Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
Village Voice The venerable Voice of New York, New York, falters into reactionary "ableism" and dons a condign dunce cap: In her review of Nancy Friday's most recent book on women's sexual...
...For me, there is no question...
...Another woman reported, "A month ago, he threw scalding water over me, leaving a scar on my right arm, all because I gave him a pie with potatoes and vegetables for his dinner, instead of fresh meat...
...After the repression which ended '60s activism, there was talk about this society being headed for fascism...
...Visions ran through my mind of the political prisoner in A Tale of Two Cities who was kept in a dungeon for many years...
...Homeowners can prevent a major cause of bird killing by requiring architects to use angled or nonreflective glass and by retrofitting windows with an external covering...
...As it is now, readers never know when they are going to be hit with a piece of flying mud...
...Smith is correct that prejudices of the body run deep, and I thank her for calling me on mine...
...The Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Migratory Bird Management introduced me to the expert on this subject, Dan Klem, when I was preparing a booklet on backyard bird problems...
...February 18, 1992]New Republic In a fleeting discourse on "family values," Sid Blumenthal goes Mediterranean: The timing of these events conspired to favor Clinton...
...We can determine what is a normal odor and a normal amount of discharge for ourselves, and we can seek medical attention when we think it is necessary...
...I experienced a momentary rush of satisfaction in actually putting my beliefs on the line for a cause—despite allthe meetings, debating, and writing, it had come down to this...
...And if any woman was sympathetic, it was not the gaudy Gennifer Flowers, but Hillary Clinton...
...Believing that they are being denied their maleness by being denied their meat, husbands often lash out at their spouses...
...Now I knew of the educating Magic was talking about...
...Unlike Clarence Thomas, he went first—before the accuser could establish herself as a sympathetic presence...
...Women, we have been told that our crotches stink, that they are dirty and hold some lurking evil...
...February 3, 1992] 82 The American Spectator April 1992 New Indicator (University of California, San Diego) Prettily put dicta to the benighted, albeit sweet-smelling students of U. Cal, S. D.: To douche or not to douche...
...Keep playing, Magic...
...Don't believe it...
...The upshot of the tale, of course, was the French Revolution...
...Eleanor Smith Atlanta Judith Levine replies: I regret very much having committed an offhand act of ableism...
...February 3, 1992] City on a Hill Press (University of California, Santa Cruz) Logorrhea on paper, from a Heroine of Our Times: Elfland is where I decided to take a stand against those forces which I see strangling the character of UCSC as an appendage of society as a whole...
...I was placed in a bunker-type room which was mentally tortuous...
...Come back to the NBA...
...We have been taught that to be whole members of society—and even to be liked or loved—we must change our natural scent and reduce the amount of our vaginal discharge...
...Fall 1991]Nation Another Nation writer appeals to Amnesty International: The simple guitar hook that threads through Michael Jackson's new single "Black or White" (Epic) owes its life to Keith Richards, twenty or thirty years ago...
...Keep reinventing the game until all the fear and stupidity about this awful virus slink off of their own embarrassment...
...December 1991] Whole Earth Review Proof that artistic innovation remains possible even in a Dark Age, as demonstrated by the strangely unaccoladed Jim Nollman: How about a whale film entitled Talking to Beluga...
...Heidi Hughes Vice President American Backyard Bird Society Jefferson, Maryland [February 4, 1992] The American Spectator April 1992 83...
...A tap dancer on a metal raft...
...Some of us deserve another chance...
...I really don't like the song except "in a shallow sort of way," as a clever friend of mine, the head of A&R [Artists and Repertoire] for a major label, said of his own attachment to it...
...Invite a guitarist, a rap musician, a ceremonialist, a synchronized swimmer, an ice sculptor, a psychic, a chanting Tibetan lama...
...I attribute it to the depth of terror disability arouses in non-disabled people, as well as the profundity of personal change needed to acknowledge that there is such a thing as ableism, and to learn about, recognize, and challenge its manifestations...
...Come to the Summer Olympics...
...Klem's studies show that the scare techniques you mention, falcon silhouettes and owl decals, do not significantly reduce window deaths...
...Articles in the Voice specifically about disability (most recently, by Nat Hentoff and Mary Johnson) have tended to respect and understand disability...
...As I stepped in front of the advancing pickup truck, images ran through my mind of myself as the pro-democracy demonstrator in China who had stepped in front of an advancing tank...
...Those so-called "feminine" sprays and washes, those douches of all chemical concoctions, and even those baby powder tampons, they are developed by our capitalist society to convince us that we need to purge or disguise the evil of our vaginas...
...You don't have to be afraid of him," she said simply...
...With information and trust in our own thinking, we can demand non-oppressive health care...
...As it turned out, I spent that one day in jail...
...Disabled people having sex is per se "kinky...
...Don't believe the hype...
...Now that I know it's not just a few birds, I've chosen to cover my killer windows with bird netting...
...They are designed to create insecurities in order to exploit them for profits...
...Sex "for" the disabled...
...February 17, 1992] Sports Illustrated An edict from the Ministry of Sport: And it was while luxuriating in Magic-ness again that the lesson was learned...
...Hillary Clinton's statements had an authentic air to them, making her husband's defense appear more than politically expedient...
...Their rage is sometimes violent and uncontrollable...
...While George Bush—all whiteness—talks about "family values," the Clintons demonstrate them by confessing to adultery...
...Vaginal scents and secretions are natural and certainly normal...
...But frequently, offhand remarks appear in other articles and in reviews that demonstrate an absence of recognition that disability is political, not an oddity or an individual misfortune...
...Unfortunately, Brown does not yet seem to have a plan...
...After all, this is the current protocol for breast cancer detection...
...I'm not asking for censorship of such remarks, but I am asking for editing that sends a piece back to the writer pointing out ableism, and asking the writer whether he or she wants to stay with what they've written...
...It was for every AIDS patient who has heard the hostess at the dinner party whispering, "Just don't let him kiss the kids...
...Across the way, Magic's mother, Christine, had a calming look on her face...
...Rather than between people expressing their sexualness...
...We must not let them convince us that their products somehow improve us...
...It was about the patients...
...You did not go far enough in "Windows Near Bird Feeders Can Pose a Deadly Threat" (Science Times, December 31, 1991...
...Keep teaching...
...Authorities report that many men use "the absence of meat as a pretext for violence against women...
...Sometime in the last two minutes, between the moment Magic took on Michael Jordan one-on-one and the swishfest he put on at the end from the three point circle, I forgot, just for a second, about somebody on the court having...
...If we question authorities that dictate from a place of capitalist interest, from douche and tampon corporations, right up to our own health care professionals, we can once and for all dispel this myth of the "evil vagina...
...As he insists, the way to get a decent health care system, to convert military excess to domestic production, to restore the integrity of devastated communities and to create a world without want is to make a revolution that will allow ordinary people to participate in social decisions now made exclusively by the elites...
...Said one battered wife, "It would start off with him being angry over a trivial little thing like cheese instead of meat on a sandwich...
...The real feminist canceled out the fake one...
...Klem, an associate professor at Muhlenberg College, may be the only ornithologist to consider "plate glass predation" worthy of study...
...January 23, 1992] New York Times Yet another critic of modern architecture clears his or her throat: The widespread, persistent and increasing loss of wild birds (a high estimate of 976 million fatalities) from window collisions (not just winter feeders, but through the year, particularly during migration) contrasts sharply with the relatively meager losses from such catastrophes as oil spills, pesticides and collisions with vehicles...
...The disabled...
...Only here there were plenty of police on hand to stop the process, and I was arrested by the UCSC police...
...Like a lot of people I know, I'm a prisoner of pop...
...A phrase that objectifies, connotes radical differences and distance...
...Its swaggering bass line and percussion breakdown are right out of Stevie Wonder...
...February 17, 1992]The Great Books Series For the progressive intelligentsia of this world—all scrawny and shivering and pallid—the demagogue Jeremy Rifkin provides food for thought: If there were any lingering doubt as to the powerful symbolism Western cultures still attach to meat and machismo, the statistics linking domestic violence and quarrels over beef are both revealing and compelling...
...Be sure to let the whales themselves initiate the interaction...
...Not for the playoffs...
...The patented squeals and muddled, treacly sentiments are Jackson's...
...The results of his nearly two decades of research have been published in journals, including an article on prevention techniques for Living Bird, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's popular magazine, in 1985...
...And you will help me to educate the people tomorrow...
...The scents are beautiful and we need no baby-powdered tampons or flowery douches to make us "better women...
...I analyzed all the markings on the floor as well as all the graffiti on the walls...
...So does the tune's catchy combination of acoustic and electric guitars...
...Or a neon artist...
...So what's my problem...
...From: Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, by Jeremy Rifkin, Dutton, 353 pages, $21] Nation Whilst appraising the presidential candidacy of the Mullah Brown (former governor of California and future self-propelled astronaut), a quaint editorialist demonstrates that at the venerable Nation 1968 has never ended: No other Democratic candidate this year even begins to make the radical connections between war, politics and corporate power that Brown sees as the matrix of the one-party state and the dictatorship of the incumbents...
...And that's when I realized it was not about basketball...
...It hurt so much to see the convoy of loggers' pickup trucks begin driving into Elfland that I felt compelled to step in front of the gates to block them and make a statement that they had no right to be logging here because local people were taking action to stop the logging after their right to a hearing, which local elected county officials appealed for, was unjustly denied...
...The rap is a nod to that format's growing dominance of early- and preteen taste...
...Absolutely not...
...Village Voice The venerable Voice of New York, New York, falters into reactionary "ableism" and dons a condign dunce cap: In her review of Nancy Friday's most recent book on women's sexual fantasies ["Different Strokes," January 14], Judith Levine says of sex books she looked at as a child, "Some were even kinky, like the illustrated handbook on sex for the disabled...
...Instead of the usual gang of whale scientists, why not ask a few creative artists up to the Arctic and film them attempting to communicate with one of these fascinating, beautiful, most intelligent, and least known creatures on the planet...
...I took a stand at Elfland to protect the environmental and cultural character of this campus, and also to fight fascism by demanding democracy because it has been systematically denied in this instance...
...This is a curious, harmful absence in people presumably on the left...
...The players here today helped me educate the people," he said to the press afterward...
...Today, in the '90s, it has gone so far to the right that any kind of dissent is almost impossible...
...And I absolutely hate the video, except for a technical admiration for the seamless editing so many millions can buy...
...But I've been bopping to "Black and White" every day now for the last two weeks...
...It was for every HIV-positive who has locked himself away and comes out only to shop for tombstones...
Vol. 25 • April 1992 • No. 4
