Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM New Republic Lugubrious communique from Dr. Lee Siegel upon hearing that the celebrated Times is putting the American short story to death: Fewer agents and editors than ever will...
...Several others took up the chant in recent days and I see the pattern of the last six years emerging...
...Instead, I will let it lure me...
...In righting societal wrongs, conducting foreign affairs, shunning Vatican entanglements and curtailing elitist exploitations of the kingdom, his father had made many adversaries, some who utilized their power, wealth and connections for assassination and cover-up...
...SUNDAY PAVLOCK Canyon Lake [JULY 25, 1999] The American Spectator • October 1999 77...
...I watched William Safire (July 18, "Meet The Press") presume to know the cause of the accident and proceed to lay blame by calling this a total "lack of judgment...
...But lately he had seemed on the brink of being persuaded that we were ready to embrace him as not just our favorite son but as our new leader....This most scintillating, mesmerizing, beloved of presidents was suddenly, inexplicably dead....The pain of this week inevitably recalls the pain of that week...
...I don't think Hillary should run for the Senate in New York...
...If you think tobacco is addictive, watch what happens the next time you try to get a gun out of the hand of a gun owner...
...AUGUST 2, 1999] Los Angeles Times Another admirer of Hillary's real estate savvy and investment acuity speaks out: For many years I have had the deepest respect and admiration for Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...AUGUST 1999] Austin American-Statesman A peculiarly named denizen of Canyon Lake delivers an original reading of the time-honored slippery slope theory of social progress: A distraught nation was forced to observe, once again, the insensitivity and arrogance of some people in the recent tragedy of the John F. Kennedy Jr...
...The kingdom once the King's could be his any time, but the enemies of Camelot could not risk disclosure and retaliation...
...she or he is still a "literary tourist...
...The Victorian residue of some letters, wanting to hide from these things, seems odd...
...This is precisely the way the witch hunts and character assassinations of the last several years have materialized...
...I write off all gun owners, from the so-called "law-abiding citizen" to the criminal sociopath...
...Afterwards, his mother sought refuge via a dynastic union with a Grecian shipping magnate so powerful the conspirators dared no further, until he, as later she, passed on, leaving 76 October 1999 • The American Spectator her children vulnerable again to those who have for centuries sought extermination of the lineage...
...we just pretend it's naughty for our parents' sake...
...No matter that she or he might be writing the most beautiful short stories of the past 5o years...
...JANET ROCKWELL Santa Barbara [JULY 11, 1999] San Francisco Chronicle K. Zorch, a leading consultant on the risible and humor therapist to both Democratic presidential candidates, discourses on the fundamental elements of funniness, in the venerable pages of the Chronicle by the sea: Everybody passes gas, has or wants to have sex and says f--k from time to time...
...This child of all children...
...We have access to the President...
...I don't need to keep and bear arms...
...I'm talking about the drag queens...
...We, the people...
...I'm 48...
...How about community service to pay for the destruction of property...
...A penile-shaped instrument used to drive at high velocity another penile-shaped object, a metal bullet, into the living flesh of an unsuspecting creature, an imagined enemy, a 4-year-old child, a rival gang member, an old woman on her porch or a classmate's face you just don't like...
...They are the flamboyant people who show up in the newspaper photos and "don't really represent the lesbian and gay movement," some of us tell ourselves...
...If nobody has noticed, the word f--k is as common in certain circles as the word "the...
...I'm not paranoid of "coloreds or foreigners...
...I think not...
...No, he said at first, I won't seize the political life...
...Clinton would make a great senator but I beg her to think of what she could do with her worldwide presence for women, children and improving the quality of life of disenfranchised peoples everywhere...
...I think it means that sexual desire—that mysterious, seemingly uncontrollable, and beautiful thing—still frightens most of us...
...So next time someone feels an awkward twinge upon hearing flatulence, etc., I urge that reader to look at it nakedly and remember that he passes gas too, and it's funny...
...I have been truly impressed by her commitment to social justice, her worldwide involvement in improving the quality of life for children and her unwavering commitment to universal health care coverage...
...Who can know what happened on that sorrowful night, least of all men who exhibit no compassion or humility in the face of family suffering...
...These are teens on the brink of adulthood with promising lives ahead of them, not hardened criminals...
...This projectile pierces the flesh, smashing through bones and tissues, brains, eyes, arms and guts...
...I don't question my sexual adequacy...
...Secondhand smoke will take on a whole new meaning...
...And gun owners will defend to the death their right to own this marvelous "toy...
...God knows, the Indians are on the reservations, and the English haven't invaded since 1812...
...Perhaps they should show autopsies on the news instead of smiling pictures of their victims...
...Imagine a gifted, special, ambitious young woman or young man, black or white or yellow or red or brown or gay or straight...
...Finally, I am impressed that "The Boondocks" [comic strip] can reveal so much about the tenor of American race relations in three small pictures, impressed that it has engaged the Big P to nakedly portray a kernel of the truth wrapped in a joke: A little black kid stopping a grown woman for being white is a humorous foil of say, a big white cop stopping a motorist for being black...
...Are Santa Barbarans so hungry for lurid, juicy news they must feed on their young...
...That is what they are designed to do, and they work...
...How about writing a paper on the history of Jewish people...
...This dashing son of the dashing man I adored and respected and knew without doubt would lead our nation to glory...
...And the tears flow and refuse to be slowed...
...When you purchase a gun, you are purchasing a killing machine...
...This is what all guns do...
...Is it in our best interest to plaster their photos in the newspaper, label them as felons, throw the book at them, make them into social pariahs and cause their families untold heartache...
...The Prince grew graceful, resourceful, wise and learned of details concerning his father's death...
...But as he embraced his destiny, his father's fate awaited him, as well as his wife, her sister, and a rumored heir to the legacy...
...Shame on the News-Press, San Marcos High School and the Santa Barbara judicial system for their insensitivity...
...So this young person's chances have diminished...
...who helpedstart the Stonewall riots (like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera), the bull dykes, bisexuals, and many others...
...I will toy with it and wait until I am sure it wants me and I want it...
...Some impressionable readers might not even buy a recently published volume of short stories...
...And I think it means that some lesbian and gay people still dislike and fear themselves by taking out their nervousness on the more visibly sissy, butchy, campy, bisexual, or transgendered, they give the rest of the world license to hate...
...But while some lesbians and gay people celebrate our current popularity and search for "good representatives of our community," the newly legitimate gay movement seems to want to leave some members behind...
...And the people wept...
...JULY 24, 1999] Rapid City Journal Loren of Rapid City, South Dakota, rhapsodic in the grip of true poetic afflatus and possibly sexually aroused: As long as he led an average life, avoided the political arena and remained single without child, he was exempted by those who felled his father a generation before...
...It would only allow me to be able to kill...
...CECILLE M. CORDON Los Angeles [JULY 14,1999] San Francisco Chronicle More belles-lettres occasioned by the disciples of the National Rife Association: The gun...
...We can only rid ourselves of this attitude by eliminating these greedy, self-serving men from our government...
...MICHAEL S. ECKENRODE San Francisco [AUGUST 16, 1999] Knoxville News-Sentinel Specimens from a column by Miss Barbara Asbury, in the aftermath of...well, you guess what unhappy event elicited these prodigious sobs: I shake in sobs on my sofa...
...They don't blend in well...
...I hope our citizens around our country will recognize this un-Christian behavior for what it is...
...Not to hit bull's-eyes or clay pigeons or squares of paper with human shapes on them, but to end the life on the other end of the barrel...
...I've never had the slightest urge or fantasy to hold, touch, buy or shoot a gun...
...She can do anything she wants at this point...
...They don't take the trouble to camouflage themselves, or they can't...
...Her incomparable talents and abilities would be better directed in a global, worldwide direction...
...Buying a gun would never bolster any real or imagined deficits or shortcomings in my body, mind or spirit...
...Waiting for the precise moment, under cover of night, they downed the Prince, and with him, any hope of Camelot's return to its rightful role amongst the league...
...How can we assess what permanent damage is caused by the callous way this is being handled...
...Will kids do stupid things, shocking things, rebellious things...
...How better to create a global village than to work in a global way...
...They all have the same sick and perverse need to own, fondle, caress, oil up and rub down a machine designed, manufactured and sold for the sole, singular purpose of tearing gaping holes in living flesh...
...They kill and maim...
...This child would settle down, now that he was of age, and he would bear the banner of the New Frontier: And we would know the torch had passed to another generation...
...They are all the same to me...
...Why not embrace and be able to laugh at those things, and follow in the tradition of Rome (phallic jokes), Moliere (a maestro of the enema joke) and even that beloved national figure Ben Franklin (who proposed a study on flatulence to the Belgian Science Academy...
...Of course...
...We're on TV...
...Lee Siegel upon hearing that the celebrated Times is putting the American short story to death: Fewer agents and editors than ever will risk publishing a volume of short stories now that the Times has officially declared such an enterprise a dead one...
...plane crash...
...How about counseling...
...How about a mandatory trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C...
...LOREN E. PEDERSEN Rapid City [AUGUST 5, 1999] Santa Barbara News-Press On the pages of a great American gazette, sensitivity and compassion, probably the two leading elements in the Decline of Western Civilization: I am outraged and appalled at your coverage of the recent incidence of vandalism at San Marcos High School...
...Why this embarrassment while we march on toward freedom...
...Cross-dressers and transsexuals are also murdered frequently, though these killings get little media attention...
...Her personal power goes way beyond a political dogfight, which will be costly and very dirty...
...JULY 27,1999] The Progressive Anne-Marie Cusac, managing editor of this prestigious organ of Democratic thought, introduces a new element of hope into the modern Democratic Coalition and therapy group: The mainstream has recently declared gays and lesbians to be a significant, meaningful, and, in some cases, ordinary segment of the population...
...We're a marketing niche...
...We are a fortunate, affluent community allegedly committed to promoting tolerance and compassion for our fellow man...
...Martin Arnold and the Times have said so...
...What does this mean...
...Are we scared of sex in the wake of a "sexual revolution" that turned into an "STD (sexually transmitted disease) revolution...
...Transgendered people, in particular, are the siblings many would rather forget about...
...I don't feel threatened...
Vol. 32 • October 1999 • No. 10
