Editorials/Our Dynamic Duo/The Malcontents
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
8 THE MALCONTENTS January 30, 1991 It is the onset of night, and having ists, though they would make lousy heard the evening news's latest re- 1930s Republicans. Others yelled at me ports of...
...I trundle over to Lafayette Park, across They thought that I was a government from the White House, to see what's up...
...Many Were the civilized nations of the world notified me that we should be fighting to allow the Saddams of the world to for democracy, not Arab sheiks...
...nized as such...
...But —threatened to bring in nuclear powers evolved in American society, the mal- or fanciful and were until recently recog- today crowding around these issues are and a nuclear confrontation...
...One, in fact, suggested that I had The anti-war demonstrators are milling taken his picture with a tiny camera that about and mad as hell...
...We should years to come...
...Think of those who United States faced Korean Commu- played much of a role in peace move- playwright Marston even wrote a play menace medical advances rather than nists and Vietnamese Communists, the ments of the recent past...
...Think demonstrators in front of the White tation that breathed new life into anti- and feature in literature going back to of the groups on college campuses who House will go on to some other demon-war activists and kept them alive for the seventeenth century, when his dis- insist that youth attend college but then strations when this war ends...
...Nor have many a source of drama or of laughs...
...The did indeed lead to a nuclear confron- grudges and dissatisfactions is a stand- some reason achieved solemnity...
...These mad- entitled The Malcontent...
...These were the isolation- monstrations had a serious theme, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 which was nuclear holocaust...
...They do not warn of posed to all war as the strict pacifist is impending nuclear holocaust, for the opposed to all war...
...What are these anti-war demonstra- But then these are not serious anti-war tors lathered up about...
...There is no evidence that us in early adolescence and evaporates the anti-war demonstrators are willing in the springtime of adulthood, unless to live in a world without oil or with we are doomed to the condition of the exorbitant oil prices...
...Over the last two de- people who are mad as hell...
...In American allow animal experimentation...
...The cious matters...
...When the of nuclear holocaust...
...But none of the rabble pendious wrath fetched theater-goers...
...Others yelled at me ports of Saddam's shameless brutality that we ought not be waging war over against noncombatant civilians in Tel oil—their raucous yells are understand-Aviv, against POWs in Iraq, and against able: I was well bathed, my hair neat-the birds and fishes of the Persian Gulf, ly trimmed, and I wore a trenchcoat...
...denature college curricula with books recognize them for what they are and in Lafayette Park can speak seriously Shakespeare's malcontents were always based on race, sex, and other meretri- join Shakespeare in the laughter...
...in Kuwait when we have so many prob- There was a time when anti-war delems at home...
...Are they op- demonstrators...
...In 1962 content...
...case could be made that our "limited as-hell demonstrators are the purest history few malcontents have played a Education, science, and, for that engagement' as the phrase then had it distillation of a type that has steadily role...
...Nothing our policy towards Communist Cuba The malcontent with his absurd cades, however, malcontents have for can be done to appease their anger...
...thought of Saddam incinerating the In fact, only a handful of generally be- world with nuclear bombs is too absurd spectacled bookish types had any inter- even for these patheticos to adumbrate...
...No, not many are...
...One gets the im- he believed he detected behind my earpression they were born mad as hell, or lobe...
...These, develop their war machines unmolestI suppose, were the strict Wilsonians in ed, they might indeed someday present the group, though old Woodrow would us with nuclear holocaust, but not now not be proud of such disorderly minds...
...their boom-boxes and Nintendo games...
...what would power malcontent...
...and, after American arms prevail in a Some claimed that we have no business few weeks, not for a while...
...est in or knowledge of pacifism...
...Their complaints are always petty matter, war, are all serious issues...
...that they never have gotten over that Now, of course, the blah about oil is mad-as-hell disposition that envelops not serious...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 9...
...agent...
Vol. 24 • April 1991 • No. 4
