appropriate for the chief medical officer of the United States to offer advice on reducing the risk of disease and death...
...Last month a golfer found a severed head while searching for a ball in the rough off the famed Hopewell Valley Golf Club...
...Some presumably college-educated members of the High Court have declared that desecration of the American flag is protected by the free speech provision of the Constitution...
...Now a young sport fisherman has found two legs of a dismembered woman while casting in the Pequannock River...
...Larry M. Davis to measure the accused penis "in a flaccid and turgid state," even though Dr...
...Davis has been accused of no crime, and Judge Jimison's interest can be laid to idle curiosity...
...Lee Bach was found guilty of violating a noise law by flying his three-by-fivefoot American flag near the home of Miss Gena Contreras and faces up to ninety days in the hoosegow...
...I agree with 1Yrrell's general premise that we are an overwarned society and that "regulatory nannies" (as Jeane Kirkpatrick is fond of saying) are creating here a nation of healthy hypochondriacs...
...Thomas Stephen Foley was shanghaied by fellow Democrats to become Forty-ninth Speaker of the House of Representatives...
...Bangs insists that Mrs...
...In Las Cruces, New Mexico, Mr...
...Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of premature disease and death, responsible, according to the latest peer review study, for nearly 500,000 deaths annually in this country...
...As I write to you today, less than three months after your expose appeared, one of the crooks has resigned, and the other one will certainly be gone by the end of this week—probably before you read these words...
...Koop do—preach abstinence, remain mute about the protection offered by condoms and stand by while hundreds of thousands of Americans become infected with a deadly virus...
...In Exeter, England, another felicitously named worthy, Mr...
...Jacques R. Hebert North Miami Beach, Florida THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989...
...The government of Japan got a new numero uno when the ruling Liberal Democratic party elected as prime minister the felicitously named Mr...
...Donald McFarlan, editor of the Guinness Book of World Records, announced plans to knock off forty-three gluttony records from the next edition of his venerable book of preposterosities...
...I. E Stone, 81, a man who in the large issues of his time was wrong more than 90 percent of the time...
...The cancellation prompted Miss Elizabeth Broun, acting director of the National 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 Museum of American Art, to observe that it demonstrates "just how fragile the arts community feels its position to be and how concerned they are about the future of the arts...
...The Chinese TWentyseventh Army crushed the democracy movement in Peking's Square of Heavenly Peace, and in New York organizers of the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March announced that they will not attempt to call attention to AIDS by releasing 10,000 balloons for fear that they might endanger turtles and other sea life long held to be friendly to the homosexual cause...
...Does RET know, does anyone know, can anyone find out the source/sources of all that fruit salad he wears...
...So it is back to polo, colleagues...
...Meanwhile, while the cartels have cooperated with leftist guerrillas in some coca-growing regions in the south of Colombia, they have elsewhere waged war against them...
...I'm a recovered alcoholic...
...This dramatic improvement in New Hampshire's financial situation did, as stated, lead to our regaining the AAA credit rating lost by the previous Democratic administration, with a consequent saving in interest costs...
...Tom Beatty's 21-year effort to win the annual Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee culminated in one of the most colossal sports victories of the year when his slimy thoroughbred, Heavy Metal, vaulted nineteen feet and nine and three quarter inches to win the sixtyfirst jumping of this classic...
...Evidence of the New Conservatism showed up in London, where Mr...
...Love of country has been replaced with love of nature, so let each state legislature make the burning of flags an offense against clean-air standards...
...Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died of natural causes, and two million believers promptly demonstrated that they are as given to desecrating the corpse of one of their own as they are to desecrating the corpse of an American serviceman...
...As waves of excitement spread across America over our plans to raise his face atop Mount Rushmore, former President Ronald Reagan flew to London to receive an honorary GCB, or Grand Commander of the Order of the Bath, from Queen Elizabeth II...
...Last year, a Colombian judge indicted two of the most notorious cartel traffickers— Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha—along with several military officers in a series of brutal massacres of leftist labor organizers and peasants in the Uribe banana planting region...
...The arrests came at a time when U.S...
...Michael Isikoff Washington, D.C...
...Rodriguez Gacha has also been linked to the November 1987 murder of Marxist labor leader Jaime Pardo Leal...
...According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, eight persons died and 500 were injured during the funereal orgies as thousands shredded the old boy's burial shroud for souvenirs...
...But he has hung the charge on the wrong guy—Koop, unlike so many of his colleagues in Washington, didn't waste time squishing ants, he aimed his gun at the public health elephants...
...M. Alexis Lichine, the suave internationally renowned wine expert, conked out at the age of 76...
...so at the end of June all patriotic Americans are wondering how to protect the flag from pyromaniacs...
...What would Tyne11 have Dr...
...The only gluttony entry that will remain is the greatest omnivore entry, held by a Frenchman, M. Michel Lotito, who since 1966 has consumed ten bicycles, a supermarket cart, seven television sets, six chandeliers, a coffin (empty), and a Cessna light aircraft—heavy French sauces having long been famous for concealing a multitude of culinary sins...
...Philip Averbuck Watertown, Massachusetts Drug Cartel Ideology To support his curious thesis that an alliance between Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries and Colombian cocaine traffickers is behind our current drug problems, David Brock ("The World of Narcoterrorism," TAS, June 1989) selectively quotes from a brief portion of an article of mine and Eugene Robinson in the January 8 Washington Post...
...Regarding second-hand smoke, there is solid scientific evidence of increased respiratory illness in individuals exposed to socalled passive smoking, and the headaches and tearing which occur in sensitive people is far more significant than RET's analogy of exposure to perfume...
...Several weeks after my article appeared, I picked up the front page of the Washington Post and read (I'll quote from the beginning so as not to be charged with "selectivity"): "The Cuban government said yesterday that one of its most distinguished military commanders and eight other high-level officials have been arrested on charges of drug trafficking or corruption...
...George Bangs, was convicted of setting the family house afire in protest of his wife's incessant banging on the family organ...
...I Was There First the mind goes, then the eyes...
...Eric Alterman Washington, D.0 The Great Sununu Although very much in agreement with Joe Mysak that John Sununu may well be the best hope in Washington for "the partisans of tax exemption" for municipal bonds ("The Beauty of Municipal Bonds," TAS, June 1989), I think that he has understated the achievements of our former governor...
...Outdoorsmen in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, may be spending more time in their recreation rooms and otherwise avoiding the great outdoors...
...Elizabeth M Whelan Executive Director, American Council on Science and Health New York, New York I very much enjoyed "Chicken Koop" in the June TAS...
...You and all your colleagues at TAS should feel proud of this accomplishment, and inspired to strike for new victories...
...During a rambunctious funeral in historic Mousalam Square the mourners tipped over the Ayatollah's coffin, heaving him out and exposing his bony legs, which immediately appeared on front pages all across the heathen world...
...Isikoff for having given readers the mistaken impression that he agreed with my "curious" and "wobbly" thesis about narcoterrorism...
...On June 27 President George Bush called a press conference and suggested a constitutional amendment...
...In Poland, Solidarity won practically all available seats in the Sejm and ninetynine Senate seats in Eastern Europe's freest elections in four decades...
...Possibly breaking wind is also speech and nose blowing and lighting leaves in autumn and campfires at the beach...
...On the cover are featured two (at the time) haughty and powerful stalwarts of the House of Representatives: Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho...
...A coalition of Washington artists and the criminally insane formed a National Committee Against Censorship in the Arts after the Corcoran Gallery of Art canceled a federally subsidized late-June exhibition of photography by Mr...
...On June 13 President George Bush thumped for the most stringent cleanair standards of any President in American history and no one said that driving a Volvo in Los Angeles is a matter of free speech—though if the ACLU disagrees, the Supreme Court may wave aside these antipollution standards too...
...The five defendants are the offspring of the late Mr...
...Somehow—I don't know why—I find the idea that he's a two-Martini-at-lunch man comforting...
...On June 16 twelve staff members of The American Spectator were asked to leave the Annandale Bowling Center in beautiful Annandale, Virginia, after a nearby foursome complained to the management about the staff members' "lack of bowling etiquette...
...In sports, Mr...
...Post writer Julia Preston shared the byline on the report with Michael Isikoff...
...The point is that the drug cartels have their own agenda, which transcends the boundaries of the East-West conflict...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
