Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM The Nation From Nation scribe Patricia J. Williams, a lapidary dropping that could have been laid upon faithful readers of this famed organ of progress at almost any time throughout...
...And it's rare that we see someone familiar on the pages of magazines, splashed across the front of the newspaper, or in close-ups on national television...
...22, 1963...
...They're not girls, like our Olympic gold medal-winning figure skating or gymnastic teams...
...occasioned the rise of a new variety of television journalist, the TV undertaker...
...We" (as in "the people") are "getting rid of" whom, and how...
...They are pushing for restrictions on light that shines wastefully into the sky, illuminating nothing but the bellies of birds, as they like to say...
...Today, 39 percent of American Indians smoke, compared with z6 percent of blacks, 25 percent of whites, 18 percent of Hispanics and 15 percent of Asians, according to the suit...
...Joe, we will think about it—and thanks for the compliment: Are Limbaugh and Podhoretz, despite their powerful influence over right-wing opinion, merely two creepy oddballs spinning out of control...
...Leaders in a half-dozen states, scores of communities and groups internationally are acting to bring it back...
...We might catch an occasional game or two on the television with our husbands after work, but our sports-watching is mostly confined to cheering on a bunch of sweaty 6-year-olds who wouldn't know a penalty kick if it hit them in the head...
...It is hopeful stories such as this that heralded the rise of Ralph Nader, and in an earlier age, Benito Mussolini: Call it light trash...
...JULY 13, 19991 The American Spectator • September 1999 73...
...It creeps up on you gradually," says University of Virginia astronomer Phil Ianna, who some nights can see the city of Richmond's glow, 70 miles away, from his hilltop observatory...
...Kennedy's burial rites, dribbles poetry on the op-ed page of the venerable Times: There comes a time in every generation when the light of youth flickers out, when some tragic accident unearths buried anxieties about the senselessness of death and the brutality of living...
...By what authority comes this purchase of state force...
...The women out there, even with their all-American good looks, highly trained muscles, and loo-watt smiles, could be us...
...JUNE 21, 1999] San Francisco Chronicle A whopper from the people who hooked Sir Walter Raleigh on demon tobacco and created the much maligned Marlboro Man: It is considered the child of Mother Earth and Father Sky...
...It is also used for medicinal purposes...
...comes off sounding like some thin-lipped, dimwitted, bad-backed polo player whose empty head can barely retain enough limited cocktail chatter to get him through a dinner with that international moron, Princess Di...
...Most of them are within spitting distance of 3o—the age when most female athletes have long since packed up the sports bras and water bottles and headed for home—but they show no signs of slowing...
...These are women, and they have kids, husbands, and lives that they're trying to juggle like so many soccer balls...
...They're not 6-foot-tall super-models with stilts for legs and anorexic ribs or pre-pubescent rubber bands like Dominique Moceanu or Tara Lipinski...
...At last we see real women doing amazing things and getting the attention they deserve for it...
...Joe Conason makes a dignified appeal to us "decent conservatives...
...JULY 24, 1999] New York Times Another of the TV undertakers, historian Douglas Brinkley, whilst negotiating a $ro,000 fee for further solemnities during the unfortunate Mr...
...A monumental lunge of literary creativity considering his 1997 column on Kennedy, esteeming him: It's more than a distinct possibility that JFK Jr...
...After spending the requisite 15 minutes lauding the team's win and praising the players for their indefatigable spirit, sportscasters downplayed the achievement...
...President Clinton did it," one said...
...Or do they stand for a more widespread impulse, dating back to the JFK-hating pamphlets that littered the streets of Dallas in the days before Nov...
...In direct opposition to the scores of men and women who have asserted since time immemorial that women cannot work together without resorting to backbiting and cat fights, these ladies are pure class, sharing the work and the spotlight...
...locker room after the game: "From someone who knows how to take a hit, I really admire you...
...Kennedy, "He lived a wonderful life, a proud life...
...We're too busy running companies, loving families, and keeping our kids fed, clothed, and happy...
...That same ugliness was all too persistent during the orgy of Clinton-hating that swept over the American right in recent years...
...Never once did he do anything to cause any embarrassment to his family...
...JULY 8, 1999] Salon In the Clintons' favorite journal of Internet soft-porn, Dr...
...JULY 19, 1999] 72 September 19 9 9 The American Spectator Washington Post A historic front-page account of Virginia girls practicing oral sex on the boys at an Arlington, Virginia middle school reveals the success of the White House's ongoing Clinton legacy project: When some parents tried to speak to their daughters, the girls shrugged off the significance of what they had done...
...JUNE 5, 1999] Sports Illustrated From the ladies' locker room, high melodrama, compliments of Our President: She looked typically drained...
...They blame non-Indians for introducing them to non-ceremonial uses of tobacco products and said tobacco manufacturers have directed ads at Indians, particularly young people, during marketing campaigns...
...But American Indians also battle with high rates of tobacco addiction...
...JFK Jr...
...They predicted that the roar surrounding the game, the team, and women's soccer in general would become little more than a whisper within days...
...As if on cue, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive came over the loudspeakers...
...And the disappointment isn't that he wrote about his family...
...Physically and emotionally, they're what I'd like my daughter—if I had one —to grow up to be: spirited, fit, intelligent, attractive, and powerful...
...JULY 27, 1999] Monterey County Herald Stifle that laughter...
...Americans in their 30's, like me...
...it's that he writes so poorly...
...has the body of Joe Piscopo and the brain of Sonny Bono...
...The dark frontier recedes...
...The most lachrymose of these fantasticos was Mike Barnicle, former Globe columnist fired for his many fabrications...
...She was smiling, though, cradling a nonalcoholic beer and speaking with her parents, Bob and Sue, and with 1991 World Cup teammate Carin Gabarra...
...I think all this near-perfection makes some males a tad nervous [JULY 14, 1999] New York Times A suave explanation as to why this page lacks its usual goofball charm: Anthony Lewis is on vacation...
...But now we're fighting to reverse a cycle of disease...
...The great majority of decent conservatives ought to ask themselves whether such hideous behavior is worthy of their cause...
...But despite this lack of sports fever, almost every woman I know was glued to the TV set during the final minutes of the game, watching Brandi Chastain hammer one home for good ol' USA...
...What's the big deal...
...Rooting on a sports team falls on our list of things to do somewhere between vacuuming the baseboards and learning how to make a centerpiece out of dried herbs—nice, but who's got the time...
...They're us at our best, handling pressure with grace and aplomb, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders yet never stumbling...
...JULY 19, 1999] Boston Globe The death of John F. Kennedy, Jr...
...For untold millions, it says, the "spectacular view of the night sky that our ancestors had on clear dark nights no longer exists...
...The thing about this team is that we see ourselves on the field...
...AUGUST 14, 1997] The Capital Gang During an admirably primitive dithyramb to Congressman Bill Thomas, Margaret Carlson commits an unconscionable act of disloyalty to those of a lowered I.Q.: CARLSON: Well, I actually don't think it hurts President Clinton to veto this and this vote is, reminds me of the impeachment vote when you, you know, if you vote for impeachment you're not really voting for impeachment because it's going over to the Senate where they'll fix it up because they're more responsible than you guys in the House...
...Then Akers, whom DiCicco calls the best woman player ever, couldn't resist repeating what President Clinton had told her when he visited the U.S...
...Performing his funereal services on NBC News he hymned of the late Mr...
...They're not steroid-enhanced Amazons who look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's twin sister...
...The news that John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Bessette are missing at sea and presumed dead has struck such a crippling blow for my generation...
...Tobacco) was never used in everyday experience—it was a sacrament, an offering," said Fidel Moreno, president of the Native American Council for Tobacco Litigation...
...We can relate to them, and we cheer them on as we see them attempting to have it all...
...What makes us all sudden soccer fans...
...CURRENT WISDOM The Nation From Nation scribe Patricia J. Williams, a lapidary dropping that could have been laid upon faithful readers of this famed organ of progress at almost any time throughout the century, always to the same amen effect: In many places in the United States these days, one hears politicians and citizens alike speaking of "cleaning up" and "getting rid of" that part of the population whose only fault is their poverty...
...The vocabulary has changed so that tax cuts now look like irresponsible spending and spending on investments and education and Medicare looks like the responsible thing to do because if I get $100 back, I can't go fix a school or clean a river and people are more interested in these things than they are in the tax cut and the poll numbers, you know, don't explain this...
...It's as if suddenly, an entire generation's optimism is deflated, and all that is left is the limp reality of growing old...
...It is used in many ceremonies and is often smoked as part of a prayer...
...The International Dark-Sky Association draws astronomers and other stargazers together to fight celestial glare...
...Her face was wan and discolored with pale blotches, and she wore a butterfly bandage on the crook of each arm where the IV's had left their marks...
...They probably couldn't even be considered sports fans...
...Within many tribes, a pipe is often the first courtesy offered to guest or stranger...
...JUNE 8, 1999] Boston Globe Philosophical reflections on our soccer gals' World Cup, from Miss Lain Chroust Ehman, the Hillary Clinton of Bean Town: Within hours of America's stunning penalty-kick victory over China in the World Cup soccer match, the cynicism had already begun...
...Our favorite leisure-time activity is sleep—when we can squeeze it in...
...They look like someone we might have gone to school with or grown up next door to...
...As development spreads, so, too, do lights of civilization...
...I mean the only thing that could explain this love of tax cuts is a lowered I.Q...
...Some sky-watchers worry the nightscape primeval is fading from sight...
...Most of the women I know are not soccer fans...
...These commentators underestimate the power and passion of the American female...
Vol. 32 • September 1999 • No. 9
