Current Wisdom

...They are so narrow, that the best you can do is balance on them by leaning forward, as if you were a jockey riding a horse...

...No wonder so many competent people will have nothing to do with a career in government, which should entice the best we have to offer...

...It's a movie about me and a couple of things I go through, a nice little script I put together...

...They are, to use an expression coined by urban sociologist Mike Davis, "bumproof...

...I've been married for 29 years," he continued...

...All she'll say is, "Don't the authorities know that the harder they make it, the more committed and fanatic you become...

...In our culture, we think it's such a big deal that [Albright] showed up," says rock dignitary Reed...

...Right on, sistah...

...I simply have better things to do than worry who might be watching me answer the call of nature...

...Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Czech president Vaclav Havel, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson all hung out at a gig by avantgarde jazz guy John Zorn at New York's Knitting Factory...

...At one point, Zorn shouted, "Shut the f--- up and listen to the music," to Albright who was busy chattering away...

...I had hoped I could just say I was tired of "Debbie," ask them to call me "Nzinga" and that would be that...

...I'm doing a movie called Doin' Too Much...

...My journey from Debbie to Nzinga started about a year ago, when I began dating Upendo...

...I'm heterosexual...

...When a male Marine walks away from the platoon to relieve himself in the field, the others pointedly look the other way...

...The news media fail to accept that basic principle...

...In a really cool culture it would have been lame if she didn't...

...Lollapalooza tour where he's travelling with a massive 125-man Nation of Islam security force and an armoured van for protection...

...He builds acrobatic biplanes in his spare time at home in Douglas, Wyo...

...Weeks went by before I could even verbalize the idea of changing my name, so I knew it would probably take months for my friends and co-workers to get accustomed to Nzinga...

...But nothing as dramatic as changing one's name is ever accepted without question...

...One little sign of humanity and we fall all over ourselves...

...And the fact that I waited until I was over 40 to make this decision didn't help...

...It's not so much a fashion statement or a political statement as a fully realized expression of the fact that this is the way I am," Sissy Goodwin explained in a quiet, awshucks voice that might have belonged to Gary Cooper...

...It changed me for the better...

...Don't you have any sense of decency...

...Stephanie Murdock, one of the New Armed Forces' leading candidates for Prisoner of War: I always enjoyed the argument that I cannot be in the infantry because I have to squat to urinate...

...At 5 feet 10 and 170 pounds, accessorized with a green leather handbag, ladies' watch, sparkly ring and slip-on tennis shoes, he introduced himself as Sissy, the name he's been using for the past two decades...

...Yet, after six years in the national spotlight, pursued 24 hours a day by a huge posse of reporters searching for missteps wherever they go, the CI intons come through to the American people as a brilliant, hard-working couple much in love, raising a daughter in an exemplary fashion...

...In a situation like this, you either lose your soul or gain it," says Susan...

...AUGUST 22, 1997] Boston Globe As the indictments and plea bargains mount and the congressional revelations squitter forth, a staff writer for the historic Globe peers into Dog Patch and beholds visions of Old Abe Lincoln up from the log cabin: Does anybody really think little Clinton, raised in that tar-shingled shack in Hope, Ark., with his gutsy mom going out to nurse the poor for short money, trying to find a life for herself and her two boys, marrying four times along the way, learning to take her small pleasures where she could, at the race track or the cigarette counter, do you really think that her boy grows up to become president only to sell out the USA to Chinese spies laundering cash through Buddhist nuns...

...A really good person who shaves his legs, favors pink Magic Kiss lipstick and on this particular August day on the Mall, was wearing an accordion-pleated gray and white tennis skirt, a frilly puffed-sleeve pink blouse and—he lifted his thigh-high skirt to reveal—lacy yellow panties...

...AUGUST 17, 19971 Sunday News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware) The confused intellections of another Democratic goody-goody entranced by the grandeur of a scamp: I am outraged by your publication (June 8) of the cartoon by Marlette depicting the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials along with a memorial to President Clinton, a partially opened zipper...

...Snooping extends even into the private lives of relatives, friends and associates of the public officials...

...Don't you feel any responsibility for safeguarding our government, especially the office of the presidency...

...It is impossible for the homeless people to sleep on them...

...The same Nzinga who kept 5o to 6o young men in her palace as lovers...

...But I like what I know about Susan McDougal, who chose to do 18 months in jail rather than finger Bill and Hillary Clinton...

...Her former husband, Jim McDougal, has blabbed his mouth off to 88 October 19 9 7 • The American Spectator save his skin...

...from The Triumph of Meanness: America's War Against Its Better Self, by Nicolaus Mills...

...Right on, sister...

...So the media fall back to some earlier sexual miscue that the president allegedly committed...

...He's also the proud father of two grown children (a 25-year-old son, Travis, and a 23-year-old daughter, Kristi): He keeps snapshots in his wallet, and has been married to the same woman for almost 29 years...

...Well, I ain't the prom queen, that's for sure...

...AUGUST 7,1997] Washington Post More evidence that a little learning can be a dangerous thing—and unpronounceable: Trying to get folks to address me by my new name has been no easy task...

...Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $25] Newsday Chained to toilets, surrounded by masturbators, the martyred Susan McDougal inspires Liz Smith to rhetorical peaks not seen since Anita Hill's glory days: It won't win me any friends, or influence anybody, if I say that one of my current heroes is a woman who has been in jail for seven months for contempt and who continues to defy ...Kenneth Starr...

...population 5,000), volunteers in worthy causes and Democratic Party politics, and has worked for the past 23 years as a highly paid technician at a coal-fired power plant in nearby Glenrock...

...But I've been this way since age 4 or 5 probably...

...It is time that we-the-people demand that our news media stay out of the private lives of our governmental leaders and focus on helping such leaders solve our remaining problems...

...JULY 26, 1997] Rolling Stone Visions of a Better World from pop warbler Lou Reed being shamelessly exploited by Bill Clinton's groovy Secretary of State: Calling this occasion surreal doesn't describe how weird it really was...

...In New York they are consistent with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's "quality of life" strategy for keeping beggars and the homeless out of the subway stations at all costs, and for the country as a whole, they reflect a much broader trend in which meanness—large—and small —has become our first response to a series of social problems that we face...

...The idea of bumproof benches and seats isn't new...

...Compared with the old benches, the seats are small and uncomfortable...

...What do I look like when I'm wearing a load-bearing vest, flak jacket, helmet, two canteens and my M-16...

...Chatting this week during a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and then over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the broad-shouldered 51-year-old described himself as an ex-Air Force enlisted man (crew chief on C-13o transport planes flying from Guam to Thailand in 1965-67) and a onetime rodeo cowboy back home in Wyoming (his specialty: bareback bronco-riding...

...Today our government is probably much cleaner than ever before...

...rapper is currently on the U.S...

...Nicolaus Mills elaborates on his rectal theory of urban history: At a subway stop near where I live in New York, the city has recently taken out most of the old wooden benches and installed new popup seats that return to a vertical position the minute you stand up...

...It certainly does prove that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger...

...It's a real movie...

...It's a case of just being able to respect life in general and take it for what it's worth, to do all the positive things you can do while you're here...

...Yet the president is innocent, just as you and I and every other American is innocent, until proven guilty...

...AUGUST 20, 1997] The Great Books Series In a tome sure to set minds afire and hearts full of hope, Prof...

...Most such civil contempt cases go to minimum-security prisons, but Susan was held in both the severe Sybil Brand Institution for Women and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in L.A...

...That's why I dedicate a part of my stage show to him every city I go to...

...President Clinton has been the recipient of the most demeaning and persistent attacks...

...AUGUST 21, 19971 The American Spectator ?October I 9 9 7 89...

...No wonder there is so little respect for governmental leaders...

...It's not autobiographical, it's just real s--- that we put together in a movie form and fashion...

...He's been dedicating songs to Tupac Shakur during his sets...

...America is envied by most people around the world...

...he is," she added, "a really good person...

...Our country is making good progress on many fronts, and our leaders are facing up to our remaining serious problems...

...The Tupac situation has impacted on me," Snoop told NME...

...That's n-ZING-uh, as in Queen Nzinga Mbandi, born in 1582, who ruled the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms in present-day Angola and who fought off the Portuguese slave traders for more than 40 years...

...Without missing a beat Nzinga ordered one of the governor's servants to his hands and knees, sat on him, then introduced herself formally...

...She was a waitress at the Pink Kitchen in Casper when Larry, then a college student on the GI Bill, first asked her out on a date...

...We've been together a long time, because I love him," said his wife, 49-yearold Vickie Goodwin, who accompanied him here...

...RUSSELL W. PETERSON Former Delaware governor [JUNE 29, 19971 Washington Post A characteristic tourist to our nation's capital in the age of Clinton: The tourist formerly known as Larry Goodwin is most people's idea of a man's man—in every respect but one...

...As in Queen Nzinga, who, during negotiations in Luanda, found the Portuguese governor seated on a large chair while she was left standing...

...It's ridiculous that anyone would build a separate head in the field because a woman needs privacy...

...JULY 10-14,1997] New York Times The lead headline on the front page of America's newspaper of record as written by a grammatical dunderhead and published, apparently, without editorial complaint: 25 Million Pounds of Beef Is Recalled [AUGUST 22, 1997] Washington Post The fine points of the New Warfare as elucidated by 1st Lt...

...I don't...

...But our acceptance of them as the norm for our cities is...

...Shakur's murder has also spurred Snoop to write, produce and direct a movie based on some of his own experiences...

...This is a woman who, until she was moved to a federal prison last week, had a flashlight shined in her face every three hours, had to live with rats and the indignity of body searches, was denied contact visits with her own mother, found herself chained to courthouse toilets while awaiting visits from her lawyer and was often conveyed in a sheriff's bus while male prisoners masturbated all around her...

...For the city, however, the seats are a great plus...

...This cartoon is symbolic of the growing disease that plagues much of the news media ?tearing down public officials for peccadilloes in their private lives, real or imagined...