Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette A statement of conscience uttered just before the Secret Service move in armed with Dr. Donna Shalala's Speech Code for the Nation: Sitting around the office today, we...
...Moving from the public domain of abolitionist politics to the privacy of lyric poetry, Sanchez-Eppler argues that attention to the physical body blurs the boundaries between public and private...
...May we foresee and be prepared for all contingencies...
...November 22, 1992...
...December 13, 1992] The Review (Bainbridge Island, Washington) Mrs...
...I think it's great...
...And may we make history that lasts longer than our solar system...
...only members who have ready access to another copy of JAMA may want to exercise it...
...December 8, 1992] San Francisco Bay Guardian In one of the last revolutionary organs left in the Republic, UC Berkeley Prof...
...We all agreed on the kind of seasoning Bill needs to use on his food: saltpeter (potassium nitrate...
...Yet, to be fair, it wasn't just Reagan we were angry at: It was the country, for electing him—not once but twice...
...There is enough evil in the world without giving it a day to celebrate itself...
...30 described signs that the American economy may be recovering...
...Spring 1993] Associated Press The sublime Miss Risa Denenberg ushers feminism from the realm of mere pest politics onto the lofty New Age plateau of performance art: Risa Denenberg believes so strongly in a woman's right to abortion that she has had several, performed in people's homes, even though she wasn't pregnant...
...To write your prescription for a healthier planet and voluntarily waive your JAMA subscription, detach and mail this postage-paid card today...
...December 14, 1992] The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee) Paul A. Speer and Susan E. Avery issue a rebarbative little bull, demonstrating what happens when teacher's pet reaches adulthood: As the holiday season approaches we submit the following declaration of wishes: May the good work of building a new civilization proceed smoothly and efficiently...
...November 1, 1992] University of California Press The long-awaited announcement of Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body, by Karen Sanchez-Eppler, assistant professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College, just another proof that the American university is in the hands of the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Huns: In this striking study of the pre—Civil War literary imagination, Karen Sanchez-Eppler charts how bodily difference came to be recognized as a central problem for both political and literary expression...
...November 18, 1992] Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia) An anonymous editorial writer sucks up to Hillary: If President-elect Clinton lifts the ban on homosexuals in the military, Gen...
...Things didn't get better when the freewheeling '80s rolled around...
...We recognize that this option may not be for everyone...
...The headline referred to "the Clinton recovery," and the first sentence referred to "the Clinton expansion...
...But college students tend to be liberal, and for most of us Reagan was a reviled figure, embodying the opposite of all that mattered to us, and not just because of his age...
...There was a deep sense of awe and responsibility...
...Although the article reported suggestions that part of the recovery was due to a psychological reaction to the election of Bill Clinton, most of the statistical evidence of improvement should have been more directly linked to the Bush Administration...
...Sanchez-Eppler warns against exaggerating the positive links between literature and politics, however...
...Bill Clinton," Emma answered...
...Sue asked Emma...
...The Gipper's prime lasted from 1981 to 1986, before Iran-contra and lame duck status hit home...
...Drawing analogies between black and female bodies, feminist-abolitionists use the public sphere of antislavery politics to write about sexual desires and anxieties they cannot voice directly...
...By reading a colleague's copy of JAMA, you can help reduce the amount of paper waste going into landfills—perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing our planet today...
...Insincere, hollow, anti-intellectual, Reagan championed hostile positions on the social issues we cared about—abortion rights, racial justice, gay and women's rights...
...Ronald Reagan...
...Richard Morgan Little Rock [December 14, 1992] JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) More desperate measures taken on behalf of the failing planet Earth, this time by the gray lice who have finally subjugated the AMA: In response to a growing number of members concerned about environmental issues, we are offering all of our members a chance to write a new kind of prescription for JAMA and a healthier planet...
...Expectations are getting higher all the time...
...Powell and everyone else all the way down the chain of command will only have to do what people' in the military are trained to do: Follow orders...
...You should still read JAMA every week for up-to-date medical information you can use every day...
...You now have the opportunity to waive your membership subscription to JAMA for the sake of the environment...
...Sally Frease makes history: There is a feeling that has been growing inside of me for a long time, and I feel now is the time to do something about it...
...He mocked government's ability to better people's lives, and cared little about finding a substitute...
...November 18, 1992] City Pages (Minneapolis, Minnesota) On the correspondence page of a great metropolitan gazette, the highly respected Miss Maria Bamford suggests improvements for the real world: I just wanted to say the article about Nike's natural woman ads ("Pretty on the Inside," 11/25) was just fantastic...
...It quoted business people and economists who were beginning to see signs of improvement...
...There are all these women that are supposedly more powerful now because we are stronger physically when in fact we are spending four hours a day in the gym when we could be writing a book or making a speech or debating feminist aspects of life...
...The 42-year-old nurse practitioner waits until she is about to menstruate and then volunteers so small "self-help" groups can learn how to suction the contents of her uterus into a jar with a syringe and tubing...
...and we'll probably carve pumpkins (happy faces, not scary ones...
...The money allocated from your dues will be diverted to other important AMA programs such as the National Coalition of Physicians Against Family Violence and Health Youth 2000, to name two...
...Denenberg, who lives in the Bronx, and hundreds of other women around the country regularly get together to practice menstrual extraction, a technique that a group of Los Angeles feminists developed in 1971 after observing equipment in an underground abortion clinic...
...It won't be wrapped candy, but rather something special we have made...
...It's not the candy, or the costumes, or the pumpkins, but it' s the "yucky" side of all of these things...
...December 2, 1992] Washington Post More of the same from one Richard Blow on his fellow 20-year-olds: But don't blame us if we're a grim bunch—it's not our fault...
...I know I am not alone in my opinion, but this year I want to do something about it in a positive way...
...Our earliest conscious years had a bleak backdrop: Watergate, gas shortages, inflation, the hostages in Iran...
...I have a genuine dislike for Halloween...
...we will probably take along a bag in case those to whom we give would like to give us treats...
...Those were also the twentysomethings' formative college years...
...Donna Shalala's Speech Code for the Nation: Sitting around the office today, we were talking about all the different foods that might be served at the White House now that Hillary and Bill finally made the big time...
...At a time when we were desperate for a leader, we got...
...May our cities be flawless in design and structural form, able to withstand any geologic, climactic [sic] or possibly even cosmic event...
...May we unite in the goal of survival for our descendants hundreds of millions of generations from now...
...June Jordan manifests the old "to the barricades" esprit in all its brass and heroism: A few days after the election, my friend Sue was reading a Curious George book to her Emma, her daughter who is almost 2. Near the end of the book, a little boy's balloon gets caught in a tree...
...May we develop our agricultural skills with the realization that our future is to live with plants...
...I would like my family to "celebrate" Halloween by GIVING treats door-to-door, rather than just getting them...
...That makes the military a particularly easy place to accomplish social change...
...Reagan was popular among some students, who found him a welcome antidote to the anxious Jimmy Carter...
...We will probably still dress in "good guy" costumes (it makes giving anonymous...
...May our education be practical and our information be free...
...Her readings of sentimental antislavery fiction, slave narratives, and the lyric poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson demonstrate how these texts participated in producing a new model of personhood, one in which the racially distinct and physically constrained slave body converged with the sexually distinct and domestically circumscribed female body...
...December 5, 1992] New York Times A pained communiqué from the Kultursmog: A front-page article on Nov...
...Who do you think can get the balloon down for that little boy...
...I was never concerned anyone would do anything risky...
...Everyone would go to the ends of the Earth to make you comfortable," she said...
Vol. 26 • February 1993 • No. 2
