Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
New York Times The illustrious Times courageously revises its view of the McCarthy Horrors: The obituary of former Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas on Feb. 10 misidentified the politician...
...AJR: Like Tonya Harding...
...She agreed...
...If someone this together could be a piercer, how bad could it be...
...Maraniss was by Mr...
...And soon, following his lead, legions of Congressmen—the ones who display no obvious appreciation for art either—will be attempting to deny it to those who do...
...My mom and dad," he said...
...I describe his obedient followers as mindless because I find that not one of them has a thought of his or her own...
...BCB: I think the excesses of personality, celebrity, privacy...
...You can't take it to the john...
...She had a calming effect on me...
...Diana...
...You can't put it under your arm and go to the subway...
...Art is not elitist...
...He chooses to watch videos at home, instead...
...I read somewhere that Rush Limbaugh doesn't attend the theater, cinema or museums...
...March 11, 1995] Washington Post Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin explicates his inflationary policies: "It's a new economy, it's a global economy, and we have to somehow or other—it's funny, it was prescient in a way—we have to increase public understanding of what a global economy really means because we don't have the predicate right now for doing the kinds of things that need to be done if we're going to get done that which is in the self-interest of this country to get done," he said in a Feb...
...it was alive with conviction and the belief that art is integral to civilization...
...Simpson trial...
...January 22, 1995] CLARIFICATION In last month's Current Wisdom entry from "Larry King Live," the first question to Clinton biographer David Maraniss was posed by an unidentified caller to the show...
...As Congress bats around the rhetoric of "cultural elitism," and wasted tax-payer dollars, art will dissipate in the hot air and become defined by the kind of people who believe tickets to the symphony are nothing more than a good tax write-off...
...And here is how she concludes her plea for, ahem, moderation: Listening to Rep...
...Instead, it should be about things that are—on a grand scale—important...
...The country gains...
...A little motel, mobile park rat...
...BCB: Yes, exactly...
...Did you read everything about Tonya...
...March 25, 1995] Sacramento Bee On the correspondence page of a great American daily, a protégé of Dorothy Gilliam sounds off: Rep...
...Living without art is no way to live...
...Roger Wilkins recalls how it was that one of his precocious charges came to graduate with honors: A warm, brilliant young white male student of mine came in just before he was to graduate and said that my course in race, law and culture, which he had just finished, had been the most valuable and the most disturbing he had ever taken...
...I had visions of knights wielding oversize lances...
...March 27, 1995] Downtown Seattle Forum In the guest column of Seattle's most prestigious organ of cerebration, a Renaissance Mind unwinds: I bet Newt's Washington D.C...
...E. Clay Shaw, Jr...
...who helped write the welfare bill, did not bite his tongue about why federal government should not give welfare payments to poor teenage mothers: "We're talking about children you wouldn't leave your cat with on a weekend," he said...
...The NEA's funding, in reality, helps get it there...
...The next day I drove Lauren, her sister, Bonnie, and a friend, Felicia (along for moral support), to the Castro district in San Francisco, home of Gauntlet...
...Affirmative action puts people together in ways that make that kind of revelation possible...
...King himself...
...Yet, there I was gobbling down pierce-care hints, as if this were the most normal thing in the world...
...After a few minutes we marched into another alcove to see a video on pierce care...
...Adolf Hitler could not dismantle and destroy the country we know and have loved, but Newt might...
...This is a scene my parents could never have envisioned: dad and daughter watching a half-naked man demonstrate the proper care of a nipple pierce...
...I learned that my two heroes are racists," he said...
...March 14, 1995] American Journalism Review In an exclusive interview, former Washington Post editor Mr...
...BCB: I'm getting to a stage where I'm not going to get involved in that thing...
...All art—even federally-funded art—will ultimately live or die in the marketplace...
...Somebody help me if I'm wrong to think this way, but I am convinced that what is going on in Congress is a form of shock therapy that we minimize at our peril...
...This notion was dispelled the very next day...
...The circumstances had changed but not the parent-child dynamic...
...March 1995] New York Times On the men's page (wimp's page) of the Times magazine, a dead-beat dad maunders: Six months ago, my 13-year-old daughter announced that she wanted to get a belly-button pierce...
...By the time I arrived, Lauren had taken care of everything except producing me and my ID...
...R.-Fla...
...Her birthday was six months away...
...1 speech in which he vowed to increase "public understanding of the new and modern economy...
...Affirmative action had brought me together with him when he was 22...
...The battle over the NEA is about money...
...It isn't populist, either...
...Then it hit me: this was normal...
...You have to bring a picture ID, too, and it has to show we have the same last name...
...Rep...
...All of the O.J...
...I made an appointment at Gauntlet in San Francisco tomorrow at 4. I have to bring a picture ID...
...She was so smooth and it went so quickly that I momentarily forgot my nervousness...
...Why not wait until your birthday...
...Art simply is...
...support of the arts should be the function of the marketplace...
...George Wallace's putative contrition for past transgressions against Americans of color, the Times's hallucinating reporter breaks into bibble-babble: The politics and economics of race are more complicated now, and the marchers, including the old survivors of meaner days, worry that the nation is going backward, not forward, in its racial tolerance...
...I thought Tonya was a great story...
...10 misidentified the politician who derided him as Senator Half-bright...
...The myth of Hitler's vegetarianism is believed to have been concocted by his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who wanted to enhance Hitler's popularity with the German people by portraying him as a revolutionary ascetic, a sort of Teutonic Gandhi...
...Wake up, America...
...If this should come to pass there will only be two classes of Americans: the elite and the rest of us...
...Very unlike the truly free thinkers in the Democratic Party, who seldom hesitate to question their leaders if they believe they have a better way to get things done...
...February 1, 1995] New York Times Midst an astounding front-page news account of the Hon...
...Now, hanging in the New Museum, the fire is gone...
...townhouse is a real dump...
...And judging by his esthetic palate, he shouldn't be allowed to...
...I asked how it had been disturbing...
...That's another example...
...All this talk they'll be put out to pasture by the information superhighway...
...Is this grossly wealthy man going to pick up the slack once funding for the arts is abolished...
...At one point, as Senator Helms was slashing artists like a serial killer, this work became an emblem of free expression...
...Not 1950's normal, but maybe 1990's normal...
...Dad, O.K., here's the thing...
...But I gotta tell you...
...Limbaugh will claim the public shouldn't have to fund art they don't like...
...But this is already the case...
...They hear modern-day leaders blame blacks, because of crime and welfare, for what is wrong with America...
...Nobody is a loser when that happens...
...Denise took charge, talking soothingly to Lauren as she daubed her with antiseptic, marked the spot, clamped it with the forceps and, in a flash, pierced the skin next to the belly button and popped a ring in...
...I sent the girls in ahead of me while I parked the car...
...Who's screwing whom...
...Only the follow-up to Mr...
...March 18, 1995] Washington Post Here is how the saintly Dorothy Gilliam begins a column pleading for moderation: After many hours listening to the white-hot rhetoric of the welfare debate last week, there is only one word to describe the language and level of the discourse from some Republicans: venomous...
...Hard Copy" kind of journalism...
...Who are your heroes and how are they racists...
...I know this because Newt is leading the charge to shut down the National Endowment for the Arts...
...It's still impossible to separate the work from the controversy, but Piss Christ looks quieter than ever, as worthy of contemplation as a church window...
...I asked...
...A reader's letter, initially misdirected at The Times, points out that it was President Harry S. Truman, not Senator Joseph R. McCarthy...
...Did he really say that...
...If you still want it then, we'll make it a birthday gift...
...After thinking about what I was learning, I understood that they had spent all my life making me into the same kind of racists they were...
...Waters's shock and surprise about the venomous rhetoric and the rollback of laws that shred 60 years of New Deal and Great Society legislation, I wondered if her reaction—and my own—resembled the way Jewish people felt in Germany when the antisemitic rhetoric escalated and long-held legal rights were being eroded...
...I bet his place is a dingy mess of Formica, mood-lights and faux-wood paneling adorned with velvet Vargas girls...
...Newt Gingrich and his lockstep little storm troopers are a good example of how Nazi Germany came to be...
...Though I hadn't realized it, I was there to bless Lauren as she grew away from me, to respect and trust her as she forged her own identity...
...On her birthday, Lauren didn't mention the pierce, and in the manner of parents throughout history who fantasize a differentreality for their kids than actually exists, I entertained the notion that she might have forgotten about it or changed her mind...
...Along with her confident demeanor and apparent intelligence, Denise had a nose pierce: She may also have had a belly-button pierce, but who knew...
...I bet he hasn't washed his bed sheets for years—not because he's forgotten, but because he's afraid the leopard-skin pattern might run in the wash...
...February 1995] 80 The American Spectator May 1995 London Sunday Telegraph On the correspondence page of the enlightened Telegraph, reassuring news for those goody-goodies who eschew succulent steaks and delicious veals for bird seed, bunny pellets, and often sparse viands: Hitler's doctors did put him on a vegetarian diet for brief periods to cure his sweatiness and flatulence, but he was constantly backsliding and could not overcome his weakness for ham and sausages...
...l don't think it's a comfortable way to get information...
...A self-possessed and professional young woman introduced herself: "My name is Denise and I'll be doing your piercing today...
...It left me wondering just who had been pierced...
...AJR: What about the future of newspapers...
...Edward Gordon Marysville [February 27, 1995] The Nation Prof...
...The American Spectator May 1995 81...
...Ben Bradlee reveals the moral sensibility and reading habits that have made him one of the capital's peerless sophisticates: AJR: What are some of the worst trends [in journalism today...
...Rynn Berry Brooklyn, New York [March 12, 1995] Village Voice In the "Art" section of the Voice, the perfectly mediocre Miss Elizabeth Hess finds religion: Most critics and fans agree that Piss Christ is Serrano's most significant photograph...
...This might be the key to why so many people scoffed when Money magazine branded Bremerton as the nation's most livable city...
...It's time to wake up and smell the coffee...
...I said: "This is a big step...
...Gauntlet...
...I can guess these things because Newt has no taste...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 5
