Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
The Nation Rustic drolleries from Miss Molly Ivins, America's most widely published semiliterate: Every now and again Shrub W. Bush will stop you faster than pullin' on the whoa reins. You...
...Before they are recognized, the acts are considered, by people not subjected to them, as either too extraordinary to be conceivable or too ordinary to be atrocious...
...Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve: The allegations that some New York City teachers may have cheated to raise their students' test scores should surprise no o n e - partly because of similar accusations elsewhere but also because of the enormous pressure on educators to produce better results...
...But before making the commitment to extirpating the beard, MeCloskey scheduled removals of hair on the backs of the hands, then arms, then back, legs and stomach...
...Many of the white people in New York support and admire him because he has stuck it to African-Americans...
...Sessions under local anesthesia can run as long as seven or eight hours at a stretch...
...He'd freak...
...by two men...
...It is fear...
...By the Spanish conquest in a53z the Inca, a small ethnic group based in Cuzco, Peru, ruled more than 12 million subjects, of loo different cultures, speaking at least 20 languages...
...Tired of that flash of fear I feel when I walk alone and see a man coming toward me down a dark street...
...Because I watch the news before dinner...
...Inca textiles, for example, inspired awe among villagers...
...What a joke...
...Because I am afraid to open the door at night to the Greenpeace kid because he is male...
...He's likely to be elected to the U.S...
...What about the waste of our natural resources...
...Yes...
...I did not know how difficult and how expensive it is to change sex, or that more than 25,000 Americans have done so...
...Ah, what fun...
...Because my best friend bought a gun and is spending hundreds of hours and dollars learning karate because she feels unsafe living alone...
...It was obscene of the Jewish Journal to print that drivel without an opposing view...
...They used gifts as well as spears to demonstrate power to potential subjects...
...JANUARY 3, 2000] New York Times Book Review Poetess Maxine Kumin reviews the makings of another pretty face: When I received "Crossing," I wondered why the editors had not designated it for review by someone gay, or someone involved in the transgendered community...
...I know...
...I could go on and on...
...Just for starters, the cost of getting rid of a male beard by electrolysis is a minimum of $1o,ooo...
...Has he not been elected mayor of the country's largest and, by its own admission, most sophisticated city...
...there is no way to tell in advance the stage of growth ofa l~eated follicle...
...Don't you just love the biblical clowns who say, "The bible is true, every word, and we live by that book...
...The Republicans are against Medicare, Social Security, a livable minimum wage, free prescriptions for the elderly...
...You can go along for long periods thinkin' to yourself, "Don't agree with him about dog, but he seems like an amiable fellow...
...Hey, boy, hot dog, if we live by that archaic, superstitious and ignorant hook, well, wow, just look at who else is going to bum in hell...
...Sacrifices were unifying events...
...If the events are socially marked as unusual, the fact they happened is denied...
...Since only about 4 ~ percent of the hairs treated are killed at each attempt, retreatments-"strippings"-are necessary...
...15 issue...
...That was an experience that deepened her and shaped her life, and, incidentally, tomorrow I'm doing a major announcement on disabilities and I'm doing an event here on policies toward Americans with disabilities...
...I do not hate men...
...Senate a year from now, defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...NovEMBER a999] The American Spectator - February 20 o o 77...
...DECEMBER 14, 1999] 76 February 2000 _9 The American Spectator San Francisco Chronicle Displayed on the howl page of the venerable Chronicle, the loquacious influence of Wilma Shakespeare on Louise of Berkeley: Editor--I wrote an angry Shakespearean sonnet about men (Letters, August x9...
...JOSEPH LEVINE Los Angeles [NovEMBER 5, 1999] National Geographic Irrefutable proof that not all the higher civilizations have been so hospitable to youth culture: In its short life of only about a hundred years, the Inca Empire came to stretch 2,50o milesroughly the distance between New York City and Los Angeles...
...It isn't hate that creates my anger...
...Reading it, I realized that I - a lifelong heterosexual woman-need this book...
...All of us need to consider the way our culture shapes gender expectations and makes unspoken but profoundly rigid gender assignments based on physical appearance, apparel, gait, gestures, voice and so on...
...My fear has no qualifications when it strikes...
...That's the point...
...Sometimes, I get tired of being politically correct and qualifying my anger...
...Only an "active" follicle can be destroyed...
...Well, I don't know what to make of her claim...
...children often were taken to Cuzco for celebrations before processions bore them on long journeys and up massive mountains to sacrifice sites...
...Because his friend was just mugged and beaten in L.A...
...This fact makes me wonder if in the final analysis the Big Apple is almost as depraved as its basketball team...
...Practically all of the Republican leaders in Washington, that's who...
...I wrote it because I have been raped by a man...
...NOVEMBER 25, 1999] Town Hall Meeting During a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, regular guy A1 Gore has a hearty laugh, posterior to a question from the multitude: Q: When Juanita Broaddrick made the claim, which I found to be quite credible, that she was raped by Bill Clinton, did it change your opinion about him being one of the best presidents in history...
...His police hassle and harass blacks daily and occasionally torture them or gun them down in a hail of bullets...
...This is just a sample of the Republican party...
...I look at all those trees that were cut down just to be burned and I'm horrified...
...The squitterings are allegedly the work of a university professor by the name of Catharine A. MacKinnon, though this might be a joke: Human rights are a response to atrocity denied...
...I am afraid of men...
...And, at 56, after a long life, two kids, a double mastectomy for cancer, I am tired...
...The Inca were not the brutal conquerors the Spaniards were...
...Fear makes me write extreme poems...
...Because since my dog has gotten too old to hike, I feel unsafe in Tilden Park unless my boyfriend is with me...
...And it says right there in Leviticus 18:2a that'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman...
...the third leaves 21.7, and so it proceeds...
...At the second treatment, the percentage ofregrowth is reduced to 36...
...by a man with a lot of guns...
...if they are regarded as usual, the fact they are violating is denied...
...One woman friend read my poem and said, "I don't dare show it to my husband...
...I wrote the sonnet the day after little children were shot at in L.A...
...Worked her way through school...
...Child sacrifices were part of this approach...
...Gore: Ha ha (pause) ha ha...
...I have spent my life loving them: father, son, husband, boyfriend, friends, neighbors, teachers...
...You know how they get when they're mad...
...The dedication required for this monumental task is mind-boggling...
...The basic psychology seems to be, if it's happening, it's not so bad, and if it's really bad, it isn't happening...
...NovEMBER 14, 1999] Palm Desert Sun Biblical exegesis from "former adjunct professor" William Edelen, writing in his characteristic yokel dialect: On the CNN show "Equal Time" recently, the homophobic Oliver North ranted and raved and foamed at the mouth about gays and lesbians and how God's "word' in Leviticus calls them "sinners...
...Because my son was beaten and had a broken hand after an attempted carjacking by two men...
...Yet he praises the police for lowering the crime rate...
...Because I have been beaten by a man...
...Once in charge, the Inca assimilated new peoples with remarkable effectiveness...
...DECEMBER 9, 1999] The Jewish Journal Heartfelt whoop-whoops from an honest man: You ought to be ashamed of yourselves for printing such garbage as Rabbi Dov Fischer's in your Oct...
...But she dreamed of a day when men and women would be equal...
...And do you believe Juanita Broaddrick's claim...
...FALL]WINTER 1999] NewYorkTimes The ethical teachings ofVito Corleone, prescribed for our Troubled Schools by the famed educator Dr...
...Saying it is "Shakespearean" does not mean I think I am Shakespeare any more than saying a sonnet is "Italian" means that I have become an Italian...
...Never have I heard such anti-bias against the Democratic party...
...Could such a man be elected president...
...Because I feel unsafe walking to my car alone at lO at night after a movie...
...McCloskey was still going back for retreatment after two years of womanhood...
...DECEMBER 9, 1999] Hartford Courant Consciousness-raising taken to a new frontier in the provinces of the preposterous: In all the coverage of the terrible bonfire tragedy in Texas, few people have mentioned the other tragedy [news story, Nov...
...And this has been going on how many years...
...DECEMBER 2, 1999] Stuart News (Stuart, Florida) During a rousing philippic against New York's reformist mayor, the Rev...
...And what did you tell your son about this...
...My mother was born a poor girl in West Tennessee at a time when poor girls were not supposed to dream...
...My father was also born into a poor family...
...We all know that the Republicans only care about big businesses and the wealthy in this country and not the common man...
...Took her blind sister, my Aunt Thellie, to college with her and read lessons and took notes for both of them...
...LOUISE MURPHY Berkeley [SEPTEMBER 7, 1999] NewYorkTimes In a living room in Keene, New Hampshire, with some sixty soap opera aficionados in attendance, A1 Gore--misery's candidate--lilts briskly across some of the happier chapters leading up to his bittersweet life: I was raised myself in a family that taught me and my sister the virtues of public service...
...We all know...
...The Inca obtained children from throughout the empire and rewarded their families with positions or goods...
...OCTOBER 2, 1999] Law Quadrangle Notes Any reader who, upon perusing the following, can discern any coherent idea in it whatsoever is advised to refrain from operating a mechanical vehicle for at least twenty-four hours...
...It is a strict, poetic form...
...In this way, acts that are common to human experience, like rape in war and rape in peace, are beneath notice because they are so familiar, while acts that are uncommon to human experience, like the Nazis' industrial murder and the Serbs' industrial rape, are beyond belief...
...Zl, "Funerals Begin In A&M Bonfire Tragedy...
...Worked her way through college...
...Andrew Greeley betrays an unlovely streak ofantibasketballism: Then there is Rudolph Giuliani, the ruthless prosecutor-turned-New York mayor who wants to close down museums that present art he doesn't like and does his best to restrain freedom of expression in New York...
...I would like to meet the Rabbi face to face just to show him what an obscene view of the common man he has in this great country of ours...
Vol. 33 • February 2000 • No. 1
