Current Wisdom

...I have no excuses or rationalizations for what I did...

...I certainly do not want to deny anyone of [sic] what I consider to be a sacred right in this country...

...Then you state: "Tandems, as they are known by the cycling savvy, never really went away...

...Thomas's lie—that nothing remotely resembling what Anita Hill said happened, happened—started out smaller than Brawley's...

...We are proud of our Soviet breasts and asses and sexual acts and exclaim joyfully, at the top of our lungs, that we have our own, home-grown erotica," said one recent article in MegapolisExpress...

...that the Senate was "ruining the country...

...movement, nor has anyone else, because there is no such movement...

...Frankly, I don't know what to say," Lan-decker said in a prepared five-paragraph statement released through his office...

...Sara D. Cohron Graduate Student, A&S [October 4, 1991] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 51...

...Landecker, 39, a two-year veteran of the council, was confronted by a security guard and a store clerk in the parking lot of the Home Improvement Center, 415 E. Gutierrez St., police reported...

...He is a Justice of the United States Supreme Court...

...October 14, 1991] New York Times In the correspondence section of America's greatest newspaper, another intellectual breakthrough: "Bikes for 2: Romantic, Now Rugged" (Business Day, Sept...

...movement" exists is being taken seriously...

...Some mornings I stand on the Kasten Street sidewalk listening to the surf and watching the odd peanut or two blow down the street toward the Mendocino Bay...

...We'd been seeing each other, on cautious terms, for a month...

...November 4, 1991] Nation A splendid example of the amazing quality of cerebration to be found almost anywhere on the pages of the distinguished Nation, save, perhaps, in its correspondence section, which is even more puerile: But I firmly believe that, whether they are literate or not, the vast majority of children would not attempt to vote before they are ready...

...He apologized to the community, and especially to his supporters, for disappointing them in what he termed a "momentary lapse...

...Yet when they are interested, as in the case of voting, they're told they are not yet ready...

...But as for what all this is—we don't know, for we never had any instruction in this sort of culture...

...I do know that the entire notion of such a movement's existence is a false construction perpetuated to make those who have always possessed agency in this country to feel as if they are being censored...

...Goodnight," we both said, our voices overlapping...

...and that he, Thomas, was the victim of a malevolent, racist conspiracy so immense that it encompassed much of the political universe...

...They haven't done badly...

...What I had originally dreaded turned out to be about the most personally and socially responsible thing I've done in a long time...

...I wonder if a Brown Pelican, California Gull, Brandt's Cormorant, Common Loon, Great Blue Heron, Coot, Surf Scoter, Black 'llirnstone, Killdeer, Oystercatcher, Grebe, Phalarope, Sandpiper Curlew, Godwit, Clapper Rail or Wandering Tattler may decide to try one of those crunchy plastic things for breakfast...

...Common sense would dictate that the shorter person sit up front and the taller person in back, where he or she could look over the driver's shoulder...

...A simple procedure, yes...

...A teacher who does not ascribe [sic] to this philosophy probably either has a priority or a personal score to settle, rather than the interests of her or his students in mind...

...The lie grew, to distract attention from its own inconsistencies...

...that "our institutions are being controlled by people who will stop at nothing...

...That is not what happens...

...October 19, 1991] New Republic Manly boasts from a New Age he-man, writing a policy piece for progressives entitled "My Vasectomy"—and just when we thought Miss Anita Hill had doomed the New Openness forever: In the days following my operation, the minor discomforts ("In the next week," my doctor told me, "gravity will be your enemy and your jockstrap will be your friend") were well outweighed by the good feelings that came from finally doing my part...

...I walked up the dark path to my house and opened the door...

...Daniel Farber Worcester, Massachusetts [October 2, 1991] Santa Barbara News-Press Another rising American politician polishes his skill in the exacting art of public apology, in preparation for the long tenure he will undoubtedly someday have in the United States House of Representatives: Santa Barbara City Councilman David J. Landecker was stopped and cited Sunday at a Santa Barbara home and garden store after he allegedly switched price tags on a garden tool handle, reducing the price by $8.20...

...The councilman on Monday acknowledged the wrongdoing...

...But as I opened the car door, I was mentally closing the door on this man, who was never sure whether we were involved or not...

...But Clarence Thomas has done better...

...To question Brawley's tale was to become a party not only to her victimization but to the victimization of black women by white men since the beginning of time...

...October 14, 1991] Vanderbilt Hustler A prodigy of American higher education speaks out cogently and lucidly, displaying the quality of mind we have come to expect from enlightened Americans enrolled in one of the Republic's finest graduate schools for a decade or SO: A young man like Dinash [sic] D'Souza has ascribed [sic] to the conservative mania prevalent in this country that many educators are Orwellian totalitarians in disguise...

...Brawley began with a relatively small lie, designed to save her some grief at home: some white men abducted her, and that's why she was out all night...

...Education is about asking questions, not giving or forcing answers...

...In its search for uniquely male experiences that are socially constructive, the new men's movement would do well to consider vasectomy...

...Today Tawana Brawley is a minor celebrity on her college campus, and Al Sharpton remains a prominent "activist" in New York...

...In their expedition into the great outdoors the man's share is the great outdoors and the woman's share is 12 square inches of the noble male's back...

...I know no faculty member at Vanderbilt that [sic] has passed out the latest propaganda announcing the next P.C...

...September 24, 1991] New Republic After a clandestine mission into Judge Clarence Thomas's brain, the fearless Hendrik Hertzberg returns to tap out belles lettres of surpassing beauty and inventiveness: One thinks, in this connection, of Tawana Brawley, and of Al Sharpton...

...But it grew much bigger, big enough to engulf a nation, and by the end Thomas was telling an audience of tens of millions that he was being lynched, assassinated, and destroyed...

...The male, who is almost always the taller, sits up front at the controls...

...Enter Sharpton, and the small lie became a big lie, until an entire community was riven by racial bitterness and demagogy...

...But the last few years have seen a spurt of growth, thanks in large part to family-oriented fitness enthusiasts, graying baby boomers and some new technology borrowed from mountain bikes:' You could have mentioned that nowhere is male chauvinism more arrogant, or female subservience more pitiful, than on the tandem bike...

...I think I would not have voted until I was 8 or 9, but perhaps if I had known I could vote I would have taken an interest sooner...

...And a simple virtue...

...What frightens me is that this outlandish claim that a "P.C...

...My dog's kisses are never timid...

...I personally prefer to prioritize the education of the student over ones own personal viewpoints...

...That's my last date with him," I told my dog, leaning down so she could lick my face...

...Our goodnight kiss was a timid, closed-mouth one, notable only because four hours earlier, we'd been making passionate love on my bed, and there was nothing timid about our kisses then...

...7) reports that the bicycle built for two is coming back into style...

...Interest follows hand in hand with readiness, something that is easy to see as a home schooler but that is perhaps not so clear to many people in this society where, ironically, children are continually taught things when they are not ready, and so are not interested...

...meeting on campus...

...As a graduate student and an educator, I do not want to abolish or eradicate anything...

...October 1991] Mendocino Beacon The astounding ornithological learning of Tony Miksak, owner of the Gallery Bookshop and Bookwinkle's, two cultural meccas not to be missed when next you hit downtown Mendocino—and forget not that Tony can also tell you the names of 243 types of rodents, 333 types of amphibians, and 7,000 types of insects...

...In fact, I have never so much as uttered that I am running as president-elect of the P.C...

...September 19, 1991] New York Times Another futile essay into wit from the insufferable Anna Quindlen, the Times's resident feminist scold: It is difficult for me to imagine the same dedication to women's rights on the part of the kind of man who lives in partnership with someone he likes and respects and the kind of man who considers breast augmentation surgery self-improvement...

...This was drop-off, curbside service...

...So with the cry, 'Hurrah for perestroika!', we lump together Rubens, sex, erotica, the Marquis de Sade and German sheepdogs...

...Getting one was a small but clear way of putting my body ever so slightly on the line so that my wife could take hers ever so slightly off...

...September 4, 1991] Esquire Miss Patti Davis, that Vesuvius of hormones and brains, goes to the dogs: My date stopped the car in front of my house, obviously not intending to get out himself...

...It was stupid, wrong and a violation of everything I stand for...

...Publishers have discovered that plastic "peanuts" are a quick and cheap way to fill in the gaps around books before shipping...