CURRENT WISDOM

...Howard Dean: How did America descend to the level where a vile, strutting thug in the White House can publicly call for the execution of a man who has not faced trial, and nobody seems to think this is unusual or improper behavior...

...January 20, 2004) Sacramento Bee In the howl column of the illustrious Bee a mister Bryan Zepp Jamieson of Mount Shasta turns in a superb impersonation of the prelapsarian Dr...

...How America got saddled with George W. Bush as president is a question that people will eventually have to account for...

...Get with the program, God...

...And then there's this letter, also pink and heart-shaped, signed "Mom": "I didn't let your dad know about you, simply because I'm ashamed...

...A few more sentences, and then, it is signed, "always and unconditionally, your mommy...

...They were not just after Bill Clinton...

...One was—and one isn't supposed to say this about one's work—what an extraordinary work of art it is...

...January 4, 2004) MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...

...But I also quickly realized that I shouldn't take it personally, because what this administration was attempting to do was to turn back the progress of the entire 20th century...

...So toward the end of the whole event, after most folks had left, I saw Schlesinger and two women standing off to one side...

...And if I try to find out what they're talldng about, I'm going to get in trouble...

...So I walked over to where the three were talking and planted myself there like a schoolboy and waited...

...It was the first time I'd seen it in quite a few years...

...I think it's a reflection of the experience that I went through in Vietnam, that I didn't feel particularly threatened....But attitudinally, which is really what the question is about, I've always said that those of us who came back from Vietnam, we sort of have this saying that 'Every day is extra.' And I think there's always been a feeling in me that that's a very liberating experience, that, you know, because of Vietnam, you kind of feel, 'Hey, let the chips....'" (January 1, 2004) New' ork Times Barbra Streisand assumes a pen name: In keeping out of sight at his ranch (news article, Jan...

...Even ifyou eliminate Bush's numerous personality pathologies, such as his utter lack of empathy and his open glee at administering the death penalty on "evil-doers," the simple fact remains that Saddam dead cansay nothing that might compromise Bush, his daddy or President Reagan...

...1), President Bush seems to be fulfilling his role as the anti-Clinton...

...When they did, I introduced myself...

...January 15, 2004) Hillary Rodham Clinton (at a Florida fund-raiser) More hallucinations from the authoress of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: When the Bush administration first came into office and decided that they would try to undo everything that the Clinton administration had done, I took that personally, I admit, because I thought that we had made a lot of progress in those eight years together...

...It's easier to speculate on why Bush would speak the way he did of Saddam Hussein...

...With the Bush group, I feel I'm on the outside looking in...

...The other thing that struck me—that I hadn't really thought about because I hadn't seen it in such a long time—was how prophetic the film is...

...I don't say this as a diehard liberal, because I've actually voted for Republicans a couple of times, but Ihonestly feel that if Bush wins the next election, democracy is in grave danger...

...They wanted to undo Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, they were on their way to Teddy Roosevelt...

...I had two impressions...

...I will never label you a mistake, because God obviously thought you should have been here, even though I beg to differ...

...In my heart I will miss you but physically I don't have the means to take care of you and your older sister...

...Although I say goodbye today, you will always be with my mind, heart and soul...

...Clinton made me feel I mattered...

...I don't know precisely how old he is...

...January 15, 2004) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A great American gazette reports on the reassuring epistles two mothers manqué were considerate enough to pen to their aborted fetuses and hang on the wall of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center in the event that their unhappily dispatched charges learn to read: It is a message from a place where grief and sorrow live, scrawled on a 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004 CURRENT WISDO pink, heart-shaped sheet of paper: "To my little angel...

...And I waited, and waited a bit more until they, a touch awkwardly, turned their attention to me...

...How can I let it go by...

...And I thought, this is my chance...

...Please understand that this wasn't your time because you are better off in the hands of God than mine at this moment...

...December 19, 2003) Boston Globe Asked by a Globe interviewer "if successful bout with prostate cancer affected his outlook on life," Senator John Pierre Kerry—midst the cologne fumes—suffers another of his painful Vietnam flashbacks: "The cancer, frankly, was—it's strange...

...Despite Bill Clinton's faults, I liked vicariously shopping at the bookstore with him, listening to his lengthy policy explanations, and watching all those news conferences...

...ANDRE GREGORY: I just did see it again when I screened it in Honolulu...

...CURRENT WISDOM New York Review of Books From her powerful position on the influential pages of the New York Review, Dame Elizabeth Drew confers an additional congressional seat on the grateful paisanos of the Hoosier state: Though Gingrich has since been replaced by the milder-mannered Dennis Hastert of Indiana...

...While I understand his need for privacy, both it and "executive privilege" have morphed into secrecy...

...It was a bipartisan, right-wing extreme agenda that they were pursuing on behalf of a different kind of America that had very little to do with what we had invested in and grown over the last 50 years...

...But, to give you a sense of the range we're talking about the book that made his name as an historian, The Age of Jackson, came out, I believe, in 1946....In any case, as you can probably see, Schlesinger is a rather big deal to me...

...Schlesinger, if you're not familiar with him, is one of those few people who is quite literally a legend in his own time...

...December 16, 2003) Talking Points Memo On a popular websitefor youngsters, a well-crafted essay describing what it was like to meet Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., by blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, age seven: ...I noticed that one of the folks there was Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...I've always had a keen sense of the danger of fascism in all different forms...

...It gave me an incredible sense of pride to see it again...

...February 12, 2004) The Independent (Santa Barbara, California) Still more visions of fascism in Amerika, and Andre isn't talking about Anheuser-Busch: All these years later, what is your impression of My Dinner With Andre...