Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM San Francisco Chronicle Poignant questions from Terri of San Anselmo: I was surprised to learn from the soldiers of First Platoon (Letters, May 23) that there are still U.S....
...Robert M. La Follette, Woodrow Wilson, and Adlai Stevenson—pretty Miss Donna Minkowitz reports from the floor of the National Lesbian Conference: Some things have changed in the lesbian world: political purism apparently no longer extends to the bedroom...
...Fascism...
...Yet there is a small percentage of such individuals who undergo what has been called delayed maturation around the age of 35 or 40 and they never commit another crime...
...In 1986, the conceptual artist within her came up with a unique solution, a calling card that read: "Dear Friend, I am black...
...It makes a kind of comical sense...
...Fascism...
...His organ stiffens with indignation over the smug philistinism that absurdly denies the dignity and truth of the human body...
...Enough...
...In the past, I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance...
...After the gulf war, we must realize that a large percentage of Americans will welcome the fascism of the triumphant military state...
...In my opinion, Kennedy has given us considerable indication that he also echoed such delayed maturation...
...The key question centers on the degree to which Kennedy is prone to drink in more than a social manner...
...Censorship started on Day Two, when a local photographer and a cartoonist handed out 300 copies of a drawing chiding the policy prohibiting the use of flash cameras...
...July 1991] Los Angeles Times A clean bill of health for EMK from one of L.A.'s leading necromancers: There is no doubt that historically Kennedy regressed psychologically on several occasions earlier in his life when he manifested asocial and antisocial behavior...
...Miller bellows entering from the rear of the space...
...What are they doing there...
...He yanks down his pants and has a very frank, emotionally charged discussion with his bared anatomy about the importance of celebrating the flesh, especially in the midst of disease and censorship and death...
...With shoulders like that, you're not gonna have any problem," one called out soothingly...
...Mickey stands tall and asks to be counted...
...It may be Adolf's century after all...
...June 16, 1991] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 43...
...Would someone let me know what's going on...
...June 22, 1991] Los Angeles Times Book Review A provocative address to the Pilgrims of Plymouth delivered three centuries after the fact by an obviously befuddled Maurice Sendak, award-winning author of children's books, to the amazed at the 1991 American Booksellers' convention: It's been brought to my attention by a number of people that Mickey, in the lithograph I prepared for this American Booksellers Assn...
...Either explanation might be correct, but of course I prefer the former...
...In fact, progressive publications like The Nation and the movement(s) they represent should enlarge their scope of concerns beyond chasing down the latest Bushian atrocity and into envisioning—and averting—a Fascist States of America by the turn of the millennium...
...like Pinocchio's nose displaced downwards (in Freud, it usually goes the other way), Mickey's penis grows in response to the lie that is censorship, the lie that says children must be protected from such a sight...
...Now, this is true—I was unaware of that detail—and I'd like to think I inadvertently touched on some significant unconscious point—and not merely that I'm guilty of bad drawing...
...troops "serving in Korea, Panama, Hawaii, Alaska, Turkey, Japan, Honduras, Europe and the Philippines...
...Conference organizers claim they can cause seizures in epileptics...
...His cheating while in college and the Chappaquiddick episode were flagrant examples of such actions on his part...
...Just this...
...I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark...
...Yet, following these events, his stability and achievements in the Senate were remarkable...
...Fascism...
...June 24, 1991]Nation For those ritualistic leftists who may have missed this idea when it was trotted out in the thirties, the forties, the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, and every few days since January 1, 1990: Fascism...
...I thought they were states, like Nevada and Oregon...
...The first of four scheduled workshops celebrating s&m was one of the best-attended and least tense events, attracting a multiracial crowd of 350 with lots of self-identified incest survivors...
...When a muscular, gorgeous 20-year-old complained that "it's not enough to learn about s&m from books, I need experience...
...It thumbs its nose—if you'll pardon the expression—at those who would pervert that truth under the unctuous guise of wholesomeness, thereby confusing and frightening children, and "teaching" them to be ashamed of what is natural and good...
...I say that because he was exposed to unbelievably intense and repetitive stress experiences, such as the assassination of two of his brothers, the alcoholism of his wife and the cancer of his son...
...349 women looked blissful...
...Terri Smith San Anselmo [May 31, 1991] Vanity Fair Vanity Fair interviews Patti Davis, 38year-old enfant terrible of Ron and Nancy, and in no time Miss Davis offers, shall we say, an advertisement for herself: In the bedroom, across from her bed, hangs a pastel painting of a woman in a white slip daintily touching her upper thigh...
...American fascism will be unlike the historical models we may be on alert against...
...After a few days, many of us wished we'd had a similar preparatory experience...
...Joel Taunton Seattle [June 24, 1991] Village Voice Life nowadays among the heirs of Messrs...
...It's good exercise...
...While claiming the moral high ground, the conservative establishment has been systematically destroying this country for most of two decades now—its schools, its unions, its protections of the poor and the old and the sick, its civil rights laws, its banking system, even its roads and bridges...
...Love...
...But we have dismissed the right-wing judgment of the Kennedys until now first because we know that what really appalls them is the Kennedys' powerful political agenda...
...Do I hear her calling for teachers...
...Sex...
...Sincerely yours, Adrian Margaret Smith Piper...
...But we need to hear this word more often, read its definition and compare it with the current national course...
...Piper, however, identifies herself as black, which—given her appearance—has made her the unintended victim of, and witness to, what she sees as persistent, semi-submerged racism in America, the primary subject of her art...
...And if he shouts brazenly—as he does—"Cock-a-doodle-doo," well, that's his democratic birthright...
...The rest of us ought to get our heads out of the sand and say the word...
...What could be more reasonable under the circumstances...
...So has Andrew Kopkind, quoting Bernie Sanders ["Imposing the New Order at Home," April 8...
...There—I've said it...
...And Ted Kennedy has stood almost alone in opposing them with any force...
...I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me...
...The metaphor dwindles...
...June 22, 1991] New Republic The venerated novelist and metaphysician James Carroll breaks the New Republic's long, stony silence and finally gives conservatism credit where credit is due, particularly our bridge policy: Conservatives, Republicans, many Democrats, most Americans perhaps, have long since concluded that the core of the Kennedy myth is rotten, that deceit is as much a part of it as fornication and adultery...
...Regarding the Palm Beach episode, it does appear that he again manifested some deviation from the "delayed maturation" by his behavior...
...Are we at war...
...Most postmodern line of the conference, also from the s&m workshop: "A beating that I had two years ago is what enabled me to get through Saudi Arabia, because it taught me I could withstand pain...
...Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are no black people present, and to distribute this card when they do...
...convention, is still the 1970 little boy he always was—but that, oddly, his privates have grown way out of proportion...
...I do anticipate that his delayed maturation will again appear on a consistent and long-term basis, much as his outstanding work in the Senate has demonstrated...
...May 21, 1991]Washington Post A night at the theater in Renaissance Washington, as described by critic Pamela Sommers—and Pamela, don't forget to wash your hands: Minutes into "Sex/Love/Stories," Tim Miller's solo program at Dance Place last weekend, it's abundantly clear why this ardent and unshackled performance artist was denied a National Endowment for the Arts grant by NEA Chairman John Frohnmayer and his advisory council...
...No one has to listen to Mickey...
...She has seen it in places she, and others, might least expect: among the middle-class and upper-middle-class self-proclaimed "liberals" who populated her youth and adolescence...
...But one mustn't castrate Mickey, and thus deny him that birthright...
...No one has to look at Mickey...
...Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative, or socially inappropriate...
...To them these ruminations must seem naive in the extreme, a long overdue examination of the liberal conscience, a further proof of our shallowness...
...It is of note, however, that some criminals manifest repetitive examples of such behavior most of their lives...
...Then, in a quieter voice: "War . . . AIDS . . ." With these big, resonant, scary words, he offers up an outline of all that is to come bursting forth from his oh-so-clever mouth...
...Alfred Coodley, MD Los Angeles [June 12, 1991] Washington Post The illustrious Style page vouchsafes the perfect dinner companion for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or the present president of Stanford University: To everyone but herself, artist-philosopher Adrian Piper looks white—not the pale, Anglo-white that yearns for the sun, but white crossed with just enough subcontinental Indian to explain the lack of pallor, the huge deeply lidded brown eyes, the fine, long wavy black hair that, at 42, has just begun to turn, of all things, white...
...And how about Hawaii and Alaska...
...It is, says Davis with a laugh, one of her favorite things, a woman masturbating, "which I do a lot myself these days since I'm not seeing anyone...
...Did they secede...
Vol. 24 • August 1991 • No. 8
