Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM Washington Post International feminist and expert in posteriority, Miss Germaine Greer, esteems Hillary Rodham Clinton's fundamental soundness in a wide-ranging interview for the...
...It was not our intent to overlook violence against transgendered individuals...
...Often, the belief that human homosexuality is somehow "unnatural" is grounded in the equally unenlightened notion that animals in the wild never flirt, court or bond sexually with creatures of the same sex...
...APRIL 29,1999] Detroit News Deb Price, the questing mind what writes columns for the forward-lookers of Motown, expatiates on the cultural superiority of the denizens of the local zoo and the nearby barnyards: Life in the animal kingdom is a far more intricate and amazing ballet than most of us have ever dreamed...
...JUNE 10, 1999] Wall Street Journal And so the redoubtable Albert Hunt begins another of his oleaginous rants against "the right," whose personae he dares not mention: An amusing sideshow to Hillary Clinton's Senate bid is the sight of her obsessed detractors, driven crazy by her candidacy...
...Or the homosexual couple forcibly adopts an egg-filled nest...
...Parents were honored when the Inca, or king, took the best-looking children to his court in Cuzco as servants...
...Though common among birds, male-female pairing beyond momentary encounters is found in only 5 percent of mammals...
...A male couple interested in fatherhood consorts with a female, shooing her away after she lays eggs...
...Yet it produced a unified empire that distributed food equitably and maintained a complex system of mountain roads...
...CURRENT WISDOM Washington Post International feminist and expert in posteriority, Miss Germaine Greer, esteems Hillary Rodham Clinton's fundamental soundness in a wide-ranging interview for the venerable Post's "Style" page: "The nicest thing about Hillary is her [rear end...
...However, this attempt failed, as it excluded individuals like this person who do not fit within male/female gender categories...
...Now, however, thanks to a monumental and captivating work—Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (St...
...Although the planning committee members change each year, we envision in future years the lessons that have 76 August 1999 • The American Spectator been learned will lead to increased awareness and an atmosphere of safety that includes all individuals, regardless of gender identification...
...One boy held a makeshift rifle — a kid's broom with a round tube attached to it with duct tape...
...Finding none, he decided to write it himself...
...She can be reached at ager@freepress.com, if she is not already residing in Beverly Hills: Not long ago, three people I know disclosed to me within 36 hours that I had appeared in their dreams on the very same night...
...I jumped off the bench and rushed at them...
...Because it's big and fat and close to the ground, and there's [nothing] she can do about it...
...That prompted the rumors—politically damaging in Quinn's district—that Quinn and Kowadler were having a romantic relationship...
...In the third, I give bossy, bad directions as a woman friend drives lost on the streets of Detroit, in search of her gynecologist's office...
...Among the elegant, red-billed black swans that nest there, the most successful parents tend to be male couples...
...In the closing scene of her dream, the gynecologist emerges to ask for her patience, revealing himself to be the vice president of the United States, Al Gore...
...The tiny frozen mummies, packed underground near the top of a snowy mountain, are amazing evidence of the elaborate Inca culture that once ruled much of South America before Spanish conquistadors arrived...
...By combining their strength, a male black swan duo—mated for years or life—stakes out prime territory sometimes loo times as large as properties left over for their neighbors...
...As we listened, we considered how students were performing against the specific criteria of which both students and jurors were aware: speaking audibly, pausing appropriately after punctuation, enunciating clearly, and looking up occasionally...
...The competency that my panel (which included a teacher, a student, and three community members) was assessing was 11th grade reading...
...According to the New York Post, Quinn dumped her longtime girlfriend shortly after the election and went on a vacation with her consultant Wayne Kowadler...
...JUNE 8, 1999] Ann Arbor News In progressive Ann Arbor, a lamentable snafu on the road to scortatory utopiaz: The Ann Arbor Coalition Against Rape wishes to apologize for the pain that was caused by this year's "Take Back the Night March...
...But for the rest of us, it offers new and exciting ways to look at living creatures...
...LISA PAHL Coalition Against Rape Ann Arbor [MAY 29, 1999] San Francisco Chronicle Relaxed musings from a suave editorialist at the Chronicle, and a persona—one suspects— wholly out of sympathy with animal-rights activists, vegetarians, and other squeamish types: An Inca Riddle Surrounded by gold statues, bowls of food and alpaca weavings, three little children were found on an Andean peak last month, 500 years after their ritual deaths...
...Once we find it, I fall asleep on a waiting room sofa (how could I be so rude...
...In some species, such as California's northern elephant seal, 90 percent of males never attempt to breed...
...The male couples' success rate is awesome: Though just 5 percent of black swan pairs, they parent 20 to 25 percent of surviving chicks...
...Bagemihl guides us through an animal world where violent, claw-your-way-to-the-top quests for territorial and sexual dominance recede to give us a view of other elements at play — companionship, affection, cooperation, shared sexual pleasure: • Pairs of male walruses nestle together like vertical spoons as they float in the sea while sleeping...
...APRIL 10,1999] Detroit Free Press Susan Ager, distinguished columnist for the illustrious DFP, displays incipient talents for dramaturgy that are sure to land her a job in Hollywood...
...The planning committee is very sorry for making this grave error and for the pain it has caused...
...I heard my son say "Well, I'm taller," which was immediately followed by the boy with the gun shooting a few rounds at my son...
...Of course, Marcelo responded by making a gun with his fingers and shooting back...
...In order to make the march welcome to transgendered individuals, it was stated that the march was for women as well as those who identify as women...
...Boys will be boys...
...JUNE 2, 1999] The Politicsl Report Despairing consequences of a politically promising Old Maid's meeting with the manly Wayne Kowadler, quite possibly an agent for the Christian Coalition or for Playboy magazine...
...Quinn spokeswoman Maura Keaney maintains that Quinn is truly a lesbian and "there's no sexual or romantic aspect to their friendship...
...In another, I'm running a meeting of a high school yearbook staff, on which the guy who is telling the dream is a peon...
...Now Quinn finds herself contending with nasty rumors about her private life...
...A handful of Spanish invaders, with superior weapons and contagious diseases, decimated this realm...
...In addition to passing their coursework, each student at the school must demonstrate that he or she is competent in several areas in order to graduate...
...APRIL 19,1999] The American Spectator August 1999 77...
...A survivor who did not identify as male or female was forced to leave the march by other participants, who perceived this individual to be a man...
...How dare an outsider run for the Senate in New York, complain some on the right, forgetting...
...JUNE 12, 1999] Boston Globe In the correspondence section of a frontier gazette, Abigail Smith of Cambridge reports on how the settlers are progressing with the written word in a rustic outpost of civilization amidst the chiggers and Injuns: I recently had the pleasure of participating as a community juror in the annual performance-based assessment at City on a Hill...
...Yet Bagemihl's eye-opening revelations about how thoroughly homosexual, bisexual and transgender animals are woven into the natural world probably won't resolve many human political fights: People determined to be hostile can always find new excuses...
...Take the swan lakes of Australia and New Zealand, for example...
...City on a Hill teaches us all a lesson about the importance of opening public schools up to public scrutiny...
...On one of my countless afternoons at the park with my 4-year-old son Marcelo and his two friends Mateo and Elayha, I was confronted with the issue firsthand...
...Martin's Press, $40) —the far-flung evidence of homosexuality in more than 450 species is collected in one book...
...Lesbian rhesus monkeys play "kiss and run" and other courtship games found only among them...
...while she frets for hours, furious at the wait...
...Bagemihl, a gay man with a doctorate in cognitive science, searched for a compilation of research into animal homosexuality while studying biology as an undergraduate...
...History has only a sketchy understanding of Inca traditions, a gap that the discovery of the three bodies may fill by scientific examination of the bodies...
...The enemies of Progress proliferate: New York City Councilwoman Christine Quinn (D), a lesbian, was elected to office last year with the strong support of the large gay communities in the Greenwich Village and Chelsea neighborhoods...
...What were their thoughts as priests or soldiers accompanied them ever higher up the zz,000-foot peak...
...A couple of boys, no older than 6, came to the playground and began to claim the space...
...In their brief lives, the three children embodied a long-lost culture...
...JUNE 25, 1999] San Francisco Chronicle Another alarming instance of child abuse on the playgrounds of San Francisco as reported by Mrs...
...It started with an insignificant argument about who was older...
...In one dream, a coworker and I are washed up on a beach after surviving a shipwreck that sucks many of our colleagues down to their deaths...
...It takes courage to open the schoolhouse doors in that way, but the benefits to students and to the integrity of public education are worth the effort...
...He insisted there were no other details to tell, but I darkly suspect otherwise...
...Kowadler, meanwhile, told the Post, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a heterosexual—not that there's anything wrong with that...
...Before I knew it, the boys had gravitated toward each other and the shooting began...
...Ana Perez, self-confessed hellcat: Three school shootings later, more than a dozen kids dead and hundreds recovering from the psychological aftershock of being attacked, yet parents still are not getting the message...
...After introducing themselves to the panel, the students were asked to read aloud the editorial...
...I wanted to get a more sophisticated discussion going on," he explained...
...More intriguing still is wondering about the last moments of the youngsters...
...It was a society that had no steel, horses, written alphabet or the wheel...
...The nuclear heterosexual family, if you look across the whole animal species is really the exception, rather than the rule," author Bruce Bagemihl (pronounced "boga-meal") said in an interview...
...Gunplay kills...
...As its delightful title suggests, Biological Exuberance affirms life in all its richness, abundance and complexity...
...Students were given a newspaper editorial to prepare one-half hour in advance of coming before the jury...
...Male giraffes sensually "neck" only with each other...
...Together, the male pair incubates the eggs and raises the chicks...
...Were they terrified or kept ignorant of their role in the Inca world...
Vol. 32 • August 1999 • No. 8
