Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
"Current Wisdom" San Antonio Express-News On the correspondence page of a great gazette George Stephanopoulos's dirty tricksters strike: Never in my 79 years have I been more...
...Newt Gingrich or Alfonse D'Amato complaining about ethical transgressions is like Louis Farrakhan decrying bigotry...
...It documents the experience of youth growing up in worlds created and managed by adults: families, schools, churches, neighborhoods, stores, courts, corporations, economies, industries, political parties, poverty, racism, alcoholism, abuse, and unemployment—worlds that are often harsh and uninviting...
...Certainly, I would not be sitting here with graying hair amazed to find myself wishing that I could tell Seth, Mongoose, Tweetie and especially the detestable Chuck, at great and satisfying length, how hateful they were and how often and heartily I have fantasized their destruction...
...I feel vindicated...
...Our addiction to sports is as intoxicating as it was to the Spartans and, as I've said, today dominates television, the daily press and social discussion...
...Indeed, in answer to the vegan travel question, you reported that Amtrak's spokeswoman claimed not to know what vegan meant...
...I mean, I like all the Yankees...
...I get off the No...
...Between a Bronx jury and Yankee Stadium, I don't need anything else in life...
...It has been a long time since I have read your magazine...
...or original sin with free market theory, or the Ten Commandments with selling machine guns...
...I like the idea of focusing attention on vegan travel needs...
...Snoop Doggy Dogg, Hootie and the Blowfish, Bjork, Blues Traveler, Shakur, Madonna, R.E.M., U2, Pearl Jam and Soul Asylum—the names are distinctive...
...He's in constant back pain after several operations...
...Suzie Black @aol.com Blown away does not begin to describe how I felt after reading the July issue of ELLE...
...Our excessive preoccupation with games is self-defeating in that it does not lead to thoughtful discourse, and our excessive reliance upon the sporting idiom even suggests that we have adopted the macho sporting experience as a summary of our major values...
...It might look bizarre on the outside, but I feel there are so many more things I should be doing...
...But my real secret is that I exercise regularly...
...How, for example, do Plato and Augustine fit with Joe McCarthy and Ralph Reed...
...I'm always sympathetic to those who struggled against adversity...
...Though they are young (eight, six, and four), my girls go about their day in a way I never could, with a deep sense of being loved, accepted, and adored for who they are...
...4 train and there, looming brightly in the sun, is Yankee Stadium, the eternal symbol of hope...
...I always thought he'd get his...
...OCTOBER 28, 1996] Wall Street Journal On the correspondence page of the Kapitalists' chief organ, a much-needed correction from la Pokras, who rather quaintly objects to being made to look "stupid": In your Aug...
...I was living paycheck to paycheck, and he had a sports car, a camper, a boat...
...But I also schedule rest, play, and vacation...
...FALL 1996] The American Spectator • December 19 9 6 89...
...Robin Parsons Arundel, ME [OCTOBER 1996] The Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons In America's annual directory of public nuisances Miss Phyllis Kruckenberg lays claim to an authority known hitherto only to Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy: Eighty-five percent of all women are wearing the wrong size bras, and as a result, serious problems may occur, such as cystic mastitis, pregnancy breast problems, tissue damage, and impaired circulation...
...marched out, placed in a paddy wagon and put in jail...
...First of all, I think one always feels that one is not productive enough...
...OCTOBER 24, 1996] Elle Two more Clinton voters speak out: I just want to thank you for "Women Are Crazy" [The View From the 44th Floor, by Amy Gross, July...
...The people responsible for this outrageous decision should be impeached, disbarred and disgraced for the rest of their lives...
...Do you ever sleep...
...Kruckenberg is Executive Vice President of Jeunique International, Inc., a manufacturer of Bras and Figure Fashion Control garments whose direct sales force is unique in that it provides custom fittings in customers' homes...
...I'm very regimented: I wake up at 6:3o, I make coffee, I read the paper on the treadmill, I eat the same breakfast every day, and I go to bed generally by so o'clock, unless we have company over...
...While some might consider this a minor detail, it is not minor in the context of attempting to get a vegan meal on Amtrak, which was the whole point of the question...
...She couldn't afford the airfare or the time off work to go back and sue him for it...
...OCTOBER 7, 1996] Harvard College Gazette Stately cerebrations evoked by another distinguished Harvard prof, this time the Guru Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: I'd like to ask a more personal question...
...James A. Michener: I'm delighted to see the strides achieved in women's basketball in our universities and find their playoffs for the national championships almost as exciting as the men's...
...you contributed to the confusion about what vegans can and can't eat (not to mention making me look stupid...
...NOVEMBER 4, 1996] New York Observer Mr...
...This woman voluntarily walked into the grand jury unattended and turned herself over to special counsel Ken Starr and the judge for refusing to testify and lie in order to receive an avoidable plea bargain for less time in prison...
...Johnson with Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Irving Kristol...
...It's another thing Fidel and I have in common...
...OCTOBER 12, 1996] Time How God stepped in to right the many wrongs committed against "a program coordinator at a Los Angeles aerospace firm": One woman, a program coordinator at a Los Angeles aerospace firm, claims her ex-husband refused to pay alimony or child support two years after their divorce...
...I do most of my writing in the morning at home, and I almost never write past noon...
...Horace B. Baird [SEPTEMBER 29, 1996] The Nation Miss Katha Pollitt, the voice of feminist revolution, Defiant, Resolute, Invincible, in the waning years of the Twentieth Century, just before every male gynecologist is put to death and the National Football League is banned: If adults had listened to me and defended me and helped me defend myself instead of treating my struggles as unimportant, those bullying boys would have learned an important lesson, and I would have shed a lot fewer tears...
...You were not helping the matter by giving an incomplete definition of vegan...
...Look, Fidel Castro is a Yankees fan, he was criticized for it by Abbie Hoffman, you don't remember that...
...After which, they would stammer and blush and utter those beautiful words: I'm sorry...
...or Burke, Gibbon, and Dr...
...I used to think it lacked substance...
...Then I do my teaching and administration here...
...Unfortunately, their story is partly an indictment of us...
...To me (and the dictionary), vegan means not only one who eats "no dairy or meat," but also no fish or egg—in fact no animal products at all...
...There is one gift that I can give my girls, more important than trendy clothes, haircuts, and private schools, that will carry them to fulfilled lives: a sense of how wonderful, beautiful, and powerful they are...
...OCTOBER 17, 1996] The Great Books Series Schizophrenic thoughts on sports from the ever so p.c...
...JUDY POKRAS New York [ SEPTEMBER 30, 1996] New York Review of Books Infantile symmetries beheld by one Jason Epstein, among whose many delusions is apparently the idea that Joe McCarthy is still among us: What, if anything, does political conservatism mean today in the United States...
...To this day I can't receive a compliment without thinking, They're just saying that to make me feel good...
...I mean, I love the Bronx...
...You serve on umpteen editorial boards and committees, you preside over the department and institute, you do your interviews for The New Yorker, and your name seems to crop up almost everywhere...
...This was done in front of all TV cameras and shown on evening television for three nights...
...and "Why will wearing a non-supportive bra today cause the need for a face lift tomorrow...
...The Yankees, after all, do represent the perpetual struggle of good against evil...
...1997] Fresno Bee Professor Louis F. Markert, a full professor and incoherent bore at California State University in scenic Fresno, explains the buzzing between his ears: Rock, rap, alternative rock, gangsta rap, grunge — these are tribes...
...Their music tells their story...
...I don't know when you made the changes, but I'm thrilled you did...
...II lllf, iIUU tt CURRENTWISDOM San Antonio Express-News On the correspondence page of a great gazette George Stephanopoulos's dirty tricksters strike: Never in my 79 years have I been more ashamed than I was when I saw what a federal grand jury did to Susan McDougal...
...As the mother of three young daughters, I struggle to instill the sense of self that I was denied as a child...
...from This Noble Land: My Vision for America, by James A. Michener, Random House, 256 oleaginous pages, $23] 88 December 199 6 • The American Spectator Wall Street Journal The Kultursmog watch: Columnist Al Hunt, his vision befogged by the smog, beholds two duly elected representatives of the people and blithely equates them with a lunatic racist: In those few instances where the Clintons are vulnerable, the critics lack credibility...
...and I wonder why professional women's teams have not prospered here as they have in Europe...
...The examples I gave earlier of the proliferation of a sports vocabulary as a substitute for logical or precise thinking can be multiplied...
...I try to be well organized and disciplined...
...9 Travel column, you used a question I asked about vegan food on Amtrak...
...They have their own lyricists, choruses, followers, and sounds...
...As an administrator, I have an excellent support staff...
...Second, I am a Virgo...
...I have a contract to do six New Yorker pieces a year, but summertime is when I do most of my writing...
...Though she has put her life back together and even graduated from college alongside her son, she feels a rush of satisfaction over her husband's medical problems...
...The young must make sense of them, define themselves against them, and find their way in them...
...He "bought the boys gifts, which made him look like a hero, while I was working two jobs to pay for braces," she recalls...
...I have known several superb women players who, if they wanted to continue basketball after graduation from college, have had to emigrate to Italy or to the surrounding countries in which women's leagues flourish and pay substantial salaries...
...Because of her refusal to cooperate with the special counsel, she was then handcuffed, shackled and chained to two other prisoners...
...Ron Kuby, the not so chic radical lawyer, joins the fun and names his favorite Bronx Bomber: Darryl Strawberry...
...By defining vegan as only "no dairy or meat" (as if it were my definition...
...I sleep like a baby...
...Phyllis Kruckenberg, one of the world's foremost authorities on bras, is an experienced and successful interviewee who can explain why so many women are wearing the wrong size bra, why under-wire bras are uncomfortable and dangerous, and how padded bras not only re-direct a woman's breast tissue but also keep breasts in their own private sauna bath and can actually reduce the buntline...
...She'll answer questions such as "What's the most dangerous consequence of wearing an ill-fitting bra...
...My only problem is with the way you defined the term "vegan...
...The music is rebellious, tender, harsh, and compassionate, more emotional than spiritual, more brazen than inspiring...
...I have awaited the formation of such a league in the United States...
Vol. 29 • December 1996 • No. 12
