Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE
................................................................................................................................ The Jane and Jill Letters Readers may be wondering...
...Reed argues that Christians must address a wide range of issues because religious values "inform every aspect of our lives...
...Brotman was serving to the public...
...It is particularly egregious, since we were happy to oblige your request for an interview, that you didn't bother to ask about most of the outlandish claims in your article...
...Stein's criteria...
...Brock supposedly told them that "The American Spectator has no intention of printing our rebuttal" is, as we said in a letter to them, preposterous, "inasmuch as we do not model ourselves on the New Yorker...
...Having just obtained acquittals for a security guard accused of attempted murder while defending the Drug Enforcement Agency's Manhattan parking lot against a suspected terrorist, and a youthful Russian immigrant charged with an assault on an off-duty Transit Authority police officer who had just shot his com panion to death, it is difficult to understand what evidence he considered in reaching his appraisal...
...There are such a dizzying number that it is fruitless to enumerate them all-particularly since you have already told us that The American Spectator has no intention of printing our rebuttal...
...Stein could pay the agent by credit card, securing certain legal safeguards in case the airline did something heinous...
...Corry did not make, however, is the political significance of the fact that the efforts all occurred within the week before the November 8 election that produced the emergence nationally of more black conservatives who reject the failed nostrums the liberal/Democrat elites have been feeding them for thirty years...
...But you overlooked an even more portentous passage in her forty-six words...
...Surely somebody here is knowingly telling lies or being maliciously indifferent to the truth, so a libel action ought to be possible...
...As for the subject matter under discussion, I think conservatives should be leery...
...See, e.g., Focl6ir Poca (Pocket Dictionary), English-Irish/Irish-English, published by An Gum, Dublin...
...Thank you...
...Byron's less-thansatisfactory reply to them...
...Bay Shore, New York I have finally discovered why I cannot call myself a conservative: Conservatives are mean-spirited...
...Frederick C. Thayer Senior Fellow for Education Policy University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Questions About Charity William Tucker's "Sweet Charity" (TAS, February 1995) is a window on the extent to which private charity has become an adjunct of the state...
...In the pursuit of happiness, high intelligence may create unequal prospects, but virtue is the great equalizer...
...Kent Guida Houston, Texas Ben Stein has only himself to blame for being victimized by doltish airline personnel...
...So, the problem is: Why didn't you light into AARP as well...
...law firm had to attend night school taught by a government bureaucrat to improve her writing skills...
...Burton E. Brush Rapid City, South Dakota The recent "fur flying" over the "deviltry" in direct mail has given me long pause for thought...
...I have observed this type of behavior by college conservatives when, as an undergraduate, I would read the Dartmouth Review...
...The advanceissue boarding passes are also excellent protection against overbooking...
...They...
...Ben's report leaves me with the feeling that I have just held a long intimate conversation with a dear friend of many years' standing...
...Thus, those of us who use travel agents are being slightly subsidized by those who do not...
...Finally somebody has had the courage to say what many of us conservatives have felt and known about Mary Matalin...
...William M. Kunstler New York, New York More Jane and Jill I am writing in regards to Mr...
...John R. Swisher Columbus, Ohio David Brock has put the brakes on the rumor mills that are directed toward irrevocably linking Thomas with depravity in Washington the way Fatty Arbuckle was associated with debauchery in Hollywood in the 1920s...
...Brock...
...There is no reason to believe that people with low IQ's would be more likely to commit crimes, divorce, drop out of school, remain unemployed, have children out of wedlock, or have low birthweight babies were it not for the pervasive and dramatic decline of our society's character-building institutions...
...I am not sufficiently informed, at the moment, to tell which is the accurate evaluation...
...entry into WWII, was captured in North Africa and remained a POW until his escape in 1945...
...Most of the people who are incapable of scoring 140 on an IQ test are capable of listening to their elders, following good examples, developing good habits, and thereby acquiring the virtues necessary for leading good and happy lives...
...When that failed, you then made up negative statements that they tell us they never made...
...Stein now has the information he needs to spend money instead in a way that will more nearly insure that he and Tommy get to their vacations...
...If you miss out on Ed Rollins, you can still hire Charlie Black or Stu Spencer...
...Al Hunt's "Capital Gang" attack on the professional credentials of Ms...
...I dropped Seniors Coalition like a coal right out of the fireplace...
...Brock and Ms...
...I guess on second thought Ms...
...Brock to reassure those who have trusted him by bringing legal action...
...After Mr...
...John Podhoretz hit it on the head in his December review of the Matalin-Carville book All's Fair when he stated, "Mary Matalin calls herself a conservative, but she was legendary in the 1992 election cycle for her tone-deafness about the vitality of the conservative message...
...As for the failure of Herrnstein and Murray to produce satisfying recommendations, I'm not surprised...
...Regarding the problem of college admissions-wouldn't the pressure be ameliorated somewhat if the government stopped encouraging folks to seek higher education...
...It is at once both the best description of the book and the most cogent analysis of it that I have read...
...These leaders inflame public opinion by refusing to take any responsibility for what happens...
...Even if you were trying to be satirical, it was a terrible joke...
...Hunt's unpardonable and rude behavior arose because Ms...
...We can be reasonably confident that a secular public agency could not or would not...
...Brock...
...This lack of respect for these men who have served in the United States Senate and even run for the presidency is appalling...
...Perhaps the next gun aimed at the White House will be that of an M-1 tank manned by Hillary...
...If Christians settle for that, they "do our religious beliefs an injustice and fail society as well...
...If everyone had an IQ of 140, presidents, Congress and the Federal Reserve would ensure, as they have been doing, that joblessness and stagnating incomes would not improve...
...If Gingrich is No...
...One point that Mr...
...Oh yes: if time is a factor, a good agent will not even require Mr...
...The real bosses are those who influence entire voting blocs...
...We need to see this matter laid out in open court, because I do not see how one can go on indefinitely taking Mr...
...Mona Charen and Mr...
...It is indeed ironic that the egalitarian left, by "liberating" us from the pinching constraints of things like virtue, duty, and the amiable conformism essential to genuine social responsibility, has destroyed the equalizing force of virtue, delivering us into today's Hobbesian world in which only the shrewdest survive and in which social inequality is widening to match the full range of intellectual inequality...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 11) tents...
...When "Capital Gang" came on Saturday-I became furious...
...But that doesn't mean the abortion issue should be put off indefinitely...
...This letter is not part of an "orchestrated letter writing campaign," since I do not know any of the direct-mail crowd...
...Brock's invaluable work, those rascals could succeed in their never-ending smear campaign...
...As for "cashing checks from mobsters and terrorists," he should know by now that I did not charge for any services rendered to John Gotti and the Islamic fundamentalists indicted in connection with the World Trade Center bombing and the alleged conspiracy to blow up such New York City landmarks as the Holland Tunnel and the U.N...
...When character is no longer infused with virtue-when people no longer have consciences-the lowest desires determine behavior, and one's shrewdness in calculating selfish advantage determines one's level of success...
...Changing this situation will take more than simply removing the perverse incentives of the social welfare system-necessary though this may be...
...Beannacht De leat...
...Stein means halyards, not lanyards...
...This tidbit of information to me is unbelievable...
...The psychologists, having isolated something they can measure with precision, deprive it of moral force-the characteristics we should deem praiseworthy are those we can affectand are left with tests and statistics, and a perilous pride in their science...
...Richmond B. Sullivan Arlington, Virginia Early in December it was my good fortune to hear David Brock on Chicago Talk Radio...
...Strange Justice indeed...
...He learns to live with his score, to maximize his returns by determination, hard work, courage, and the like...
...Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson The Wall Street Journal Washington, D.C...
...Tim Ferguson Los Angeles, California First Things First I always read Ben Stein's Diary first...
...In Ben Stein's Diary, his friend Hilda is an example of a prolife heroine...
...Charen declared the Mayer-Abramson twaddle to be an outrage...
...As the fastest growing magazine in America, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR offers a superb value for a wide range of advertisers...
...Armed with Mr...
...As a regular subscriber to The American Spectator, neither Mr...
...In the January 1995 Continuing Crisis, you reported At Hunt died...
...I was shocked when I read the report and called the newspaper and a television station to see if they knew about it...
...Louis, Missouri I agree with David Brock...
...Were it a trip with only carry-on luggage, Mr...
...Single issue pro-lifers don't have the clout...
...I have been in the advertising and public relations business for over fifty years and have established a good relationship with the news media...
...The New Yorker is the publication that declined to give Mr...
...There are serious constitutional issues involved in such cases and I am always reminded of Justice Felix Frankfurter's perceptive observation that much of the law buttressing civil liberties in this country "grew out of cases where the last names of the defendant ended in vowels...
...Historically, six percent is high unemployment, other than in Great Depressions that were not as long (1890s, 1930s...
...Readers may wish to consult the writing of Richard Comuelle on this subject...
...Working on other issues-crime, taxes, education-will strengthen our voice on matters of conscience, not weaken it," he writes...
...If Mr...
...If that is the focus of the article then there is no need to insult the two writers, who are arguably your colleagues in the field of journalism...
...Brock's meticulously researched Spectator report, I pointed out several of the reportorial and investigative errors of Mayer-Abramson that had been compounded by Ms...
...The February issue letters have confirmed my concerns...
...Hunt further charged Mr...
...So far, other than the two brief letters to Mr...
...It is imperative for posterity and our country's future that men like John H. Taylor continue to set the record straight...
...She clings to every last stupid idea about why Bush lost...
...Earl Holt III St...
...The policy has been very effective for two decades in causing a decline in real wages, and creating professionals who cannot repay education loans...
...It may be that the nonprofit sector, though employing a smaller payroll, nevertheless proves a more effective lobby for increased welfare spending than would a public bureaucracy devoted to the same purpose...
...This kind of irresponsible reporting should never be associated with conservative beliefs...
...Despite my accusation, you are not alone...
...Without Mr...
...Brock space to reply to the Mayer-Abramson review of his book The Real Anita Hill that it ran back in 1993...
...The Tulsa World is our only newspaper and is extremely liberal, but they respect me and publish most of my letters to the editor...
...And, of course, travel agents' fees come from the airlines: there is no charge to the ticket buyer...
...That makes the burden on him-to do the right thing, to go against the flow if necessary, to press ahead on moral issues even when his Republican allies are leery-all the heavier...
...While its vitriol is wholly in keeping with your publication's political bent, its sheer unfairness and inaccuracy make me wonder whether both he and you have abandoned all pretense at honest journalism...
...Byron is not a bit different from a large number of writers in the liberal media...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 71) the USPO, copy of TAS, the first place I turn to is The Continuing Crisis...
...I think the time has come for you or Mr...
...In effect, Mr...
...Paul, Minnesota Hooray for Hilda...
...leading the change...
...William D. Moeder Fairfield, Connecticut Matalin Monroe Thank you...
...While I have no intellectual objection to Mr...
...higher education system...
...That juicy retroactive Borking of Justice Thomas last November has become the Wall Street Journal's Janet Cooke affair...
...Brock's word for all this, no matter how congenial his account of events is to one's prejudices...
...Even legitimate and unforeseen difficulties can affect a traveler imprudent enough to show up an hour in advance of a flight with tickets still unwritten...
...You write that we never interviewed sources with whom we've talked repeatedly and you have us meeting with people we've never laid eyes on...
...I wonder if the law students at the University of Oklahoma "lucky" enough to have her as a professor know of this fact...
...The bipartisan public policy is that unemployment rates must remain at or above six percent in order to keep wages and salaries low enough to prevent inflation...
...As someone who has averaged twenty business trips yearly for thirty years, I can testify that travel agents have saved me vast amounts of time and sums of money...
...You didn't give Anna enough credit...
...supplement, "Womanews...
...On the other hand, one can certainly not believe detestable people like Rich unless their accuracy is vindicated by public sworn testimony...
...Gore...
...Paul Locke Tulsa, Oklahoma Some Gall Thanks to John Corry for mirroring my reaction to the media mob's participation in the transparent effort "to lynch Clarence Thomas" ("Playmates of the Month," TAS, January 1995...
...In fact, Mary's liberal counterpart in the beginning, Jane Wallace, who by the way asked far tougher questions of Democrats than "conservative" Mary, was the only thing standing between Mary's making a love connection with her moderate and liberal guests in front of a national audience...
...She may be on to something...
...I like to feel like that...
...I graduated from law school and do not recall ever having a law professor who had to attend night school to improve his or her writing skills...
...A recent CBS "expose" of that organization made it sound a lot worse than TAS did...
...If that happens, Reed and the Christian Coalition will have gained strange new respect at a very high cost...
...Robert Y. Stair Ocala, Florida Nixonian Imperatives Kudos to John H. Taylor for "Nixon and Sheehy" (TAS, January 1995), which once again points out the animus that continues unabated against Richard Nixon...
...Mims "in 1982 in a night class for federal employees who wished to improve their writing skills...
...Lester W. Tanner Lynchburg, Virginia Chit-Craic Pace correspondent Janet Watt Boldt (Correspondence, TAS, February 1995), but there is definitely an Irish word craic (plural, craiceanna), pronounced crack and defined as chat...
...I took exception to the poison Ms...
...Queenan would far better serve his journalistic reputation by not jettisoning accuracy in abject obeisance to the antediluvian political views of your publication...
...If the elites are so intelligent, let them behave intelligently...
...The thought of government programs to address the "problem" raises hackles-that's liberal territory, and God help conservatives if they get involved...
...The Artful Kunstler I have just read Joe Queenan's review of my book, Radical Lawyer, which appeared in your December issue...
...My next target is tt%y monthly fix with Ben Stein's Diary...
...At one point, Reed repeats the myth that political consultants are the "bosses of the new politics...
...Yes, I too get disgusted with some of the tactics of the fundraising people...
...Anita Hill met a certain personBradley Mims...
...Under most difficult circumstances she decided to go ahead and have her child...
...Mayer and Ms...
...Thank you...
...Not a victim of sexual harassment at the hands of Justice Thomas but a victim of the U.S...
...Can't we find useful work for them some other way...
...His comments and references to his then-forthcoming article in TAS had me more excited in anticipation of the January issue than a child counting the days before Christmas...
...William J. Urban San Antonio, Texas You have invested a lot of credibility in David Brock...
...Shortly thereafter in a Chicago Tribune article, Ms...
...Abramson, incidentally, if not a practicing attorney, is a graduate of the Harvard Law School), he received this reply: We see absolutely nothing productive about continuing this tedious exchange of accusations...
...isn't this why we have editors...
...I am among the multitudes who have believed him, but t have done so partly because I wanted to and partly because you were putting your reputation behind him...
...Brock as journalistic incompe (continued on page 69) Announcing...
...After all, everyone who works for a living is "dependent" upon an employer...
...To me, it was immediately apparent that the mob was sending a thinly veiled warning as to what awaits any other blacks who dare leave the liberal plantation...
...On my drive south from St...
...Your purported "re-reporting" of our book consisted of trying to bully our sources into recanting...
...Stein to come to the agency, but will deliver tickets to his home by same-day personal courier...
...Building...
...The Gail Sheehys will never let the Nixon legacy rest in peace...
...Brotman...
...Your gross mischaracterization of your dealings with Kaye Savage and her purported statements about our book is but one item you didn't dare raise in the terse written questions you sent us in lieu of an interview...
...Is it time your advertisement appeared in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR...
...Hunt angrily denounced both Ms...
...During the debate over health care reform, for example, opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion interwove with concerns about physician choice and jobs like an unbroken tapestry...
...I don't like their questionnaires ("surveys") that need filling out, those "petitions" where we "join with" so and so to petition the president, or Congress, to do something...
...Please explain-I think it would be appreciated by more than myself...
...She stated that "when Newt Gingrich becomes Speaker of the House, that puts him third in the line of Presidential succession, after Mr...
...The Jane and Jill Letters Readers may be wondering what, if anything, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson have done in response to David Brock's review of their recent book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas ("Strange Lies, " TAS, January 1995...
...Marc Lemelin Whitinsville, Massachusetts Your report on the death of At Hunt in the January issue has caused me much embarrassment...
...Ralph Reed is one of them...
...There are several instances in which I believe your January publication crosses the line of good taste...
...However, before we get caught up in the logic of The Bell Curve, I suggest that we all rush out for a screening of Forrest Gump to remind ourselves that high intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient for leading a good and happy life...
...The columnist Rich of the New York Times goes so far as to accuse Mr...
...Moreover, after falsely likening us to Janet Cooke, a woman who was notoriously fired and drummed out of the profession for fabricating a news account, you can't possibly be serious in bellyaching that it is your reputation which has been injured by our response to your completely wreckless [sic] attack...
...You mean to tell me that a person with an undergraduate degree, a law degreefrom Yale University, no less-and work 10 The American Spectator March 1995 experience as an associate attorney at a prestigious Washington, D.C...
...Pollsters, strategists, and media wizards are "far more important than party officials and often more famous than the candidates who hire them...
...Charen in his defense of Mayer-Abramson as "meticulous" reporters...
...This is sham journalism...
...Is this Ms...
...The sad truth is this: the longer the issue is ignored, the harder it will be to raise it in Congress and elsewhere later...
...Brock of intimidating sources...
...Brock wrote back requesting specific examples of the errors he's accused of (Ms...
...Brock states that Ms...
...If you miss out on him, you've probably lost religious conservatives altogether...
...The gap between his account of the Anita Hill affair and that of his opponents has passed anything that can be explained in terms of differing opinions about who ought to be believed...
...Ed...
...I have had to go back to the media and apologize for calling them about this...
...Fortunately, a responsible, free-market capitalist has an easily enacted, costfree, inherently advantageous preventive measure: a carefully chosen professional travel agent...
...Seth C. Hawkins St...
...I am skeptical of all of the media...
...So what if they were part of an orchestrated letter writing campaign...
...We have all made our differing points, we have all received copious attention, and we are all busy people...
...James O'Neill, M.D...
...Not to worry, Reed says...
...I was upset when I read Byron's original article...
...Irish government copyright 1986...
...Is there another Al Hunt I am unaware of...
...Barbara Brotman interviewed Mayer-Abramson in the December 18 p.c...
...Administrative Law Judge Greenbrae, California Alarm Bell I can't refrain from writing to express my admiration for Christopher Caldwell's review of The Bell Curve in the January issue ("Alarm Bell...
...Brock's name nor his work was new to me...
...She shows courage and strength to have known that she would be raising a child alone in a horrible place like Los Angeles...
...After watching her TV talk show "Equal Time" religiously on CNBC after its inception, I soon saw the real Mary and it wasn't conservative...
...The policy is wholly independent of intelligence...
...Am I missing something here...
...It will take nothing less than a pervasive moral renewal of our society...
...Byron used a cannon to kill a fly...
...It is, moreover, a renewal that cannot come from teaching abstract and worthless moral theories to college students...
...This little gem offers scholarly discussions of grammar and pronunciation in its 535 pages of small type...
...In such a society, it stands to reason that the smart will be successful crooks and the stupid will be failed crooks-and that the same lack of virtue that makes the stupid into a poor rabble will lead the smart to secede from society and consign their stupid brethren to the care of an increasingly totalitarian custodial state...
...Louis somewhere in western Tennessee, or Kentucky, I noticed an old, gray dilapidated barn about 75 yards from the interstate...
...Additionally, as James Q. Wilson has urged, any contracts between the two sectors should be performance-based...
...The subject of IQ is inherently dismal and divisive...
...If you only knew (and some of you probably do) the magnitude of the mailings that bombard the average older American, your writing would have a more neutral slant...
...Suffice it to say that from the beginning (with your "out to lunch" claim that we had some secret, earlier interview with Anita Hill, which we clearly informed you, before your article was published, never took place) to the end (Abramson is not an attorney, a fact you could have easily checked had you bothered to ask) your piece is entirely false...
...Unfortunately, Caldwell drops an exciting hint, but does not pursue it...
...But there's another way Christian conservatives can fail: by accepting the priorities of mainstream politics instead of emphasizing the moral issues that motivated them in the first place...
...Eric H. Kearney Cincinnati, Ohio This past November, I had the distinct pleasure of spending Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle in Brandon, Mississippi...
...Public pronouncements aside, the 1994 economy is not a "full employment" economy, and the past twenty years have destroyed for many young people the motivation to do well in school, especially if their parents are unemployed...
...Pleszczynski, in defending former United States Senator John Danforth, describes two other United States senators as "mendacious" and "untrustworthy...
...Brock with integral dishonesty...
...If that is not always so, however, then we should ask some of these other questions...
...Your January 1995 issue is an example of how so many conservatives seek not only to make their point, but also to insult and belittle those with whom they disagree...
...I think it stems from their choice of material...
...2, just who is first in line to succeed President Clinton...
...In representing the man accused of aiding and abetting the Nazi saboteurs who landed in Florida and Long Island during World War II, Judge Harold Medina refused to make public the fact that he had been court-appointed so as not to prejudice his client...
...When unemployment is less than six percent, as it is now, those on welfare are carrying out public policy by not working, and it is unreasonable to argue that this unemployment is "voluntary...
...Let them set and enforce standards of conduct, as they once did, instead of abdicating their responsibilities and thereby egging us lesser breeds into acts of mayhem-ah, but that would require a moral sensibility...
...However, to note the amounts of such transfers is not necessarily to discredit them...
...You pull on a halyard to raise the sail, and you pull on a lanyard to fire a cannon...
...Guidance for public policy will be found elsewhere...
...Stein...
...Racing beyond a mere insult, Mr...
...Brock's article "Strange Lies" (TAS, January 1995) and the line in it describing how Ms...
...I thought of writing you then, but did not have sufficient facts at hand...
...If the Christian Coalition doesn't force Republicans to deal with abortion after disposing of the contract's ten items, who will...
...The second example of the mean-spirited approach is the About This Month column by managing editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski...
...Hill met Mr...
...Robert J. Stelton Lemont, Illinois It must be difficult for dedicated, hardworking Wall Street Journal reporterettes to awake one morning to find their hard work turned to irrelevance...
...George D. Waldman Reading, Massachusetts In reviewing The Bell Curve, Christopher Caldwell correctly notes that "liberals" Mickey Kaus and Labor Secretary Robert Reich earlier reached the same 70 The American Spectator March 1995 conclusion as authors Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, i.e., citizens with low IQs are less likely to find decent jobs, and social problems are likely to follow...
...The opening of THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR's New York advertising sales office...
...Merrill Orne Young Surry, Virginia Where's Aldo...
...After reading David Brock's review of Strange Justice I was reminded of that pelt by its similarity to whatever tatters remain of the journalistic reputations of authors Mayer and Abramson at the hands of Mr...
...My uncle, an Army Ranger who volunteered with British Commandos prior to U.S...
...Queenan's characterization of my recent docket as composed of "worthless causes," he seems quite unaware of most of the cases that compose it...
...Dr...
...Welfare dependency" is inevitable when there are no jobs...
...During early December I took up arms, well at least my p.c., against CNN because of Mr...
...Was this some sort of joke...
...I value this position and have a large group of influential people who know me...
...This is the model of statecraft as soulcraft, not as stockbreeding, and it is conspicuous in the debate surrounding The Bell Curve only by its absence...
...Hunt's outrages took the form of ad hominem attacks on Mr...
...This raises an interesting question...
...The alternative is "to huddle in the ideological ghetto erected for us by our opponents...
...Once again, hats off to Hilda for the choice she made...
...Another galling aspect of this latest effort by the mob elites to scuttle the ascent of a black conservative to prominence is their sanctimonious pretensions...
...3 and Gore is No...
...Regarding the correlation between intelligence and crime--this doesn't necessarily mean that dummies will act criminally, but only that, in the absence of sanctions, they tend to do so...
...Charen and Mr...
...I have written a lot of letters to my congressmen that were orchestrated...
...Box 549 Arlington, VA 22216-0549 703/243-3733, x236 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR...
...Your review is built on the errors that have become your hallmark...
...Jon C. Acker Northport, Alabama More Direct-Mail Mail I am writing with reference to Christopher M. Byron's article in the November 1994 issue of TAS ("DirectMail Deviltry), the letters in the February 1995 issue, and Mr...
...Mary constantly berated so-called "far-right' 'and "religiousright" conservatives, while fawning all over establishment Bush-type Republicans and Democrats on her show...
...You either hit the sore spot or there was a very biased writer...
...David Brock's article presumably is a factbased critique of Ms...
...At a time when contracting out government seems the order of the day, should social services be the exception...
...I think he should be forced to be careful and honest, especially when writing about conservatives and conservatism, because the mainline, liberal media will not report on us with candor...
...While its principles are not always fairly applied, particularly in periods of national hysteria, that is hardly the fault of the many American lawyers, most of them quite unsung, who have dared to pick up the cudgels for those detested by most of their contemporaries...
...Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson The Wall Street Journal Washington, D.C...
...I don't fault Mr...
...They both love TAS...
...Stein had a regular travel agent, or even one recommended by a reliable friend, he could have watched as the agent's computer found the combination of time, price, and other factors that most nearly met Mr...
...The spirited defense of our pariahs has resulted in the creation of an imposing block of constitutional law, unique in the world's jurisprudence...
...One thing I do know...
...They're important-every candidate needs a team of consultants-but they're also interchangeable...
...have absolutely no problem with a former governor who is charged with dropping his pants and asking a convention underling to perform oral sex on him, or with a senator who lied about leaving the scene and letting a young woman drown in his car...
...Two final comments...
...Nixon once noted, in his usual prescient manner, that history would judge him fairly but historians who for the most part are on the left, would not...
...Why, to be blunt, do we persist in sending 100-IQ kids to uncertain encounters with Aristotle and Maya Angelou...
...As for Mary, I guess the old adage is true: "If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas...
...Thank you again TAS and John Podhoretz for warning others against the Trojan horse that walks in our midst...
...Hill is a victim...
...Politicians, even those who are pro-life, may get comfortable with having abortion-and all the unpleasantness and turmoil that surround it-off the agenda...
...Paul Mulshine Norwood, Pennsylvania The American Spectator March 1995 75...
...Yet even that wouldn't settle the issue for a conservative or libertarian...
...This is the second time the same error has appeared in his column...
...Abramson's book...
...We received a call about school legislation and threats to home schooling-I wrote and I called...
...Brock printed below, we have not heard from them, though we continue to hold out hope that they will send in a serious rebuttal...
...Maybe it is true that tax money inevitably corrupts a good cause...
...The first is the cover...
...I suggest that agreements among "liberals" and "conservatives" are much more important than their disagreements...
...Rather than ridicule me, Mr...
...Robert Powers Shreveport, Louisiana Quindlen's List It may be true, as you noted in the Current Wisdom section of your January magazine, that Anna Quindlen mixes a mean metaphor...
...3 69 The American Spectator March 1995 Interestingly, when I sent a letter to that effect to the Wall Street Journal, I received a lame reply that ignored the "coincidence" of the timing and explained that the WSJ felt compelled to print the excerpts from the Mayer-Abramson hit piece only because Justice Thomas had said during his confirmation hearings that if the harassment charge were true there would be other examples of his having harassed women...
...Today I was distressed to come across the phrase "listening to the lanyards jingling against the masts of the sailboats" ("I'm a Soul Gland," TAS, January 1995...
...While lawsuits also have the advantage of stimulating the economy, Mr...
...Now I am in the embarrassing position of believing your report and trying to check it out...
...For the record, Mayer and Abramson's claim that Mr...
...Pamela Winters Oxford, New Jersey I think you should know: Each month when I get my new, sometimes abused by (continued on page 75) 71 The American Spectator March 1995...
...The only interest I have in them is seeing that conservatives are elected to office, and that organizations that are truly helping people receive the funds to do so...
...Find out more about THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: New York-based corporate advertisers contact us at our new NY advertising office: Thomas S. Buttrick, Account Executive THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 122 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10168 Ph: 212/681-1122 Advertising inquiries outside of New York contact us at our main office: John Funk, Associate Publisher THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR P.O...
...Quindlen's way of dropping a subtle hint of an upcoming coup to interrupt perestroika...
...Thomas Letchfield Palo Alto, California Christopher Caldwell's review of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve shares the book's central flaw: an excessive emphasis on the role of intelligence in leading a good and happy life-leading to an over-emphasis on low intelligence as a cause of social problems-leading to an over-emphasis on raising intelligence as a solution to social problems-leading to the conclusion that the solution is eugenics (if only in the relatively benign form of restructuring social welfare incentives...
...If we are to discover what Americans can do, a real jobs policy is needed and influential "liberals" and "conservatives" are equally uninterested...
...Also of interest, if I might add to a point made by David Brock in the same issue, the WSJ printed only a brief excerpt of my letter on the low-readership day-after-Thanksgiving...
...Gregory R. Johnson Instructor in Philosophy Morehouse College Atlanta, Georgia We mere mortals need such thorough and informative reviews as Christopher Caldwell's so we can avoid tackling the tome's 845 pages ourselves-admittedly, the flesh is weak...
...Yet even with my objections, I still think Mr...
...The contribution of the media is to dutifully report the details of the policy but to avoid asking why high unemployment must be a permanent policy...
...Another and probably more important consideration is whether the nonprofit entity is able and willing to impart some moral order along with the beneficence...
...But it's exactly the kind of faux investigative reporting that we've come to expect from you and The American Spectator...
...Stein's first encounter with airline personnel would be with the person stationed at the boarding ramp...
...The agent could immediately issue the tickets and, in most cases, boarding passes...
...That's what it is all about in America...
...If I cannot compose a letter myself, I won't send anything...
...A child is given a score, something he can't do anything about-something that, he may be told, will follow him through the years and largely determine his success in life-something that ranks him against his friends and classmates in a pecking order that would not otherwise concern him...
...Alfred Lindeman U.S...
...Why must you depict Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson as dogs pulling at Justice Clarence Thomas's robe...
...11 The American Spectator March 1995 concentrate on the economic issues that unite them...
...It would help to know whether, for example, when Catholic Charities receives $1.2 billion from government sources, this is $1.2 billion the public agencies would otherwise spend themselves (presumably with higher overhead), or whether some or all of this expenditure comes on top of what would be the state welfare operation in any case...
...A third offense would merit a flogging...
...It can come only from the preservation, enhancement, and even the creation of institutions and practices that infuse virtues and build character, such as the family, schools, civic organizations, churches, and the five market...
...Unable to grasp the popularity of Richard Nixon's silent majority and, moreover, the public's conservative ideological bent, the press-for the most part a cacophony of moral idiots-continue to spew their vituperative fallacies...
...This I read three times before I let anyone else touch the magazine...
...Nailed tightly to its door was the moth-eaten pelt of some luckless and barely-distinguishable varmint...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 3
