Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM New York Times Book Review Moral equivalency as perceived by a reviewer of the new Reagan memoir for whom a cutie in the Oval Office is as momentous as a Cold War summit: His world...
...Men will not acknowledge this because they have not taken responsibility for their gender...
...With the few exceptions where obesity is caused by a glandular malfunction, it is simply caused by eating too much...
...And you didn't speak again for a while...
...Handicapped parking places should not be awarded to the fat folks of the world...
...I had been a guest on his show a few times, and we were friendly in a dinner/cocktail party kind of way, and as Charlie is a nice guy, he said sure...
...I don't think the public thinks Reagan was so great...
...He still was...
...She got that way by choice...
...But people like Davis pander to some imaginary public adoration of this man who was really quite wicked and empty-headed...
...I suspect, though, the real moral was simple...
...AND1 FLANAGAN Seward [OCTOBER 25, 1999] New York Times Columnist Gail Collins demonstrates the perils of jocularity when perpetrated on an agelastic journalist: My favorite Ronald Reagan story involves the false Lassie...
...After an almost imperceptible pause, the President smiled and said "Lassie...
...I was so abashed I left the stage...
...Please...
...CURRENT WISDOM New York Times Book Review Moral equivalency as perceived by a reviewer of the new Reagan memoir for whom a cutie in the Oval Office is as momentous as a Cold War summit: His world was famously populated with welfare "queens" who did not exist, with trees that caused pollution...
...There are very few signs of obesity in India...
...This is some ongoing mass hysteria that some people refuse to wake up from...
...He didn't remember his dog's name, and had simply come up with something that sounded reasonable...
...I had been imagining this moment for nearly a quarter century...
...What about the broad who opened fire at a schoolyard...
...Landau, who arrived at the same time, came in with me, and said something complimentary about my political writing to Bruce...
...The President didn't care enough about the dog to bother to learn its name...
...Laughs.] [OCTOBER 8, 1999] Santa Barbara News-Press Spotted on the howl page of the esteemed News-Press, one last declamation from the 1984 chairman of Neurotics for Mondale: Gov...
...And he had obviously had an awful time under Communism, and somehow he got over here...
...If Bill Clinton's reputation is for telling lies, Reagan's was just for saying things that were not true...
...We strike back in retaliation or self-defense...
...So prizes for good art will always favor the left...
...All you folks who blame guns for all these massacres ought to really think, if that's possible...
...The Morris haters should keep this in mind: Like all very intelligent people, Morris realized that there was absolutely nothing to Reagan...
...from It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen, by Eric Alterman, Little, Brown, 282 pages, $20] Anchorage Daily News A meteor of indeterminate origin streaks across the pages of a great American daily: I take great exception with David Purcell's view about women and violence...
...Bills that relate to the health and welfare of the people of California...
...And let us stop putting obesity in the same category as smoking, drugs and alcohol abuse...
...He had been a source of hope and inspiration, of friendship and fortitude, of therapy and solidarity, of consolation and exhilaration...
...OCTOBER 12, 1999] New York Times Arcane analysis by Miss Deanne Stillman, playwright and ventriloquist, on a garment definitely in need of dry cleaning: The image of Monroe singing to Kennedy burns brightly over time, like other images whose players have long been reduced to dust...
...Once when he was President, Mr...
...And so that afternoon I was ushered into a little room where Bruce was sitting alone with his acoustic guitar...
...Your belligerent attitude toward overweight people makes me wonder what is at the root of your mean-spirited hostility...
...Since Morris had to fulfill his writing assignment, he came up with a brilliant way to shed light onto a very dim bulb...
...On that evening, in that scene of our national play, she became the disciple ministering to the adored, the acolyte praising the soon-to-be-martyred President, as Mary Magdalene comforted Jesus Christ on his path...
...Women are not inherently violent...
...To honor Ronald Reagan with a license plate...
...a cloth so sacred to the national culture ought not have a price...
...Later an aide on the press plane explained that Mr...
...Laughs.] And a guy stood up dressed like a middle European...
...When men evolve from the Neanderthal ego-in-the-pants terrorists they are to true humans, perhaps this world will be at peace...
...Reagan invited the White House press corps to his ranch in California...
...While not all great basketball players are tall, being tall is certainly an advantage...
...Unlike smoking, doing drugs or drinking alcohol, there is nothing in food that causes a chemical addiction in the human body...
...From Columbine to Waco to college campuses to assassinations to little girls, these acts were committed by men...
...We were introduced by his manager and coproducer, Jon Landau, in the Green Room of The Charlie Rose Show...
...No one can ever say any actual good thing that Reagan did...
...When was the last time you heard of a woman blowing up a federal building or gunning down her co-workers...
...They cannot afford excesses such as overeating so they don't get fat...
...Reagan's tendency to recast reality with characters from Hollywood movies...
...I was there because I had called Charlie earlier in the day and asked if I could show up for Bruce's interview...
...The gown she wore contains magic and mystery, sweat and tears...
...The relic ought to be donated to the Smithsonian, not auctioned to the highest bidder...
...Most fat people choose immediate gratification over long-term health and appearance...
...in it she gave immeasurable mojo to Camelot...
...OCTOBER 11, 1999] Washington Post Laughing it up with the literary genius Molly Ivins from Texas where, if we are to take her at her witty word, she knows of a "giant, stinking garbage dump" that is "phony, shallow, nasty"...and "appearanceobsessed...
...I suspect that some obese person in your childhood was mean to you...
...The Reagan faithful now bash Morris and the fictional "device" of his work, as a way to protect their man...
...Gray Davis has hundreds of bills on his desk awaiting his approval...
...I was speaking at the Library of Congress—and this is like being invited to Buckingham Palace by the royal family—and I was thinking that my jokes, as now, were going pretty well...
...If it is otherwise, then bias has clearly entered into the judgment of what is good art...
...That he was able to sell this fine distinction to the public surely qualifies him as a political genius...
...JIM DWYER Monrovia, California [OCTOBER 5, 1999] Salon Jocose observations from that fearless expatriate Kurt Vonnegut, now living in exilic quietude in outer Long Island: You were accused at one time of encouraging pessimism and cynicism in youth...
...Please, let us end this bad dream...
...JOSEPH BRUTSMAN Los Angeles [OCTOBER 5, 1999] Ann Landers Jim from Llano catches Ann in a foul mood: Dear Ann: I have read several letters in your column that dealt with obesity, but I have yet to read one that addresses the fact that obesity is not a disease or a chemical addiction...
...What did you think of that little lass who hated Jews so much, she shot up a synagogue...
...Look at the real truth...
...Such a lament is analogous to the charge that awards in basketball favor those who are tall...
...She wasn't hooked on chemicals...
...Reagan had, as they say, misspoken...
...What does he take the time to do...
...SEPTEMBER 26, 1999] The Great Books Series The excruciating pains that a rock magnifico has to endure when journalist Eric Alterman is at large: On a rainy late-November afternoon in 1998, I shook hands with Bruce Springsteen...
...OCTOBER 12, 1999] The Amerir nn Cnori-n+nr...
...Did you hear about the girl who walked into her school and killed her classmates...
...One of the reporters noticed the family collie and, in an effort to make conversation, asked what the dog's name was...
...And he said, "What right have you got as a leader of young people to speak so ill of the most wonderful nation in the world...
...Similarly, a leftist political perspective is almost essential to the creative process, since that process requires stepping outside of the conventional view of the world and looking at it without the blinders that are provided by the established order...
...Molly must come from one very posh neighborhood: One of my most implacable prejudices—undisturbed by the fact that I have never done more than visit Washington briefly from time to time—is that the political culture of this city is so phony, shallow, nasty, disconnected from reality and appearance-obsessed that it amounts to a giant, stinking garbage dump...
...Well, if man was created in "His" image, then where does that leave "Him...
...Jim in Llano, Calif...
...KEVIN WARE Santa Barbara [OCTOBER 16,1999] Los Angeles Times From one of our Liberal faithful, another truly colossal specimen of what students of the psyche call DENIAL: Regarding Edmund Morris and his biography of Ronald Reagan: To this day, even conservatives of considerable intellect have failed to present Reagan as anything other than what he was: the luckiest empty head ever to sit in the Oval Office—in other words, sheer proof that at certain times in American history, literally anyone can be president...
...When men become outraged at other men for this violence, only then can women and children live without daily terror...
...Because it tastes good" does not qualify as a chemical addiction...
...If everyone ate and drank everything they wanted, the world would be full of 350-pound hippos...
...There are all sorts of ways you can interpret this anecdote—as a hint of the Alzheimer's disease that was to come, or an example of Mr...
...But it is a s--- ty country...
...And this just muzzled me entirely...
...3) by James Atlas: Mr...
...7- T 71...
...They are allocated for the truly handicapped, who have no control over their condition...
...How about the gal who kidnapped men and raped them, tor-tured them and then murdered them...
...What these things have in common is that they were, and still are being, perpetrated by males...
...Looking tan and rested, Bruce stood up from the table to shake my hand and told me he was "real glad" to meet me...
...Don't like the "evolve" part...
...Obesity is due to gluttony...
...Yes, we can be violent, especially when we are being beaten, raped or our children are threatened...
...Atlas's argument that prizes in literature from the Nobel Committee indicate a preference for the political left indicates a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between art and politics...
...How about that, an "appearance-obsessed" garbage dump...
...OCTOBER 10, 1999] New York Times On the correspondence page of the venerable Times, aesthetic reflections of a life-long reader of the New York Review of Books: Re Polemical Prize (Op-Ed, Oct...
...This stepping outside, of course, is what conservatives fear, since their goal is to preserve the advantages that the advantaged enjoy under the prevailing order...
...Please, Ann, let us not shed any tears for that 350-pound woman who can't wedge herself into an airplane seat...
Vol. 32 • December 1999 • No. 12
