Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
"Current Wisdom" Washington Post Homo clintonensis speaks: Publisher of the Hill newspaper Martin Tolchin explains why it was moral, right, good, and very clever of him to publish a review of...
...Think of how hard our earth has worked to grow that tree, the many years of nourishment that the earth has invested in that tree...
...DECEMBER 4, 1995] Minneapolis Star Tribune The spirit of defiance beats its hairy chest in the pages of a great American daily: I'm proud to announce that in the October issue of The American Spectator magazine, yours truly is labeled a "New Age Mama's Boy" because of my Aug...
...Just by virtue of who he is, the turkey-basterbastard son of a writer and a trombone player, he's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable...
...Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your lives...
...Dagwood perceives the government is being unfair to his family...
...8 comic...
...And this is the real shame of the talks: that they take lives bent out of shape by poverty and hold them up as entertaining exhibits...
...Far from the humor shown through the years as Dagwood inadvertently collides with the mail deliverer, this premeditated violence is exactly like the Oklahoma City bombing in intent if not in scale...
...Or would the next step be to pay people outright to submit to public humiliation...
...DECEMBER 12, 19951 San Francisco Examiner For the record, let us take note of a major concession and breakthrough in the gender wars, as noted by pundit Hillary in one of her inimitable weekly offerings: Women are dropping ancient grudges that have caused so much pain and terror...
...You'll never find investment bankers bickering on Rolonda or the host of Gabrielle recommending therapy to sobbing professors...
...NOVEMBER 13, 1995] Time Commentary of an economic and sociological nature from Miss Barbara Ehrenreich, indignant again, this time over William Bennett's mindless assault on talk television of the Sally Jessy Raphael variety: What the talks are about, in large part, is poverty and the distortions it visits on the human spirit...
...As my bubbe, may she rest in peace, used to say, George, from your mouth to God's ear...
...Under the guise of third-world, multiculturalist, feminist, and other fashions, bohemian values have come to prevail widely over bourgeois virtue in sexual morals and family roles, arts and letters, bureaucracies and universities, popular culture and public life...
...An announcement appearing between segments of Montel says it all: the show is looking for "pregnant women who sell their bodies to make ends meet...
...I'm going to be for my son what my aunts were for me: a model of outrageousness," Allison says, rigging up a rope swing for Wolf in the backyard, then smiling as he pumps his legs skyward...
...Oddly enough, joining her onstage are Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms...
...But with today's technology, artificial trees sometimes look better than the real ones...
...DECEMBER 6, 1995] New York Times Magazine Novelist Dorothy Allison, she of the bushy nose hair and halitosis, comes down four square for the one political value such Liberals have never turned their backs on, namely, disturbing the peace...
...Her relationship of eight years with Alix, a handsome woman with a sly sense of humor and a strong sense of family, is a powerful root...
...We didn't do it to be cute...
...With few exceptions the guests are drawn from trailer parks and tenements, from bleak streets and narrow, crowded rooms...
...JANET GILLIS Amherst [NOVEMBER 22, 1995] The Nation Ending a characteristically sciolistic review of conservative luminaries (including "Moonie editor Tod Linberg" —sic) the pedant Eric Alterman bar-bars over two observations that strike him as particularly ludicrous: George Gilder, however, wins the nutcake sweepstakes...
...This is class exploitation, pure and simple...
...She also thanked viewers for "so much kindness, so much encouragement over the years" and reiterated her intention to remain a contributing member of the community...
...We thought it'd be interesting to get a super-spy to review a book about a spy...
...For $500 would you reveal your 13-year-old's girlish secrets on Ricki Lake...
...If you're hoping to bump into the flesh-and-blood general, you're too late...
...I do believe the editors intended offense with this moniker, but aside from the New Age designation, none is taken...
...Everyone has a right to speak his piece...
...Baby, It's Still Cold Outside...
...Mike called her Mo, and then she, Buchanan, sportscaster Frank Herzog and weathercaster Doug Hill held hands as the hour ended...
...He writes that "from Harvard to Hollywood, the intellectual left has managed to capture and corrupt most of the commanding heights of American culture...
...CURRENT WISDOM Washington Post Homo clintonensis speaks: Publisher of the Hill newspaper Martin Tolchin explains why it was moral, right, good, and very clever of him to publish a review of William Safire's spy thriller written by Aldrich Ames, whose treason cost the United States millions and at least ten men their lives after long periods of torture...
...We could have jailed Newt Gingrich as a training run if, or when, Bob Packwood used right-wing excuses to lunge at one of his secretaries...
...Perhaps Albin is so incensed by the opinions of Molly Ivins that he has failed to notice that a column by Charen, or by my particular bete noire R. Emmett Tyrrell, conservatives all, runs on the Journal Star editorial page every day...
...And then think about our ozone layer and how it is being depleted...
...Where were these editors when we needed them...
...by the publishers who gave us the term "femi-nazi," and whose slaughter of innocent trees for right-wing purposes has given new life to the ecology movement...
...And I'm going to raise him to take pride in it...
...But these days, a certain contentedness has seeped in...
...Perhaps you also caught Powell's bit part in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite...
...Go anyway...
...DECEMBER 17, 1995] Washington Post Another historic moment in television land, this time after the eloquent la Bunyan got stiffed in a contract dispute: Shortly before 7 last night, Bunyan addressed the WUSA audience for the last time, saying that "22 years ago I started my excellent adventure with Channel 9...
...And she's wild about Wolf, Ali's biological son, who has hazel eyes and black cowboy boots and insists on gnawing bones while watching TV...
...We have things to learn from everyone, even those who have committed the most despicable crimes...
...Why, it's Linda Powell, elder daughter of one-time potential presidential candidate Colin Powell...
...I know that in a lot of families it is a big tradition to have a live tree, and some people feel that artificial trees are not as good...
...NOVEMBER 24, 1995] Washington Times R. Kelley of Silver Spring, a.k.a...
...DECEMBER 25, 1995] City Paper (Baltimore, Maryland) The Nose, nom de plume for the gossip columnist of a sadly uncultured urban organ, sheds much-needed light on Colin Powell's mysterious retirement from the 1996 presidential race: The Nose laughed and cried when we recently took in Center Stage's dynamic double bill: the terse, moving Open Admissions and the uproarious Day of Absence...
...the Mahatma Gandhi of the pine forests: It hurts me to see trees cut down for Christmas...
...Senor Powell attended November 25...
...And pine sachets are readily available so that you have that pine smell throughout your house...
...I believe in the First Amendment," Tolchin said...
...DECEMBER 19, 1995] 80 February 1996 • The American Spectator Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts) A scholarly peruser of the comics espies the militia mentalite at work: I do not find the "Blondie" cartoon of Nov...
...Though to disturb Miss Allison's peace would be sexist, homophobic, and very troubling: Dorothy Allison is not a woman easily lulled by happiness...
...4 Commentary page column on ogling ("Men need to unlearn ogling instinct, teach respect for women...
...I hope Molly Ivins's columns will continue to appear as an occasional counterbalance to the bizarre rightwing rant of Tyrrell, which irritates me as much as Ivins irritates Albin...
...And I'm going to show him that you can enjoy your life while making other people uncomfortable...
...And hey, who is that in whiteface and a blond wig playing one of the two crazed TV reporters covering the withdrawal of the town's black citizens...
...I know that the trees are grown specifically for Christmas, used for a few weeks and then discarded...
...In the latter, an all-black cast portrays the lily-white denizens of a sleepy southern town whose lives grind to a halt when all resident "Negroes" mysteriously disappear for a day...
...Speaking of lost marbles, the Wall Street Journal editors want to intervene in Bosnia "as a training run for how we react if, or when, Russia uses ethnic excuses to lunge at one of its neighbors...
...But if I had a talk show, it would feature a whole different cast of characters and category of crimes than you'll ever find on the talks: "CEOs who rake in millions while their employees get downsized" would be an obvious theme, along with "Senators who voted for welfare and Medicaid cuts"—and, if he'll agree to appear, "well-fed Republicans who dithered about talk shows while trailer-park residents slipped into madness and despair...
...Her farewell was followed by a film clip, narrated by Buchanan, that starred in the beginning a very young and, even then, regal reporter...
...He says he's also gotten kudos for his journalistic "coup...
...Why are you encouraging such actions...
...Over the years I have tried to make my friends and my family proud of me....I've also never forgotten I was a woman...and that as a black broadcaster it has been of paramount importance to me" to advance the cause of the aspiring young...
...DECEMBER 11, 1995] The American Spectator • February 1996 81...
...Listen long enough, and you hear references to unpaid bills, to welfare, to 12-hour workdays and double shifts...
...I've learned more about myself than I ever dreamed...
...For $5o would you confess to adultery in your wife's presence...
...I'd love to have interviewed the greatest tyrants in history: Hitler, Torquemada, you name 'em...
...You may think that a few Christmas trees may not make a difference, but it was riot long ago that people thought a few soda cans or newspapers would not make a difference either...
...So he uses violence against an innocent government employee —the mail deliverer—by, as the mail deliverer understood, lying in wait to run into him...
...While sticks and stones may break my bones, my bones are nothing compared with the increasing numbers of people falling prey to the hateful rhetoric of a worldwide fascist movement...
...It is easy enough for those who can afford spacious homes and private therapy to sneer at their financial inferiors and label their pathetic moments of stardom vulgar...
...If you were poor enough, you might...
...Yes, a timely tale in the wake of Louis Farrakhan's Day of Atonement—but Day of Absence was written 36 years ago...
...Huge cartoon mugs of this duo are part of the set...
...DECEMBER 1, 1995] Lincoln Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) Scott Stanfield, probably a member of Nebraska's feared left-wing militia, heaps scorn on an American patriot: I thought it ironic that John S. Albin's complaint that the Journal Star has made no attempt to include even a small conservative view on their editorial page ran adjacent to a column by Mona Charen...
...So with respect and affection, I remain humbly, Maureen Bunyan...
...What next— "homeless people so hungry they eat their own scabs...
...Oh, we clever few: Tolchin, a former Times reporter, is reveling in the controversy...
...The truth is, it's a great honor to be called a "mama's boy...
Vol. 29 • February 1996 • No. 2
