Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
New York Times Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte pens another Big Column: Mickey Mantle was 19 years old when he burst into our lives, as strong as the heart of the great golden West, a fielder of dreams...
...America abused itself with the cold war...
...At this time there are no places to skate...
...If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been together in the White House," the supposedly objective newsman said, "we'd take it right now and walk away winners...
...Garrison Keillor, standing on his head and again seeing everything upside down: To me the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and I'm very sorry about that because I believe there is a need for at least a two-party system...
...Anyone who is a skateboarder or who has a child who skates probably understands exactly how the scenario goes...
...June 13, 1995] Eastsideweek (Seattle, Washington) A commonplace occurrence in suburban Seattle: One day I discovered the dead body of a dear friend...
...It will reduce pedestrians' complaints, but it also hurts skateboarders like me...
...Those articles without credits concern subject matter exclusively male—male murderers, male judge, male poet's needs, a pitch to Pop to buy guns, and "No More Mr...
...It's another to feel justified in raising animals, torture their existence with drugs, and feel entitled to murder them for the extension of our own lives...
...Others describe it as the most profound experience of their lives," Eaton said...
...and aside from a short poem, the only entry in the entire issue written by a woman is a mindless groupie letter to a male author...
...Mantle had booze...
...a congressman's wife offers fashion advice in Readings...
...Box 1282, Crystal Bay, NV 89402 [May 23, 1995] The American Spectator August 1995 81...
...This is a criminal party...
...Several of her friends lustily agreed...
...The threats to both America and Mantle ultimately proved empty, but they dominated the psyche of the country and the center fielder and gave each an urgency and a poignancy that affected behavior in often destructive ways...
...And Rather uttered a memorable response, though one that may not show up in broadcast journalism textbooks...
...As Lapham's essay and his magazine reveal, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
...It was 1951, the boom-time after a world war won, early summer afternoon in the American Century...
...I don't want to argue religious opinion, economics or political correctness...
...I have been skateboarding for almost seven years...
...June 9, 1995] 80 The American Spectator August 1995 MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour Neo-Clintonian David Gergen rises from the dead and appears in one of American media's most famous cemeteries: You will remember, Jim, that the historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., first elaborated a theory and then his son worked on it as well, that American history has moved through cycles from a series of governmental activism to quietism, but they then specifically rejected the notion of history moving in this pendulum, or moving over toward activism and then moving back toward quietism in this way...
...We don't know exactly what happens, but the orca sounds elevate moods...
...This is a direct result of actions by city officials and the police, both of whom care very little about skateboarders...
...I'd never think to expect that...
...It is time to do something, because in the end we are the next generation to take power...
...And like America in the 50's, he was burdened with a distant sense of doom...
...Anyone interested in volunteering for the OCR Project should contact Dr...
...In comparing the "revolutionary pretensions" of the privileged right with the children of oligarchy, however, Lapham would have been well-advised to review the content of his own magazine...
...It's ethically unconscionable...
...May 25, 1995] Raleigh News & Observer The thespian outburst of another of those modern Americans who really should have lived in another land and another time—say, Paris during the Black Death: Regarding your article on animal-tohuman transplants at Duke University: I don't know exactly when we betrayed our relationship with animals...
...Of course, her betrayer was certainly the university, which must have given out, or sold, all the names of those newly promoted to the rank of full professor...
...I ran downstairs to call 911, my voice barely barking out the address...
...Then there's a new period of activism, and you go up again, and all through our history that spiral's been rising...
...His father, his biggest booster, died after Mickey's rookie season...
...Instead, what they said was American history has been a spiral, with periods of activism...
...Some people say that they feel their hearts open...
...But a letter from the Foundation for Black Endeavor, an organization she had never heard of, was proof that she had gotten on some unfortunate mailing list and now IT would commence...
...In retrospect, we can't help but wonder if too much was expected of the network team when it was formed two years ago...
...I mean that...
...Obviously, Rather set a standard that was far too high...
...Eaton at (702) 831-6513 or write to OCR Project, P.O...
...This summer the Orca Project will collect recordings of the sounds orcas emit at people in the water with them...
...The letter was a personal one, on bond stationery, a call for papers to be delivered at the Foundation for Black Endeavor Conference at the Stouffer Ireland Resort in March...
...from Moo, by Jane Smiley...
...Randall Eaton and volunteers of the Orca Project have been swimming with wild orca whales and feeling the effect of their sounds...
...But the Republican Party is, to my mind, beyond the pale...
...Oh, he's cute," cooed a young White House aide yesterday, as she peered through a window while O'Grady, in a crisp dress-blue uniform, walked along the colonnade between the Oval Office and the residence...
...It turns out the short, wiry fellow is a sex symbol as well, at least in the eyes of some...
...Raising my head, I howled—a long, piercing cry of alarm and abandonment so human, this suicide I had stumbled onto, so senseless that I unconsciously sought comfort in an animal call for help...
...And they answered me—the neighbor's dogs howled back, in a plaintive chorus that soon joined with the high-pitched wail of the arriving ambulance sirens...
...In a way, I believe the ban is good...
...The article explained that Fredericksburg now has a sidewalk ban...
...What harm does my skating do to anyone...
...June 11, 1995] Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion (Wichita, Kansas) The Right Rev...
...Orcas are giant dolphins...
...Wallis Simpson...
...Here is a solution to the problem: Either build a public skate park or designate a public skating area...
...I do want to object to humankind's latest atrocity: genetically altering sentient beings for our own selfish gain...
...We have never done that before...
...None...
...This is a part of their demagoguery and I think if you are unable to speak in public with any compassion, with any feeling or sympathy for broken people, you are morally unfit for public office...
...May 31, 1995] Los Angeles Times A rude recollection of another moment with crazy Dan: Now that she's been axed as co-anchor of the CBS Evening News, where can Connie Chung go...
...Right at the top of the board of directors column was Thomas Sowell...
...The new ban affects cyclists and mainly skateboarders...
...Alfred A. Knopf 414 pages, $24] (London) Daily Telegraph Anti-monarchist saboteurs, clandestinely performing their grisly work in the printshop of one of the world's great dailies: We apologise for the outrage which will have been caused by our error yesterday in captioning an early picture of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother as being Mrs...
...A generation of sports fans grew up with the Mick and with "duck and cover" air-raid drills in school...
...After him came a cast of characters out of her worst nightmares—Linda Chavez, Arch Puddington, twenty others as bad, all of whom, she could imagine, had a secret password such as a derogatory remark about Toni Morrison, whom Margaret considered a goddess...
...Of all the articles, Readings, and puzzles in the March issue, all but three credited authors are men...
...More government control has come, and the spiral levels off...
...New York Times Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte pens another Big Column: Mickey Mantle was 19 years old when he burst into our lives, as strong as the heart of the great golden West, a fielder of dreams in a time of infinite promise...
...Strangely—instinctively—in what must have been a primitive defense, I dropped on all fours, panting...
...All the money that could be spent on education is now going to be spent on enforcing a sidewalk ban...
...If this is more evolved behavior then I am ashamed to be called human...
...Her airfare would be paid by the foundation, as would her room expense...
...In America, it was the most common form of betrayal...
...The six Republicans in the forum are male...
...The advances of women in the Congress during the thirty years covered by Lapham's essay are ignored in Harper's Magazine...
...We suspect that the sounds they direct to people in the water with them are not unlike those used by dolphins with handicapped children in the Florida Keys," Eaton said...
...White Guy...
...It is a great shame to have a party that dare not speak with even an ounce of compassion for poor people...
...This will be the first time that we've started going back down that spiral...
...For Mantle it was the Hodgkin's disease that killed most males in his family before they reached 40...
...During these seven years, I have been constantly harassed by the police for just riding a skateboard...
...Even newly elected President Clinton took notice, congratulating Chung and Rather during an interview...
...Who are we to arrogantly and presumptuously judge whose family, which animal or human individual, is more valuable to this world...
...Thomas Leeds Las Vegas, Nevada [June 1995] Washington Post More roiled loins in the Clinton White House: Yet O'Grady is more than a political symbol...
...For America it was the threat of atomic attack by the Soviet Union...
...From pamphlets to smudgy Xeroxes to dittoed newsletters, the literature of the organizations she trusted was always produced on the cheap, always announced itself as marginalized and therefore trustworthy—the crackpot was openly crackpot, the sane and the profound were honestly sane and profound...
...As I waited beside the terribly still body, I felt faint, my mind blanking out, sounds and colors blurring...
...Carol Butler Raleigh, North Carolina [May 9, 1995] Orca Project More evidence of America's moral decline—a press release boasting of the sexual harassment of members of another species: For twenty years now Dr...
...As soon as you accomplished something, anything, that caught their attention, they started trying to raise you out of your natural milieu...
...June 17, 1995] Free Lance—Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia) George Stephanopoulos files a manifesto from Fredericksburg: I'm writing this in response to the recent article headlined "No rolling on sidewalks...
...I want no animals sacrificed to sustain my life...
...It's one thing to receive donated organs someone else generously elected to give upon death...
...Spring 1995] The Great Books Series Sowell, Puddington, Chavez hit the Big Time in the fabulous pages of novelist Jane Smiley, a Twain-like modernist: [Chapter] 27 Call for Papers The Foundation for Black Endeavor didn't do anything on the cheap, Margaret Bell noticed as she inspected the envelope she had just gotten in the mail, and she was immediately suspicious...
...May 29, 19951 Harper's In the correspondence section of Harper's, another male conspiracy exposed: One of the parallels observed by Lewis Lapham between the radical Sixties left and the reactionary Nineties right is principled opposition to the passage of time...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
